The Trump administration's decision to close a world-leading research centre for atmospheric science is a blow to weather forecasting and climate modelling that could leave humanity more exposed to the impacts of global warming.
In a statement to USA Today, White House official Russ Vought said the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is a source of "climate alarmism" and will be broken up. "Green new scam research" will be eliminated, while "vital functions" like weather modelling and supercomputing will be moved elsewhere, the White House said.
NCAR's models underpin the reports of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which countries rely on for decisions about how to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to extreme weather.
"Shutting it down would lead to greater uncertainty about what our climate future might be and leave us less able to prepare effectively," says Michael Meredith at the British Antarctic Survey. "It's hard to see this as anything other than shooting the messenger."
NCAR was started in 1960 to facilitate atmospheric science too large-scale for individual universities. Its 830 employees are involved in research "from the ocean floor to the Sun's core", according to its unofficial motto, with programmes to monitor everything from flooding and wildfires to space weather.
At its hilltop laboratory in the Colorado Rockies, NCAR invented the GPS dropsonde, a sensor-laden device that is dropped into hurricanes, revolutionising our understanding of tropical storms. Its researchers developed wind-shear warning systems for airports that have prevented countless crashes.
But perhaps its greatest contribution has been providing data, modelling and supercomputing to other researchers. Weather Underground, which in the 1990s was one of the first to offer local forecasts online, wouldn't have existed without software and weather data from NCAR, according to its founder, meteorologist Jeff Masters.
NCAR develops and administers the Weather Research and Forecasting Model, which is widely used for both day-to-day forecasting and the study of regional climates. It also collaborates with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to advance weather modelling, especially for predicting severe storms.
If this work is disrupted, it could halt improvements to forecasts on weather apps and television news, at a time when extreme weather is getting more frequent. Shutting down NCAR is like if, "on the eve of world war two, we decided to stop funding R&D into weapons", says Masters.
[...] NCAR administers the Community Earth System Model (CESM), the first global climate model designed for universities. CESM has supported a huge variety of research, from estimates of current global carbon emissions to future changes to ocean currents, heatwave frequency and glacier and sea ice melt.
"It's probably the most-used model in the world," says Richard Rood at the University of Michigan.
NCAR holds biannual meetings with users to decide how to improve the model, which can be run on its servers or downloaded and operated locally. Its closure is likely to end the further development of CESM, as well as maintenance to fix bugs.
[...] Its aircraft help monitor air pollution and calibrate satellite instruments, according to Rood.
Its research on aerosols would be vital to understanding the effects of geoengineering, he adds. Schemes like spreading aerosols to block sunlight have been proposed to avoid abrupt changes in the climate.
"Getting rid of climate research like this would really have us flying blind, more blindly, into decisions about geoengineering, as well as tipping points," says Rood.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday December 31, @03:21PM (1 child)
The people will migrate, their knowledge will not be lost, their research will continue, it's not as if it takes outrageous quantities of exclusively held resources to crunch the numbers.
The real damage to look for is in loss (or, especially: corruption) of the sensor networks - _that_ is one of JFK's true legacies: the power of our satellite monitoring network. The staggering cost of Apollo made LandSat, GOES and friends look cheap.
How extensive is the non-US funded weather / climate monitoring network?
One thing that I found incredible on my late 2010s tour of the Eastern Caribbean was their lack of decent rain radar. Having lived under NEXRAD since its inception, it just feels like an expected component of modern life: the ability to monitor precipitation in high resolution in real-time, track storms and plan when to travel based on those projections down to a 5-10 minute window. The Eastern Caribbean doesn't have anything like NEXRAD - you can get some lame slow low resolution satellite based info, but nobody has bothered to install a decent rain radar system on the islands. I was there for almost a month, and by the end of the month I wasn't "getting used to" the idea that these savages just got wet when it rained, I was starting to think that I could put together a project to build and maintain something like a NEXRAD station on one of the islands which could share its data across the local group in real-time. The benefit clearly has to outweigh the costs, it just lacks an advocate and benefactors to get it started.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 01, @06:04PM
Tell me you have rabies without saying you have rabies, you racist piece of shit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31, @05:10PM
The point of shitcanning NCAR is to privatize it and rent seek
by whoever lines the right pockets
Brown people don't have any money for rent, so they have
no interest in providing services there
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Wednesday December 31, @06:26PM (2 children)
Remember how Trump "fixed" the problem of rising Covid rates? He cancelled testing. Voila, the rate stopped growing. He doesn't like global warming so the obvious solution is to eliminate anyone or anything that provides data.
You really can't argue with someone that thinks like this. Best to take them behind the woodshed and shoot them. Hang on, there's a knock at my door......
It was a once in a lifetime experience. Which means I'll never do it again.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday January 01, @01:42AM (1 child)
And by a similar set of logic: If you wear a blindfold while skiing, that guarantees you won't hit any trees.
But it fits the logic of somebody who thinks that if you paint the toilet gold, it no longer stinks.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday January 01, @11:37AM
It's all the rage [theguardian.com] these days. No one believes real stuff anymore.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31, @07:35PM
And we all know what that's about. [coloradosun.com]
Trump's advice is, "Don't buy a cheap umbrella"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Captival on Wednesday December 31, @07:43PM (6 children)
If we don't funnel billions to this NGO, then who will write reports telling us we need to funnel money to other NGOs????!?!?!?!?!?
(Score: 3, Touché) by oregonjohn on Wednesday December 31, @07:55PM (1 child)
There is always the question of which social investments should receive support by tax dollars. Yours, mine, theirs? Discussion is more important than simple obfuscation.
(Score: 3, Informative) by krishnoid on Wednesday December 31, @08:45PM
Fine, Mister "Transparency" [sankeymatic.com], but why should we discuss things when obfuscation [cato.org] serves our purposes so much better?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31, @11:16PM (1 child)
Our taxes might actually go somewhere that benefits us. Can't have that.
These institutions started out decent but have been re-purposed to push political agendas. Their output in current year is no longer trustable.
But no, I'm obviously a troll too. Hurry up and censor, lest someone sees it. Same way as being punctual is toxic "whiteness" per the Smithsonian. Sure glad to be funding for that.
If you wanted us to defend these things you shouldn't have spiked them with propaganda. Now my field fucks at boomer trump dismantling them for whatever reason is completely barren.
>Schemes like spreading aerosols to block sunlight have been proposed to avoid abrupt changes in the climate.
Yea man.. what could go wrong? Not like those who suggested it overlap with this organization more than the people defunding it.
(Score: 2, Troll) by pe1rxq on Thursday January 01, @12:56AM
I considered modding you a troll. But at the end I was searching for the 'What the fuck are you talking about?' option....
Seriously WTF?
(Score: 3, Funny) by aafcac on Thursday January 01, @02:21AM (1 child)
If the government doesn't do it, then who will? The government has far less of an incentive to skew the results in favor of whatever outcome they want to than private companies do.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by aafcac on Thursday January 01, @06:31PM
I see Libertarians are getting mod points again. It's a serious point, there is far less of an incentive for governments around the world to lie about things like this. The US may very well have an unhealthy relationship with oil, but there's also a bunch of places which get harmed by things like the effects of climate change or aren't run by absolute psychopaths to help balance it out. This isn't obscure physics research where things like the LHC can cost billions of dollars to develop, some of the research can be done for far less money and a few of these countries banding together to fund it could help a lot.
(Score: 3, Troll) by EEMac on Wednesday December 31, @08:59PM
...and nothing of value was lost.