The House Finance Committee has advanced a bill to fund a new climate center within the University of Hawaiʻi's School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, which researchers say is critical to the continued collection of climate data.
The state-funded center would employ local climate scientists whose work is currently dependent on federal dollars.
Their research into sea level rise, flooding, coastal erosion, and other climate impacts is important to policymaking and already provides the basis for several laws passed by the state Legislature, according to Chip Fletcher, the interim dean of SOEST.
"We are the only team in the state conducting this applied research," he said during testimony before the committee on Wednesday.
Fletcher added that the team of researchers is expecting a stop-work order on their major source of funding, a grant from the federal Office of Naval Research.
"If we get a stop-work order, we do not have enough funds to keep all these people, to keep giving them [a] salary, to keep them employed," he said.
The researchers have requested $3 million for the center. The current version of the measure has left the appropriations blank.
