Donald Trump's proposed 2018 budget would cut four NASA Earth Observation projects including three climate satellite missions: the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission; Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) pathfinder; and Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3).
These missions are critical to ongoing climate change research, as well as to weather and air pollution forecasting. Without them, international scientists lose their "eyes in the sky" with potentially disastrous consequences for people not only in the United States, but the world round.
The U.S. Congress has the final say on whether these satellite programs go forward or not. Their vote on the 2018 budget was delayed from September to December 2017, and now to 19 January, 2018. Whether the vote will occur then, or what the outcome might be, remains in question.
As a result of Trump's threatened cuts the international scientific community has been left in great uncertainty. It is currently scrambling to find a way to replace NASA's planned Earth Observation missions and continue vital climate change, weather and pollution monitoring.
