Lawsuit Seeks to Block Closure of Top Federal Climate Research Center

One of the nation’s largest environmental groups is challenging the Trump administration’s closure of a leading climate institute, filing a lawsuit Thursday in federal court saying the closure is unlawful.

The administration had announced in December that it would dismantle the Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR, which conducts advanced climate and weather modeling. The closure is part of a broader assault on climate science by the White House. But the lawsuit filed by the Environmental Defense Fund also says it was an illegal act of political retribution against Colorado.

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Colorado, says the closure will deprive scientists at the environmental organization and across the globe of critical research that underpins their work trying to protect people from the harms of climate change.

“When we check the weather or track the path of a hurricane, we’re leaning on science generated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research,” said Erin Murphy, lead counsel for clean air and energy markets at the Environmental Defense Fund, in a statement. “The federal government’s investment in climate science plays a critical role in our ability to understand and prepare for more frequent and intense extreme weather events caused by climate pollution. The Trump administration is attempting to eliminate NCAR’s vital climate science research and close its Mesa Laboratory at a time when Americans everywhere are suffering from the impacts of climate change, including more intense heat and fires, more dangerous floods and storms, and skyrocketing insurance costs.”

The complaint says the National Science Foundation, which sponsors NCAR, and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which directed the center’s closure, violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to ground their decision in facts or to provide a satisfactory explanation for the action.

It joins another lawsuit challenging NCAR’s closure filed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which operates the center, and a broader case filed by the state of Colorado.

NCAR houses some of the nation’s most advanced climate and weather modeling. Its supercomputers developed climate models that have informed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and U.S. government climate reports. Its scientists have helped improve forecasting of tropical storms and other extreme weather. Scientists describe its pairing of climate and weather science in one institution as unparalleled in the country.

The topics NCAR studies—the causes and impacts of climate change—“are among the most important scientific issues that federal policymakers have ever confronted,” the new lawsuit says.

The lawsuit says the plan to dismantle NCAR began in fall 2025 within the White House. In December, OMB director Russell Vought announced the administration would break apart NCAR, which he called “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.” 

Around that time, President Donald Trump was ramping up a campaign to try to free a former county clerk in Colorado, who had been convicted in state court of election-related crimes tied to the 2020 election, which Trump lost.

On Dec. 15, a Trump aide sent an email scheduling a call to “prioritize Colorado for the purposes of ensuring grants and federal support are in line with administration priorities,” according to a document released in one of the other lawsuits challenging NCAR’s closure and reported on by The Denver Post. 

Vought’s announcement to close NCAR came the next day.

This week’s lawsuit says the closure is “the antithesis of the reasoned decision-making that the Administrative Procedure Act requires.” Instead, it says, the decision “represents a politically-motivated, predetermined outcome driven by ideological animus rather than reason.”

Michael Oppenheimer, the director of the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment at Princeton University, said NCAR’s closure would be a huge loss to climate science. Beyond its critical contributions to global climate modeling, Oppenheimer said one of NCAR’s most important products is a community climate model that makes it easier for scientists anywhere to use the models themselves. The center has also produced critical research on how climate change is harming people.

The Trump administration does not want to know about climate change, Oppenheimer said, so “it’s blinding itself by destroying key institutions like NCAR.”

A White House spokesperson referred questions to the National Science Foundation, which declined to comment, and OMB, which did not immediately reply to questions.

The Environmental Defense Fund lawsuit also accuses the administration of violating the National Historic Preservation Act by planning to close NCAR’s Mesa Lab, which the complaint says represents “a significant historic site of scientific discovery and modernist architecture,” without proper procedure.

To date, NCAR continues to operate despite the announcement that it would be broken apart. In June, a judge issued an injunction as part of the University Corporation lawsuit temporarily blocking the transfer of NCAR’s supercomputer to a different site.