The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado

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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.