The Trump administration’s proposed budget would cancel four NASA climate science missions, which would have measured the flow of carbon dioxide and tracked long-term weather patterns.
“Long before President Trump was elected, climate researchers have warned that the nation’s climate monitoring capabilities — which include satellites as well as air- and surface-based instruments — were less than adequate and faced data collection gaps and other uncertainties,” reports The New York Times. “Elimination of any of the missions would be a further blow, they said.”
Conservatives have long called for NASA to focus its research on space, rather than earth, which could be why the president’s budget defunds these particular missions while refunding NOAA’s space orbiters, says the Times.
The National Academy of Sciences is expected to soon release a report with recommendations for new NASA monitoring missions over the next 10 years. But even if Congress chooses to fund the missions, there would be a lag time in the data, creating holes in national climate research.