Updated BalancedWx Special: Unidata suspends operations

8 pm CT Fri update: New significant updates regarding NSF

Update #2 (10 pm): A federal judge in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order tonight prohibiting the government from implementing any reorganization or reductions-in-force for two weeks (through May 23) in a number of agencies, including the National Science Foundation and Department of Commerce (NOAA). One would assume that means that the NSF reorganization actions discussed below will be on hold until this court case is resolved. You can read more about the judge’s order in this NPR article.

Update #1 (8 pm): This story was originally posted about 4 pm this afternoon, but I have updated it for major developments related to NSF that were announced this evening.

There have been several developments in the weather enterprise in the last few days that I feel like I need to update readers on and share some perspective. I am going to start with the most recent one I am aware of, which is also the most urgent for the broader weather and climate community. This morning the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) announced that it is pausing most operations of its Unidata program and furloughing nearly all of the approximately two dozen scientists and technicians that work for Unidata.

Obviously, this is yet another blow to our atmospheric science community, but to give some perspective on why losing Unidata is so impactful, I will start with this blurb from the Unidata website:

NSF Unidata is a community of education and research institutions with the common goal of sharing geoscience data and the tools to access and visualize that data. Since 1983, NSF Unidata has been providing data, software tools, and support to enhance Earth-system education and research. Funded primarily by the National Science Foundation (NSF), NSF Unidata is one of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)'s Community Programs (UCP).

For my entire career, Unidata has been the entity that has been the primary source for real-time weather data and data visualization and analysis tools for the education and research community. Unidata provides real-time feeds of most observational and model data free of charge, and also develops and maintains the software that downloads and manages that data, Local Data Manager (LDM). LDM has been the core data distribution, download and management software package for atmospheric scientists for decades, and is used not only by universities but by government agencies and the private sector. THREDDS Data Server (TDS), developed and maintained by Unidata, is the primary way in which research data is archived and stored throughout the atmospheric science community.

Unidata also developed and maintains most of the commonly data visualization and analysis tools used by meteorologists, including a version of the National Weather Service’s AWIPS software that can be used by universities in classroom and research settings. Along with developing and maintaining all of these data services and tools, Unidata provides community training and support for them, hosting online community forums where scientists can get support from other scientists and Unidata staff. Unidata holds multiple workshops every year which not only provide training on their services and software, but also serve as an opportunity for members of our community to come together and learn from each other.

Here are some sample reactions to the news about Unidata from scientists on BlueSky…

Unidata is financially supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). One of the important roles that NSF serves for science in this country is to support projects and entities that serve the broader science community at large. Unidata is a perfect example of this sort of effort. It formed through a grassroots process among a consortium of universities more than 40 years ago, and has evolved to be a crucial foundational aspect of the geoscience framework within the United States. Through funding of Unidata in its mission to provide crucial support to the entire scientific community, NSF is meeting its mission to support the progress of science and increase the capacity of the United States to conduct research.

Unfortunately, NSF itself is in grave peril. The reason for the Unidata shutdown is that on April 30th, NSF instituted a funding freeze. Unidata is funded by NSF on a 5-year grant cycle, but that funding is released in periodic increments, and the funding freeze came before UCAR received the allocation that would have allowed Unidata operations to continue beyond today. It is unclear when the funding freeze may be terminated and UCAR might receive the Unidata funding allocation.

Yesterday, though, NSF announced a major reorganization that involves elimination of all of the agency’s 37 divisions and a streamlining of remaining divisions and programs. As reported by Science, “the consolidation appears to be driven in part by President Donald Trump’s proposal to cut the agency’s $4 billion budget by 55% for the 2026 fiscal year that begins on 1 October.” Similar to what has been reported as a concerning possibility for NOAA and its FY2026 budget passback document from the Office of Management and Budget, NSF appears to be taking reorganization steps based on the administration’s outlined budget priorities rather than waiting for any Congressional budget direction.

(Below updated at 8 pm CT for new information)

Science reported in a new article this evening that NSF management today provided employees significant additional details about the agency’s reorganization in a memo from their chief management officer, Micah Cheatham. Currently, in addition to their federal staff, NSF has about 368 non-federal employee scientists who work for the agency for 2 to 4 years as part of a rotating workforce meant to keep NSF on the leading edge of science. As reported by Science, NSF is planning to reduce the number of these employees to 70.

This reduction will be possible due to and because of the budget cuts and significant change in the organization and operation of the agency touched on above. Per the additional details reported this evening by Science, NSF going forward will be organized around its current high level directorates, and the elimination of the divisions will result in a reduction of the agency’s current number of senior executive service (SES) managers from 143 to 59. The remaining directorates will focus on funding research in one of five priority areas identified by the administration: artificial intelligence, quantum information science, biotechnology, nuclear energy, and translational science. NSF is also eliminating the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM (EES) which will result in the loss of between 15 and 20 federal employees per Science.

It is important to recognize that NSF support for atmospheric science, particularly for foundational activities and earlier stage research than what NOAA typically supports, is tremendous, with the NSF Atmospheric and Geospace budget totalling more than $200M annually in recent years. Along with research grant programs, NSF supports UCAR and Unidata, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), atmospheric observing research networks and clusters, and many other initiatives.

Where all of these programs stand given the NSF news announced in the last 24 hours is unclear. Even if the NSF funding freeze is lifted and Unidata receives its pending funding allocation allowing operations to resume, the NSF organizational details announced today and reported by Science are hugely consequential and would likely result in major impacts to the weather community (and science in general, of course). More details are obviously needed to understand the potential implications, but they are likely profound.

Of course, while this is happening at NSF, NOAA continues to reel from recent staffing losses, and in the last few weeks announced the termination of numerous key scientific datasets, including this week’s termination of the billion-dollar disaster dataset and a number of critical arctic snow and ice datasets. So while the full implication and magnitude of what is transpiring may not yet be clear, what is clear to me is that the serious negative impacts to the foundation of the scientific community and infrastructure of this country are happening right now, and as I discussed earlier this week our society is in danger of having lost much of its scientific capacity before it even knows what happened.

As I have said before, I am documenting what is happening to the atmospheric science community because that is what I am experienced in and can share meaningful perspective about. Based on what I am seeing in my field, we are quickly losing the foundations of our national scientific infrastructure on which key societal benefits such as accurate hurricane and tornado warnings rely upon, and my sense is that other fields (medicine, space, life sciences, etc.) are suffering in the same way. The damage is already being done - the next several months will determine the depth of the damage and how much can be recovered if and when our society prioritizes it again.