The office is one of more than 20 rented by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that are proposed to have their leases ended under money-saving efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Elon Musk.
Staff, researchers and other sources gave details on the building's role as the main support office for the Mauna Loa Observatory about 50 km (30 miles) west of the town.
It was not immediately clear how far the lease cancellation plan has gone, and whether the office would be shut or moved. NOAA staff declined to comment publicly and their communications office did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
“You need a Hilo office,“ said Ralph Keeling, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California who conducts fieldwork at Mauna Loa.
Station staff in Hilo regularly travel between the town office to the volcanic peaks of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, Ralph Keeling said, collecting air samples in glass flasks which they ferry back to Hilo and ship to a NOAA laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, where scientists analyse greenhouse gas concentrations.
Musk and his DOGE team have been tasked by Trump to slash the size and cost of the federal bureaucracy and have said they have focused on wasteful, unnecessary spending.
“Not only does it provide the measurement of CO2 that we so desperately need to track climate change, but it also informs climate model simulations.”
“It has already become very difficult to continue our global greenhouse gas monitoring network,“ an atmospheric scientist involved in NOAA’s measurements said, asking not to be named.
A former NOAA official, who asked not to be named, said the lease on the office was due to end on August 31.
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