SACRAMENTO — Soon after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, a page on climate change vanished from the White House website, sending a chill through the scientific community.

Within weeks, state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, proposed a bill to protect whistleblowers and safeguard data collected by scientists, many of whom are worried that their research might be rewritten or even destroyed for political reasons by those who have questioned the scientific consensus on climate change.

The Senate passed the latest version of Jackson’s proposal Wednesday on a mostly party-line vote. It easily cleared the Assembly on Tuesday, 59-13, with support from seven Republicans — including the Bay Area’s sole GOP lawmaker, Catharine Baker, R-San Ramon.

It now heads to the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown, who — given his international role in the battle against climate change — is expected to sign it.

“This bill was a direct response to the effort to censor and to silence the voice of science,” Jackson said in an interview Wednesday. “We will take it upon ourselves to try to preserve scientific data and information.”

Senate Bill 51, the Whistleblower and Public Data Protection Act, also would try to ensure that federal scientists and other public employees licensed in California do not lose their professional certification for reporting violations of the law. The measure directs California agencies to protect scientific data and would require the state’s secretary for environmental protection to, as Jackson’s office described it in a recent news release, “preserve scientific information and data and make it publicly available if it is at risk of being destroyed or censored by the Trump administration.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists — which published a scathing report in July that found the Trump administration had undermined the role of science in public policy, altered scientific content on websites and created a hostile environment for federal scientists — backed the bill.

“Science is the foundation of a strong democracy,” said Jason Barbose, Western states policy manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists. “That’s why it is important to protect scientists and their research. SB 51 takes concrete steps to protect federal scientists and scientific data from the Trump administration’s efforts to sideline it from important policy decisions that affect our health and communities.”

The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, has questioned the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change, such as whether carbon dioxide is a major cause of global warming.

Most Senate Republicans voted against the bill in May and again on Wednesday.

Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, said the threat to scientific data described by some scientists is “not one of my core concerns.” He said he voted against the bill for budgetary reasons — something he said he tends to do for proposals aimed at giving state agencies new responsibilities.

“Existing law already provides adequate protection for licensees,” he said. “Why would I vote for something that’s already kind of redundant?”