The Palmer’s decommissioning would leave U.S. researchers without reliable marine access to parts of Antarctica already contributing significantly to sea-level rise and where scientists are concerned about ice sheet collapse.
In a statement to NBC News, the NSF said it planned to consolidate its resources and focus on maintaining the three research stations that operate year-round in Antarctica, including McMurdo, Amundsen-Scott South Pole and Palmer stations.
“The USAP [U.S. Antarctic Program] maintains an active and influential U.S. presence on the Antarctic continent while enabling cutting-edge scientific research in astronomy, biology and glaciology, among other fields,” an NSF spokesperson said. “To focus support on the stations and associated logistics, NSF intends to terminate the lease of the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer.”
The NSF first proposed terminating the lease this spring after the Trump administration proposed a 55% budget cut for the agency, but scientists said they were dismayed that the agency had started the process of decommissioning the ship before Congress finalized a budget.
“The [House and Senate] budgets are not really calling for drastic cuts to the Antarctic program,” said oceanographer Carlos Moffat, an associate professor at the University of Delaware, referring to budgets advanced in both chambers’ appropriations committees.
The NSF said that it was trying to identify other vessels to pick up some of the Palmer’s workload, and that the ship will be returned to its owner, the Louisiana-based marine transportation company Edison Chouest Offshore.
In 2024, the NSF ended the charter of another Antarctic vessel, the RV Laurence M. Gould, which was not an icebreaker but was strengthened to handle some sea ice. That leaves the agency with fewer options to bolster polar oceanography research and to support Palmer station, a year-round base on the Antarctic Peninsula that has depended on those two vessels in the past.
The NSF said Friday that it has “alternative means” of supporting and resupplying Palmer station, including commercial options.
The 308-foot Palmer, which first sailed in 1992 and is named after a 19th-century seal captain who explored parts of Antarctica, has a crew of about 22 people. It can accommodate about 45 scientists.
No other U.S. research vessel can perform all the tasks this polar icebreaker is built to accomplish. The ship is the key research tool for understanding Antarctic ecology, the carbon cycle in the Southern Ocean and the rate at which ice shelves are retreating, melting and causing sea-level rise.
While satellites provide useful data about how ice sheets are growing or shrinking, Wellner said, research on these changes is primarily driven by measurements below the surface.
Without that data, U.S. scientists would be left in the dark about what’s happening at key ice sheets in the Southern Ocean that could determine the amount of future flooding estimated for coastal U.S. cities. For example, researchers said, no other U.S. vessel is equipped to safely visit the infamous Thwaites Glacier, also known as the “Doomsday Glacier,” which is considered the linchpin to understanding sea-level rise.
Researchers often describe Thwaites as the cork to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet’s ready-to-drain bottle because it acts as a bulwark that prevents the sheet from collapsing into the Amundsen Sea. That could cause more than 10 feet of sea-level rise over hundreds of thousands of years.
By 2100, its potential collapse could raise sea levels much higher than the roughly 1 to 3 feet that scientists already anticipated in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which would reshape U.S. coastlines.
A collapse could also trigger changes to ocean circulation and how rapidly the ocean takes up carbon, an area of active research. Some studies have suggested global temperatures might have crossed a threshold for collapse, but more research is needed.
Changes to its current mass and stability are driven by warm water eating away at its base, which is located hundreds or thousands of feet below the surface and is best accessed by robotic instruments.
“In order to understand mass change, we need to be at the margin of the ice — where ice and ocean meet,” Wellner said. “And that is obtained by going on this ship.”
Scientists typically take research trips on the Palmer every two years, Wellner said, using what data can be collected in the field over a month or two to drive research back in the laboratory.
Because data collected on ships is so valuable, scientists have been pushing for more than a decade to add an icebreaker to the U.S. science fleet and reduce the yearslong backlog of researchers seeking an opportunity to do fieldwork on the Palmer.