Dear Colleagues,
As is the case with many of you, we at UCAR and NSF NCAR are trying to navigate this extraordinarily challenging environment. The pauses in federal grants, as well as terminations of leading programs and datasets, is creating unprecedented difficulties for our organization along with much of the nation's research enterprise. As always, however, we remain fully committed to serving the Earth system science community and to being the best possible stewards of the taxpayer investment in our work, which is so important to public safety, economic growth, and national security.
With our funding agencies implementing directives from the administration, several of our programs have received stop-work orders or have had their funding delayed or frozen while an additional review of a grant or contract is conducted. Although we can sometimes bridge the funding gaps with emergency funds, in a few cases we have had to suspend programs and furlough staff while we wait for funding to be released. We have also experienced a small number of staff reductions due to permanent funding cuts.
One of the biggest impacts on our organization occurred earlier this month when NSF Unidata furloughed almost all staff following a freeze in NSF funding. The program will endeavor to maintain data flow but will not have resources available to address any but the most critical issues. Please be assured that Unidata's commitment to providing robust data services to the educational and research communities remains undiminished. I hope the program can resume normal operations shortly. For more on Unidata's situation, see the announcement on its website.
Our Federal Response Team continues to meet daily to triage the impacts of funding and policy changes in Washington, D.C. Looking ahead, we will be closely watching discussions over federal spending for fiscal year 2026, with Congress weighing in on President Trump's budget proposal and potentially making changes to the administration's recommended funding levels.
As you may have heard, NSF last month suspended its support for the Airborne Phased Array Radar (APAR). The decision was based on several factors, including some unanticipated cost and schedule challenges related to the project's complexity as well as the difficult federal budget outlook for science in general and science infrastructure in particular. I continue to believe in APAR's scientific value as a transformative tool for observing hurricanes and other severe weather from a perspective of both research and operations. NSF NCAR remains committed to APAR and is exploring all possible options to continue making progress on this essential instrument.
On a different topic, I'm very pleased to share the news that Christine Wiedinmyer has been selected to serve as the new director of UCAR Community Programs (UCP), with a start date of June 30. Christine is both an internationally recognized atmospheric chemist and an accomplished scientific leader with an extensive background in building strategic partnerships to develop and execute high-priority scientific programs for the benefit of society. She worked as an NSF NCAR scientist for 16 years and subsequently served on the UCAR Board of Trustees from 2019 until early this year. At present, she is the associate director for science at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder, as well as a research professor at the university. For more about Christine, please see our news release.
In other UCP news, The Weather Company has become the first operational user of the Joint Effort for Data Assimilation Integration (JEDI), an open-community software tool developed at UCP's Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA). JEDI integrates vast amounts of asynchronous observations from satellites, radar, weather balloons, aircraft, and other sources, turning them into a consistent format to be fed into forecast models with unprecedented efficiency and accuracy. The Weather Company is implementing JEDI within its global high-resolution atmospheric forecasting system (GRAF), which was developed in collaboration with NSF NCAR and is based on the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS).
In addition to advancing The Weather Company's weather prediction capabilities, this development highlights the importance of public-private-academic partnerships in driving breakthrough innovations for the benefit of society. JCSDA is a research center of excellence based on a multi-agency partnership among NOAA, NASA, and the U.S. Navy and Air Force, with key collaborators including the U.K. Met Office and NSF NCAR. For more about The Weather Company's use of JEDI, please see our news release.
Finally, I am very much looking forward to the UCAR Board of Trustees meeting in Washington, D.C. early next month. Among the highlights will be a presentation about our new advocacy campaign, developed by Brodeur Partners. The campaign emphasizes the real-world impacts of Earth system science, and how our partnerships with the federal government and academia, as well as with businesses ranging from car manufacturers to insurers to aerospace companies, is translating research into solutions. We will be taking this message to Capitol Hill, emphasizing to Congress the critical importance of Earth System Science research to better safeguard those in harm's way, inform businesses, and provide military leaders with vital insights into environmental conditions.
Sincerely,
Antonio J. Busalacchi
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Boreas Penguin
UCAR Chief Penguin
UCAR, UCP and NSF NCAR
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