Trump’s Assault On Climate Research Targets World’s Leading Observatory In Hawaii

India-West News Desk

WASHINGTON, DC – The Trump administration continuing its assault on climate related offices and funding for climate research. This time its targeting the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii by cutting support for office leases — saving the grand sum of  $150,692 per year. As part of cost-cutting measures led by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), overseen by billionaire Elon Musk, the government is considering canceling the lease for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) support office in Hilo.

According to Reuters, the office is among more than 20 NOAA facilities that could lose their leases under the administration’s so-called efficiency drive. The potential closure has sparked alarm among climate scientists, who warn that losing the Hilo office could disrupt critical research on global carbon emissions.

“You need a Hilo office,” said Ralph Keeling, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, in an interview with Reuters. Keeling’s father, Charles David Keeling, pioneered global carbon dioxide monitoring at Mauna Loa, establishing the famed Keeling Curve—a graph that has tracked the relentless rise of atmospheric CO₂ for decades.

The Mauna Loa Observatory, located on the northern flank of the Mauna Loa volcano, is regarded as the birthplace of global CO₂ monitoring. Station staff in Hilo regularly travel between the town office and the volcanic peaks of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, collecting air samples that are then shipped to NOAA laboratories for analysis.

Some scientists and politicians have accused the Trump administration of waging a broader war on climate research, with federal agencies clawing back climate funding and dismissing hundreds of NOAA workers, Reuters reported.