The National Science Foundation supports the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to advance basic research in the United States in the atmospheric and related sciences in support of the university community. As a federally-funded research and development center, NCAR is able to sustain a long-term commitment to this scientific enterprise. Our research and understanding of the atmosphere, the Earth System, and the Sun and their environments is essential to fulfilling our other strategic goals. We pursue this basic research to advance our knowledge. Concurrently, we also are able to improve the modeling, computing, and observational facilities we provide; and, to transfer the results of our work to the public and private sector.
Our research includes atmospheric chemistry; meteorology, solar physics, solar-terrestrial interactions, and the Earth's upper atmosphere; climate research; societal impacts of climate change and severe weather; biogeochemistry; water cycle; geophysical turbulence; and applied mathematics and statistical analysis. We conduct our research in close collaboration with university partners; local, state and federal agencies; and with strategic international partners and private sector sponsors. Our goal is also to make our research accessible and widely available.
NCAR addresses four broad priorities within this goal:
While decision makers in virtually all sectors of the economy could benefit from improved weather and climate information, they often have little idea of what data are currently available, and how they could benefit from this information. At NCAR, we are committed to exploring "the art of the possible" with decision makers, working with them to understand the nature of their work, how it is affected by weather and climate, and how they use information to make decisions.
Read more about this priorityNCAR scientists work in partnership with stakeholder communities to research, build, and transfer state-of-the-art decision support information, tools, and systems. This effort encompasses a broad continuum of activities ranging from conducting workshops to developing operational systems and instruments. Developing greater resilience to weather and climate not only involves improved understanding of atmospheric processes, but better understanding of the decision-making process itself, and of the importance of communicating relevant information between atmospheric scientists and decision makers. It is clear that the connections between individual decision makers, as well as societies themselves, and the environment must be better understood and appreciated.
As an NSF federally funded research and development laboratory, and, as stated in our Strategic Plan, NCAR is devoted to applied research and technology transfer. While all of our programs have this responsibility, the most significant effort to support this priority occurs through our Research and Applications Laboratory. In this section, we also report on activities occurring in EOL and SERE.
Read more about this priorityMany of the most interesting and important Earth system processes are global in scale and can only be effectively pursued with cooperation among nations and collaborative research efforts among institutions from many countries.
Read more about this priorityAs climate change and societal vulnerability to severe weather become more apparent, decision makers want to know what changes are likely to occur in particular places. Advances in computational power, modeling and analysis techniques offer opportunities for regional-scale research in the atmospheric sciences, and in the study of environmental and societal impacts. NCAR intends to move ahead rapidly in this area, conducting not only the important fundamental research that must be done but also applying that work through creation of new decision support capabilities.
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