President Donald Trump’s administration decided to make a 10 million dollar cut to NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), therefore closing the United States’ research into climate change. The CMS monitored the carbon dioxide and methane levels remotely via satellite. These are important to manage as they are leading causes of climate change and need to be carefully managed. Because of the closure of the program, the States’ will no longer be able to properly measure emission reductions of not only in the United States but also in developing countries. 

The CMS is connected with climate treaties and assists other nations understand their emissions. It heavily focused on with understanding the carbon that is locked away in forests such as in Alaska and tropical forests. The System has improved previous techniques as well. It can combine multiple data sources into a picture of its greenhouse gas emissions and identify ways to reduce them. Trump’s team decided to make this cut at a time that NASA is planning space-based carbon observatories on OCO-3 and the Geostationary Carbon Cycle. The CMS’s research is not expected to halt, but rather transferred to European teams.