A Trump administration budget proposal for one of the nation’s preeminent science agencies would slash funding for climate and earth systems research — including shuttering four Colorado-based labs and ending federal funding for two other research institutes here.

The proposed budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would eliminate the agency’s research arm, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, according to a document made public on Monday.

In Colorado, the cuts would shutter major research hubs that have operated for decades. The four NOAA labs at Boulder’s Earth System Research Laboratories would close under the proposed budget: the Chemical Sciences Laboratory, the Global Monitoring Laboratory, the Physical Sciences Laboratory and the Global Systems Laboratory.

Established in 1957, the labs’ areas of focus include improving weather and wildfire forecasting, studying air quality, conducting long-term monitoring of greenhouse gases and ozone, as well as improving knowledge about water availability and extreme weather.

Scientific research has long been a bedrock of Boulder’s cultural pride and part of its economic vitality. Work from those federal labs directly influences the private sector in Boulder and underpins the area’s innovation economy, said John Tayer, the CEO of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce.

“For us, it is absolutely an economic impact that we’re going to feel in our community,” he said. “But just as importantly is the attack on our sense of pride in this work.”

The NOAA budget proposal is part of a wide-ranging effort by the Trump administration to slash the size of government and ignore the impacts of climate change. The proposal would cut funding for the agency by $1.8 billion in the next fiscal year, a decrease of nearly a third from this year.

It would reduce federal spending on climate, weather and air chemistry research from $362 million to zero, line items from the proposal show.

“The information provided by NOAA represents the factual backbone of how we know that our climate is changing,” Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, told the Washington Post in April, as coming deep cuts at NOAA were beginning to come into view. He said NOAA’s work has informed the research of climate scientists around the world.

But ahead of last year’s presidential election, Project 2025 — a conservative think tank’s document outlining potential priorities for President Donald Trump’s second term — called for the dismantling of NOAA and for its functions to be privatized. Trump has repeatedly dismissed or ridiculed the impacts of climate change, and Project 2025 identified NOAA as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, (it) is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”

“The (fiscal year) 2026 budget request refocuses the NOAA budget on core activities, including collecting essential scientific observations like ocean and weather data to support navigation and forecasting,” the new NOAA budget document states. “A leaner NOAA that focuses on core operational needs, eliminates unnecessary layers of bureaucracy, terminates nonessential grant programs, and ends activities that do not warrant a federal role, will provide better value to the American public while maintaining activities that are essential to protecting lives and property.”

The budget still must gain congressional approval. The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to begin reviewing agencies’ budgets next week.

If approved, the cuts would go into effect when the 2026 fiscal year begins on Oct. 1.

The proposal, if adopted, also would eliminate federal funding for cooperative institutes, including the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, known as CIRES, at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, or CIRA, at Colorado State University.

The institutes are collaborations between their host universities and NOAA, which provides the majority of funding for both organizations. The institutes’ areas of study are wide-ranging: mapping the ocean floor, studying the 2021 Marshall fire in Boulder to improve wildfire forecasting, studying how tornados form and researching how to best leverage satellites for real-time weather information.

Leaders from both cooperative institutes told The Denver Post this spring that loss of federal funding would require them to lay off scientists and workers. The organizations could continue to operate without the federal dollars but would be severely diminished, they said.

It’s unclear how many positions would be eliminated at Boulder’s Earth System Research Laboratories and the two Colorado cooperative institutes if the budget were implemented as proposed.

The budget document states 501 full-time positions would be eliminated nationwide through termination of the climate and weather laboratories and cooperative institutes.

The researchers and scientists at the labs and institutes are a key part of Boulder’s economy and community, Thayer said. He hoped other employers would work to hire any staff members laid off should the budget proposal become reality.

“It feels so short-sighted to make these kinds of wholesale cuts in areas of scientific research where the United States has been a pioneer,” he said.

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.