Science has guided much of Laura Riihimaki’s life.
She knew she wanted to be a scientist at only 6 years old when she did a science fair project on static electricity. That’s when she first learned of atoms and electrons, particles naked to the human eye that are some of the building blocks for life on Earth.
Riihimaki found her way to Boulder six years ago, where the concentration of research institutions is a dream for someone wanting to serve the public through understanding the natural world. She spent years pursuing that passion as a research scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. The job felt like a calling to her, she said.
That calling came to a screeching halt on Feb. 27 when she and hundreds of others were laid off from NOAA and the National Weather Service, or NWS, as part of widespread cuts to the research institution from the Trump Administration.
“I got an email at, like, 3:45 p.m. or something, right at the end of the work day, saying ‘You need to be out of the building at 5 p.m.’ I didn’t even have time (to back up) all of the stuff in my office,” said Riihimaki, who had just earned a leadership role in her division weeks before losing her job. “I was sort of standing there as everybody came in and said goodbye. It was pretty overwhelming for me and them, I think.”
Riihimaki’s story is a snapshot of how cuts to Boulder’s federal research labs affect both the people who work there and the science.
President Trump’s June budget proposal would slash funding for and effectively shutter Boulder’s four NOAA research labs — the Chemical Sciences Laboratory, the Global Monitoring Laboratory, the Physical Sciences Laboratory and the Global Systems Laboratory.
A July budget proposal from the U.S. House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee spares the labs but still cuts $387 million from NOAA, or about 6% of its funding.
The murky future of the labs has brought renewed attention to their economic, scientific and cultural importance to the Boulder Valley and the nation.
Project 2025, which has largely shown to be a playbook for the Trump Administration, argues that NOAA’s operations can be executed better by the private sector. What that belief gets wrong, Riihimaki argues, is that private weather companies rely heavily on data and models that NOAA produces. What the commercial weather apps do is tailor the data to specific purposes, Riihimaki said.
“I do think there’s a critical role for public weather forecasting. If you privatize everything, then you have a profit motive for why you make weather forecasts. And there’s lots of good reasons to have a profit motive. There’s a lot of people who need a weather forecast tailored to a particular purpose,” Riihimaki said. “But just in terms of saving lives, we need people to have the information that’s reliable and trustworthy, not in proportion to how much they pay. Otherwise, you’re going to lose more people, and that’s critical.”
Boulder footprint
The Environmental Science Services Administration, or the ESSA, had four labs established in Boulder in the 1960s that preceded the city’s NOAA labs. NOAA was born from the ESSA’s dissolution in 1970.
The NOAA labs, plus the National Renewable Energy Lab and National Center for Atmospheric Research, co-exist to create a sort of mecca for scientific research.
“Boulder is one of the places to come for atmospheric science research,” Riihimaki said. “It’s the concentration of research institutions. NOAA’s here, NCAR’s here, the University of Colorado and various institutions that they have, and really the whole area. Colorado State in Fort Collins, you have NREL down the road and a lot of spinoff companies.”
David Skaggs, the former representative from Colorado’s second congressional district, said the seeds for these labs were planted when a lab for the National Bureau of Standards, now the National Institute of Standards and Technology, was placed in Boulder during the Eisenhower Administration. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is also targeted for federal cuts.
“It’s in our DNA at that point,” Skaggs said.
Skaggs recalled when he was first running for Congress in 1986 and heard from future constituents who turned out to be NOAA scientists.
“In talking with the scientists there (they said) ‘If we could all be together in one place, it would make for a much more efficient (operation) and likely lead to better science,’” he said.
Skaggs added that it helped inspire him to push for a new NOAA building in Boulder, now the David Skaggs Research Center.
Alexander “Sandy” MacDonald worked for NOAA for more than 40 years and started off working for the NWS. He came to Boulder in 1980 to run a research program and retired in the mid-2010s as the director of Boulder’s NOAA location, called the Earth Systems Research Lab.
“I really started off as one of these weather nuts that just loved weather,” MacDonald said. “As I came into leadership positions in NOAA, it really was clear that NOAA’s job is to protect people … our research in the 1980s was building a system for the National Weather Service that made their warnings much better. We worked on really increasing the ability of the models by improving the computer capabilities.”
The labs and Flatirons welcome motorists who head into Boulder down Foothills Highway and onto Broadway. The labs sit on a parcel of land that’s roughly 205 acres and roughly 9 million square feet. A county webpage lists the value of the property at about $116 million.
The land is owned by the federal government and it’s unclear what the future of the parcel is if NOAA’s operations continue to be slimmed down or outright eliminated in Boulder. City spokesperson Cate Stanek said that if the land were sold to a private party, it would be subject to local land use laws. A nearby seven-acre piece of land is owned by the city, and another nearby roughly 40-acre piece of land is owned by the federal government.
A cloudy future
Robert Webb admits that, in hindsight, the warning signs were there during the 2024 presidential race.
He and some of his colleagues read Project 2025 in the waning months of his time as the director of the Physical Sciences Lab at NOAA. That raised some red flags. After the election, Webb said there was a challenge to ensure that the science NOAA was producing was perceived as constructive and nonpartisan.
“You can have frank conversations on the role of extreme events, droughts, floods, wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, and there might be an underlying understanding of climate change’s role,” said Webb, who retired in January after more than 30 years at NOAA. “But one of the things I found when communicating with both sides of the aisle is that they’re more interested in what their constituents are experiencing rather than (being told) what’s going to happen in 35 years.”
Webb, Riihimaki and MacDonald were confident that the proposed $387 million cut in NOAA’s funding would have a profound impact on the agency’s work.
“It would be devastating,” MacDonald said.
Skaggs noted that a lot can change between a budget’s proposal and its passage.
Some optimism may come from the fact that Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole is the chair of the Appropriations Committee. NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory is in Norman, Oklahoma.
“The broad abstraction of these proposals coming out of the administration run up against the very concrete, personal interests of (these constituents),” Skaggs said. “I would hope (that) Tom’s likely to protect his constituents’ interests in Norman, Oklahoma … all these scientists talk to each other and have a lot of mutual affection. People in Norman are going to say, ‘Tom, take care of us, thanks. But Boulder needs to be taken care of, too. And so do the other NOAA labs around the country.’”
Webb said that political interest in interpreting science is nothing new. He also noted that research from NOAA can benefit private industries.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty (at the labs). The morale is bad,” Webb said. “If you don’t know whether or not you’re going to have a job, if you’re being told that the science you’re doing that you really believe is a benefit to society is worthless, that’s not constructive. That’s destructive to people’s ability to be inspired and go to work.”
He added that it could take a couple of years to start seeing the full impact of the cuts to NOAA’s work. More immediately, he said, experimental monitoring systems may be shut down and weather warnings may be impacted.
For Riihimaki, the situation underscores how vital NOAA is.
“If a lot of people leave science in the U.S. and don’t come back, being able to recover from that is going to be really challenging and is going to take a long time,” Riihimaki said. “Science works as an apprenticeship system where you pass on your knowledge to the next generation. That happens over the course of years; it doesn’t happen quickly.”