A judge has temporarily stopped the National Science Foundation from removing the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder from its leadership of the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center in Cheyenne.
In his injunction order, District Judge R. Brooke Jackson ruled Monday that the record contains evidence that the decision to remove NCAR from the supercomputing center may have been motivated by the Trump administration’s dispute with Colorado, including President Trump’s public criticism of Gov. Jared Polis for refusing to release Tina Peters. Polis later commuted her sentence, and Peters, the former Mesa County clerk who was convicted of four felonies related to election fraud, was released from prison on Monday.
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which manages NCAR, filed a motion for an injunction in April, stating that the NSF and other federal agencies were “waging a campaign of retaliation against Colorado.”
Jackson’s ruling stated that “the record contains evidence that the decision may … have been motivated by the Trump Administration’s dispute with the State of Colorado.”
The judge granted the to stop the NSF from moving forward with its decision to transfer stewardship of the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center from NCAR and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research to another operator. The judge ruled that the NSF must stop any removal of NCAR or UCAR, which manages NCAR on behalf of the NSF, from its rights, resources or responsibilities related to the supercomputer.
“We are pleased that Judge Jackson recognized how damaging the proposed transfer of the NWSC to another operator would be for the nation’s scientific community,” UCAR Interim President Eric Barron . “UCAR’s top priority is to advance Earth system science in service to society. Our work supports national security, public safety, and economic prosperity, and any steps made toward divesting NCAR of its high-performance computing facilities would risk disrupting the country’s extraordinary advances in weather and space weather modeling and forecasting, as well as related programs spanning agriculture, water resources, wildfire risk, military support, power grid interruption, and aviation safety.”
In the motion and during the hearing, UCAR argued that it would suffer irreparable harm if the NSF were allowed to proceed with its decision to transfer stewardship of the supercomputing center, including the departures of employees with specialized expertise, disruption of research projects, financial consequences and undermining UCAR’s mission.
The injunction ensures operations continue as before at the supercomputing center as the lawsuit brought by UCAR on March 16 against four federal agencies continues. UCAR filed the lawsuit to stop the Trump administration’s planned dismantling of Boulder’s NCAR, alleging that the planned reorganization of the agency is retaliatory and violates federal law.
The NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center, currently operated by NCAR in Cheyenne, Wyoming, supports and advances Earth system sciences by providing computing environments, data services and research in computational science, according to its website. Itap used across the globe for its weather forecasts and data. Each year, it provides its resources to more than 1,500 users at more than 500 universities and research institutions.
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