UCAR statement on order granting preliminary injunction
Order finds that UCAR would suffer irreparable harm
Jun 1, 2026 - by Staff
The following is a statement from the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which manages the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) on behalf of NSF. UCAR is a nonprofit consortium of 129 North American universities with programs in Earth system science.
Today, U.S. Senior District Judge R. Brooke Jackson granted UCAR’s request for a preliminary injunction to stop the federal government from moving forward with its decision to transfer stewardship of the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) from UCAR to another operator. The injunction preserves the status quo with regard to NWSC while the claims made in the lawsuit brought by UCAR on March 16 against four federal agencies are fully resolved.
In the motion and during the hearing, UCAR argued that it would suffer irreparable harm if NSF were allowed to proceed with its decision to transfer stewardship of NWSC. The harm includes departures of employees with specialized expertise, disruption of research projects, financial consequences of terminating or transferring contracts supporting NWSC, and undermining UCAR’s mission. The transfer of NWSC stewardship would also harm our UCAR members and other public stakeholders who rely on NWSC and its critical services.
“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,” said 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. Today’s decision ensures that the NWSC will be able to continue its vital work on behalf of the United States and its stakeholders without interruption.”
UCAR and NCAR will not be making any further public comment on today’s ruling.