Extreme Temperature Diary- Wednesday December 17th, 2025/Main Topic: Trump Tries to Dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research – Guy On Climate
Dear Diary. Trump and his fossil fuel allies’ attacks on science have seemed unending during 2025. Today we will focus on how he is trying to end research going on at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. National Center for Atmospheric Research in the past has done a lot of research on climate, firming up what we know now is fact that our carbon emissions from the past two hundred years are warming our climate. It’s no wonder that Trump wants to dismantle NCAR.
Personally, I have friends working or who have worked at NCAR in Colorado, and my own record research would not have been published if it wasn’t for the organization existing in the 2000s.
@bhensonweather.bsky.social spent most of his career working at NCAR. He writes, "Working at NCAR and UCAR was an enormous privilege and one of the great joys of my life. I gained a humbling appreciation for the intricacy of the atmosphere."
yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/12/trum... — Dr. Jeff Masters (@drjeffmasters.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T16:00:01.301Z
It's like on the eve of WWII we decided to stop funding R&D into weapons systems to develop advanced aircraft, ships, and tanks. Climate change is going to kick our butts if we lose NCAR (and NOAA) at a time when climate change is increasing extreme weather events capable of crashing the economy. — Dr. Jeff Masters (@drjeffmasters.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T04:24:41.501Z
This is the work of Vladimir Putin, to crater everything this country has led the world in for decades. Honest to Christ the military should just surround the Whitehouse & perp-walk this traitor to a military brig until a sentence is rendered. And then we need guardrails built into Constitution. — PRIMAL SCREAM (@primal-scream.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T04:47:28.346Z
It is hard to overstate how critical @ncar-ucar.bsky.social is to climate science in the US and around the world. It's the beating heart of our field. Generations of scientists have trained there, and almost everyone I know relies on deep collaborations with NCAR scientists. It's end is unthinkable. — Kim Cobb (@kimcobb.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T02:50:46.254Z
The NSF statement on NCAR closure aligns closely with the White House announcement from last night, first reported by USA TODAY. Note the complete absence of the word "climate."
www.nsf.gov/news/intent-... — Bob Henson (@bhensonweather.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T20:19:03.584Z
NCAR is a unique & valuable asset - far more than a climate model, or observations, or technology, or training ground, or gathering space. It covers weather, space weather, data, climate, paleo-climate, and everything in-between. It's building is an icon, but it's iconic status goes far beyond that. — Gavin Schmidt (@climateofgavin.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T12:21:05.198Z
Here are more details from Common Dreams:
Trump ‘Taking a Sledgehammer’ to One of World’s Most Vital Climate Research Center, Scientists Warn | Common Dreams
 A banner reading “Science makes America great” is seen at a rally of scientists and researchers against budget cuts and job cuts in Washington, DC on March 7, 2025. (Photo by Thomas Müller/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Trump ‘Taking a Sledgehammer’ to One of World’s Most Vital Climate Research Center, Scientists Warn“This is self-sabotage by a wildly ignorant and malicious administration cutting off their nose to spite their face,” said one hurricane researcher. Julia Conley
Dec 17, 2025
One US House Democrat pledged Tuesday night that Colorado officials will fight the Trump administration’s latest attack on science “with every legal tool that we have” after top White House budget adviser Russell Vought announced a decision to break up a crucial climate research center in Boulder.
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) called the decision to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) “a deeply dangerous” action.
He added that NCAR is “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”
But scientists pointed to the center’s 65-year history of making major advances in climate research and developing systems that scientists use regularly.
NCAR developed GPS dropsondes, which are dropped from the center’s aircraft into the eye of hurricanes to gather crucial data and improve forecasts, as well as severe weather warnings and analyses of the economic impacts that weather can bring, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, told USA Today, which first reported on the plan to dismantle the facility.
Neguse also called the decision to shutter NCAR “blatantly retaliatory.” The breakup of the center was announced days after President Donald Trump announced his plan to pardon Tina Peters, despite uncertainty over his authority to do so. The former county clerk was convicted in Colorado court on felony charges of allowing someone to access secure voting system data—part of an effort to prove the baseless conspiracy theory pushed by Trump that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
Trump attacked Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, over the Peters case last week, calling him “incompetent” and “pathetic.”
Also on Tuesday, the administration announced it was canceling $109 million in environmental transportation grants for Colorado that were aimed at boosting investment in electric vehicles, rail improvements, and other research.
Writer Benjamin Kunkel said the dismantling of NCAR is evidently “what happens to a state whose leading officials do accept climate science… and don’t accept that Trump won the 2020 election.”
Polis said Tuesday that his government had not received any communication from the White House about the NCAR review and dismantling, but “if true, public safety is at risk and science is being attacked.”
“ Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science,” he said. “NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”
The White House Tuesday said it objected to UCAR’s “woke direction,” including its efforts to “make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered” via the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences and wind turbine research that aims to “better understand and predict the impact of weather conditions and changing climate on offshore wind production.”
The administration also said the review of NCAR will eliminate “green new scam research activities”—green energy research completed by many of the center’s 830 employees.
Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe warned that the dismantling of NCAR was an attack on “quite literally our global mothership.”
“NCAR supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes—the largest community climate model in the world,” said Hayhoe. “Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.”
Hurricane specialist Michael Lowry said the center is “crucial to cutting-edge meteorology and improvements in weather forecasting.”
“It’s far, far bigger than a ‘climate’ research lab,” he said. “This is self-sabotage by a wildly ignorant and malicious administration cutting off their nose to spite their face.”
The president this year has also pushed massive cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where major climate and weather research takes place. The cuts have come as 2024 has been named the hottest year on record and scientists have warned that planetary heating has contributed to recent weather disasters.
“Any plans to dismantle NSF NCAR,” UCAR president Antonio Busalacchi told the Washington Post, “would set back our nation’s ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters.”
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Julia Conley
Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
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More:
"Trump team ‘breaking up’ top climate research center" | I weigh in via @eenews.bsky.social & Robin Bravender: www.eenews.net/articles/tru...
#ScienceUnderSiege — Michael E. Mann (@michaelemann.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T18:35:24.076Z
Here's our reporting on the proposed dismantling of the jewel of US atmospheric science, @ncar-ucar.bsky.social.
The plan is to break NCAR apart and disburse some parts to other locations (like the research aircraft fleet) and eliminate others.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
🧪 #AGU25 #climate — Alexandra Witze (@alexwitze.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T18:59:13.384Z
a few more at the link, along with more temperature posts I'm skipping.
Here are some “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
A crazy event in the report: “Following the retreat of South Sawyer Glacier, a landslide in southeast Alaska’s Tracy Arm in August 2025 generated a tsunami that swept across the narrow fjord and ran nearly 1,600 feet up the other side. Fortunately, the fjord was empty of cruise ships.” — Dr. Jeff Masters (@drjeffmasters.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T00:15:54.531Z
Arctic #climate - 95 % thick sea ice melted, water temperatures warmed and gotten saltier, air temps increasing
www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T12:14:57.216Z
"We have known since the calculations of Nobel prize-winning physical chemist Svante Arrhenius in the 1890s of the impact increasing CO2 would have on temperature," Hayhoe said, citing scientific literature from 1896.
YES - 1896. That's how long we've known.
factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.... — Katharine Hayhoe (@katharinehayhoe.com) 2025-12-17T16:47:01.542Z
And, Svante Arrhenius’s 1896 estimates of climate sensitivity fall within the range of those made by today’s models. He famously underestimated how fast the effects of increased CO2 would appear because he could not fathom how much coal we would burn. — Ben Harding (@blhiiii.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T16:52:30.310Z
How the Greenland ice sheet fared in 2025 www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-h... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T12:13:21.518Z
Or rather, all too believable. If you want to suppress all knowledge of how a relatively small number are enriching themselves by destroying our shared home then this destruction, following on the heels of the funding freeze for the national Climate Adaptation Science Centers, is completely logical. — Katharine Hayhoe (@katharinehayhoe.com) 2025-12-17T03:02:24.435Z
Survey: Bill Gates put climate urgency up for debate. What do you think?" | Article by Rick Spence for Corporate Knights:
corporateknights.com/climate-and-... — Michael E. Mann (@michaelemann.bsky.social) 2025-12-16T20:57:44.305Z
Survivors sue Shell in landmark case over deadly typhoon in Philippines
www.independent.co.uk/climate-chan... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T12:12:43.601Z
Climate action is happening all around us — in communities, classrooms, churches, and unexpected corners of the world. Here are a few stories of hope, concern, and practical choices we can make together. — Katharine Hayhoe (@katharinehayhoe.com) 2025-12-17T19:51:24.747Z
You know... maybe this is the stage we need to be at the moment. Sarcastic, dark humour might actually get us closer to doing something about climate change: oilwell.app #climate #climatecrisis — Bojan Fürst (@bojanfurst.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T14:05:15.003Z
Anyone wishing to join Team Climate & Health for this wonderful ride can do so here: www.climateride.org/events/green.... Anyone wishing to join Team Climate One can register there too.
@howardfrumkin.bsky.social
@ashleymcclure.bsky.social
@climateone.org — Ed Maibach (@maibached.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T20:02:58.434Z
Torrential rains have caused heavy flooding in Spain’s Barcelona, submerging cars and disrupting metro services. — Al Jazeera English (@aljazeera.com) 2025-12-17T19:57:38.442Z
Epic snowfall in the Pacific NW!! ❄️
Over the next 10 days up to 10 feet will pile up on the higher terrain of British Columbia and Washington. Then another several feet in the 10-15 day period. And it doesn’t stop there. Oregon Montana Wyoming N Cali too!
#Whistler #Blackcomb #snOMG — Jeff Berardelli (@weatherprof.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T14:23:37.877Z
Santa is not happy with this Christmas forecast 😢
Huge heat dome with temperatures 30-40° above normal across much of the nation’s middle.
The only places which may escape the heat are the edges… NW/NE and Great Lakes.
We’re still 9 days out and some changes are still possible.
Stay tuned! — Jeff Berardelli (@weatherprof.bsky.social) 2025-12-16T22:52:22.365Z
Finally had a moment the run the numbers on the chance of a White Christmas.
And Florida - it’s worse than expected!
I promise, I checked and rechecked.
It’s correct. 😜
#florida #snow #Christmas — Jeff Berardelli (@weatherprof.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T00:05:37.975Z
NEW – Hydrogen emissions are ‘supercharging’ the warming impact of methane | @ayeshatandon.carbonbrief.org
Read here: buff.ly/QFrPsK9 — Carbon Brief (@carbonbrief.org) 2025-12-17T16:01:18.723Z
— Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T13:09:24.409Z
— Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T12:48:41.636Z
— Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T12:08:50.978Z
#Australia CSIRO : Electricity generation costs third lower with 82% renewable grid.
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T12:39:00.462Z
]
]2025 UK's sunniest year ever - with record levels for #solar power
news.sky.com/story/2025-i... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T12:35:52.650Z
Global coal demand hit record high this year but is set to decline by 2030, IEA says. www.reuters.com/sustainabili... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T12:28:40.319Z
Live now: House @naturalresources.bsky.social Democrats are fighting against radical GOP legislation to gut the Endangered Species Act — Brad Johnson (@climatebrad.hillheat.com) 2025-12-17T17:34:06.662Z
"With all due respect, it's just complete fucking bullshit." - @repstansbury.bsky.social goes off against the oil-soaked GOP.
Rather than accepting the striking of her words, she leaves the committee hearing.
"Absolutely shocking!" Hageman sputters. — Brad Johnson (@climatebrad.hillheat.com) 2025-12-17T17:34:06.663Z
Will have the same impact as new-build on flood plains did ...
UK housing developments exempt from wildlife habitats rules "hollowing-out one of the most important nature protection policies in a generation."
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T12:23:43.032Z
Jane Goodall Earth medal to recognise people working to improve the world — David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 (@whysharksmatter.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T15:52:00.993Z
Happy Maple Syrup Day!
Canada produces 80% of the world's pure maple syrup, and Quebec produces 91% of Canada's maple syrup.
It is something that is quintessentially Canadian.
This is its history.
🧵 1/12 — Canadian History Ehx (@cdnhistoryehx.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T14:01:37.195Z
Your pretty picture of the day 😀 🌊with of course many interesting processes! Water rich in suspended sediments is moved around by ocean currents in the Bay of Biscay. I'm curious about the long-range waves seen in the dark region, can't decide if these are oceanic, atmospheric, or an artifact 😅 — Aida Alvera-Azcárate (@aida-alvera.bsky.social) 2025-12-17T09:55:01.041Z
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