NOAA, the nation’s leading climate science agency, may lose dozens of offices, including one that is key to the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.
On the flanks of the largest active volcano on Earth, the Mauna Loa Observatory tracks the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that are warming the planet, and has been doing so since 1958.
But the office in Hilo, Hawaii that manages the world-famous site could close in August, according to a copy of an internal federal document viewed by The New York Times.
The observatory has been a pole star of global scientific research. The data collected there helped to create the Keeling Curve, a famous upward-sweeping graph that documents the steep rise in carbon dioxide concentrations over decades.
“These data are our eyes on the planet,” said Ralph Keeling, a climate science professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and the son of Charles Keeling, the curve’s creator. “It’s really vital base line data for how things are going to change going forward.”
The observatory’s office is among 30 buildings operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nation’s leading agency for climate research, that are listed on the spreadsheet for possible lease terminations, beginning as early as May.
It is unclear what would happen to operations at the observatory if the office were to close. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to comment, writing in an email, “As a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios.”