From their perch at the base of the Flatirons on the edge of Boulder, Colorado, researchers at the 57-year-old National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) aim to dissolve the traditional divides between weather and climate prediction. Colleagues work on applying atmospheric research to aviation, surface transportation, water forecasting, firefighting, and other areas. Meanwhile, solar physicists at NCAR puzzle over why solar activity has declined for the past three decades and try to predict solar storms that might disrupt satellite communications or damage the national power grid.
The oldest and largest of NSF’s federally funded R&D centers, NCAR has an operating budget of around $157 million, two-thirds of which is provided by the foundation. (For NCAR’s early history, see Joe Bassi’s article, “How did a scientific Siberia turn into AstroBoulder?,” Physics Today, February 2017, page 36.) The remaining third comes from an alphabet soup of other federal agencies, plus...
