NOAA administrator: Lack of funding for Boulder-built satellite will hobble weather forecasting

dailycamera.com ^ | 28 June 2011 | Laura Snider

[smokingfrog]

If the U.S. Congress does not provide the necessary funding to build and launch the country's planned next-generation weather satellite, meteorologists' ability to accurately predict the weather will be hobbled.

That was the warning delivered Tuesday in Boulder by Kathryn Sullivan, assistant administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Sullivan was visiting Ball Aerospace, which has been chosen by NOAA to build the body of the weather satellite, known as the Joint Polar Satellite System.

JPSS was originally scheduled for launch in 2014. But Congress' inability to pass a new budget in 2011 meant that the funding for building JPSS stayed at 2010 levels. President Barack Obama had asked to increase funding for the project from $382 million to $1.06 billion so that contractors, including Ball, could get to work on building both the spacecraft and the instruments that will ride on board.

The JPSS launch has been now been delayed by 18 months to late 2016, which means that that the satellite may not make it to space in time to pick up where its predecessor leaves off, Sullivan said. A gap in data would have serious impacts on forecasters' ability to predict the weather and give advance warning for severe weather events.

"It means that the confidence you can have for a 10-day forecast retreats to a three- to five-day outlook," Sullivan said.

Ninety-three percent of the data that goes into the National Weather Service's numerical weather prediction model comes from satellites, and the majority of the satellite data comes from polar-orbiting satellites, like the future JPSS satellite, Sullivan said. A gap in that data -- which may happen even if Congress fully funds the project beginning in fiscal year 2012 -- will make forecasts less accurate.

[muawiyah]

ZONK!!!!!!

[muawiyah]

This one, like the last one they blew up at the very last moment, has things on it to measure world wide CO2.

It, too, will be blown up.

BTW, it's not the anti-AGW folks blowing these things up. It's the pro-AGW people who want them destroyed because once we have a grasp of the real who, whats and wheres of CO2 everyone will be able to see the fraud it really is.

They have just a few places they measure CO2 "officially". One of them is a volcano in the Pacific. Within 50 yards of their CO2 measurements they measure micro-emissions of other gases from the Upper Mantle. The other two major points are down wind from other volcanos ~ in deep valleys where this heavier than air gas can't readily escape.

[muawiyah]

What that means to us is that someone who is AGAINST THE SATELLITE is an anthropogenic Global Warming fanatic.

Someone who is FOR THE SATELLITE is an American patriot who wants to put a stop to climate fraud.

[CodeToad]

One weather girl here is 40 but tries to giggle and act bashful like a 12 year old.