Posted on 01/17/2007 11:19:51 AM PST by cogitator
An upgrade to the satellite system monitoring Earth's environment is urgently needed to continue accurately monitoring hurricanes, drought and the shifting of polar ice, according to a report released by a U.S. scientific advisory group.
By 2010, the number of U.S. Earth-observing instruments on satellites will drop by 40 per cent, the National Research Council of the National Academies warned in a report unveiled at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in San Antonio, Texas, on Monday.
There are 29 Earth observation missions run by NASA and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. Some of these involve sensors on just one satellite, while some acquire their data from a number of satellites.
The group warned most of the sensor equipment on these satellites is past its prime. They predict the number of working missions will fall to 17 by 2010 and five by 2020.
The group stressed the importance of replacing old satellite sensors before they fail in order to avoid gaps of knowledge that would hamper the ability of scientists to keep accurate long-term records to forecast potentially dangerous trends.
Richard Anthes, the co-chair of the committee that wrote the report, told the New York Times the United States should take the lead in keeping the technology current.
"This is the most critical time in human history, with the population never before so big and with stresses growing on the Earth," said Anthes. "We just want to get back to the United States being a leader instead of someone you can’t count on." [Note: I don't see a lot of other countries trying to do better!]
The report urged NASA and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration to secure long-term funding to maintain the existing Earth-monitoring group of satellites.
The report proposed spending roughly $3 billion US a year from 2010 to 2020 to launch 17 new satellites to test for a number of climate indicators, such as ice sheet height changes for climate change diagnosis or land surface topography to track landslide hazards and water runoff.
They predict the number of working missions will fall to 17 by 2010 and five by 2020.We. Are. Doomed.
Why bother... Al Gore has said the planet is catastrophically warming and what more proof do we need? No sense spending money on actual data that might give us the inconvenient truth that global warming is a farce.
If it's good for the satellite industry, I'm all for it.
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