Editor: Jim Elliott
Contributor:Stephanie Kenitzer
Copy Editor: Anne Siefken
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The full Senate Appropriations Committee on 18 July marked up and unanimously reported the Fiscal Year 2001 Commerce, Justice, State funding bill (HR 4690) that funds NOAA. In a press release, the committee stated that NOAA had received $2.7 billion with $5 million for Northern Right Whale preservation and research. The administration had requested $2.76 billion for FY01.
The Environment & Energy Daily reported in its 24 July edition that the committee had provided these funds for NOAA line offices: "The National Marine Fisheries Service is slated for $496 million... which is $91 million more than the House's appropriation and $80 million higher than this year's appropriation but $41 million below the president's request.
The Senate bookmarked $630 million for the National Weather Service, $9 million above the House's mark, but still $4 million shy of the president's request. This year NWS received $601 million.
Senate Appropriations also passed the bill with $315 million for the National Ocean Service, $55 million above the House, $43 million above this year's appropriation and $90 million below the president's request.
Ocean and Atmospheric Research would receive in $304 million, $40 million more than the House figure, $2 million more than the president's request and $7 million more than this year's funding level. The committee, according to the press report, gave the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service $112 million."
The House-passed NOAA Fiscal Year 2001 funding bill passed 214-195 on 7 June (HR 106-280).
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Two of the most important members of the Senate VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee have launched a move to double the National Science Foundation (NSF) budget in five years.
Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond (R-Missouri), chairman of the subcommittee, and Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland), ranking minority member, recently sent a letter to Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Mississippi) and Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota) seeking their support, noting, “Just as we have worked collectively to double the National Institutes of Health budget over five years, we believe it is now time to launch a parallel effort to double the budget of the National Science Foundation over five years.”
Bond and Mikulski hope to double the NSF budget to $8 billion by 2006, hoping to provide a roughly 15% annual increase for NSF in each of the next five years.
The two subcommittee senators also distributed a “Dear Colleague” letter, which was accompanied by two supporting letters from leaders in medical research. The first is from Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health and now president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The second is from the president of the Institute of Medicine, Kenneth Shine.
The Clinton Administration is seeking a 17.3% increase for NSF this year, a figure supported by the National Science Board. The House provided an increase of 4.3%. Bond’s House counterpart said, “There was no way, given the available resources that we had, to meet that administration request.”
Bond and Mikulski are trying to avoid the same problem that tied Walsh’s hands, according to a report in the American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Science Policy for 14 July. “To do so,” the report noted, “they are going to need more money, and to do that, there is going to have to be strong political support on the Senate floor for NSF. That political support will come about because of active constituent interest.”
In their letter to Lott and Daschle, Bond and Mikulski wrote “The NSF, currently celebrating its 50th anniversary, supports fundamental research that contributes to the nation’s health and well-being. As the Council of Competitiveness has noted: ‘For the past 50 years, most, if not all, of the technological advances have been directly or indirectly linked to improvements in fundamental understanding.” Business Week adds: ‘What’s needed is a serious stimulant to basic research, which has been lagging in recent years. Without continued gains in education and training and new innovations and scientific findings the raw materials of growth in the New Economy—the technological dynamic will stall.’"
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The House Appropriations Committee has once again recommended to zero out funding for the Department of Commerce's Advanced Technology Program (ATP).
As it did to no avail last year, according to the American Institute of Physics's (AIP) Bulletin of Science Policy News, the committee recommended no funding for the project, noting, “After many years in existence, the program has not produced a body of evidence to overcome those fundamental questions about whether the program should exist in the first place.
“With many other priorities facing the committee and funding constraints as they are, the committee concludes that funding would be better spent on higher priority programs and recommends that the ATP program be terminated.” Many attempts to kill the program have been made over the years, but have failed consistently.
ATP, administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), was established by the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988. It provides cost-shared, competitive grants to industry to support research and development on high-risk, cutting edge technologies with broad commercial and societal potential. Since 1990, approximately $1.5 billion in federal dollars have been spent, resulting in more than 450 projects being funded, half of which have now been completed, sources reported.
Critics have described the program as “corporate welfare,” charging that the government should not be involved in choosing companies and technologies to support and questioning whether the federal funds have had that much impact.
A March 1999 independent assessment of the program gives a qualitative estimate that benefits to the nation from ATP greatly exceed the total cost of the program, but an April 2000 GAO study found that, because of the proprietary nature of private-sector R&D, the ATP selection process may be unable to avoid funding research directions that industry is already pursuing on its own.
The last time the program received the full administration request was FY94 when funding jumped to $199.5 million, up from $67.5 million in the previous year.
In FY95, ATP received $430.6 million, compared to a request of $451.0 million. Later, President Clinton signed a rescission bill which, among other things, cuts ATP funding back to $340.7 million.
In FY96, the administration requested $490.9 million. The House Appropriations Committee eliminated ATP. A House–Senate conference report provided no new money, only allowing prior-year carryover funds, but was vetoed. ATP was finally funded—halfway through the new fiscal year—at $221.0 million for the year.
In FY97, the administration requested $345.0 million for ATP. House Appropriations recommended $110.5 million. Senate Appropriations slashed $60.0 million. After year-end budget negotiations with the White House, ATP was funded at $225.0 million in an omnibus appropriations bill.
In FY98, the request was for $275.6 million. After several attempts to zero out the program failed, ATP ended up with $192.5 million.
In FY99, after again surviving several attempts to kill the program, ATP was funded at $203.5 million, compared to a request of $259.9 million. Because of disagreements over the commerce’s plans for conducting the 2000 Census, all commerce programs were only funded through June 1999. Agreement finally was reached to assure funding through the end of FY99. Later, the president signed a rescission bill cutting FY99 funding to $197.5 million.
In FY00, an administration request of $238.7 million was revised downward. House appropriators zeroed out the program. Ultimately, ATP was funded at $142.6 million.
In FY01, the administration has requested $175.5 million.
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The shortage of skilled workers in high-tech jobs will lead to an economic crisis unless more underrepresented individuals pursue education and careers in science, engineering, and technology.
That is the conclusion of the Commission for the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology Development (CAWMSET). The commission was expected to release its report on 28 July. However, it provided its recommendations to the House Science Committee during a hearing earlier in the month.
Astronaut Eileen Collins, the only woman to command a Space Shuttle flight, testified on behalf of NASA by way of video conferencing from Houston, Texas, and said, “The degrees I obtained in mathematics and science helped me to achieve my goal of becoming an astronaut. This has allowed me to see first-hand the importance of education in helping to achieve one’s goals.
“NASA also understands that we have to do our part to inspire and encourage every segment of our population, from every walk of life, and every color and creed, to reach out and prepare for the opportunities for the twenty-first century.
“NASA recognizes that the future leaders of America, even if not astronauts, scientists, or engineers, must have a fundamental understanding of science, mathematics, and technology.”
NASA has been a strong supporter of diversity in the workplace. Administrator Dan Goldin testified before the same committee last year, when he said, “As I see it, we are rapidly approaching the day when the primary discriminator between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ will be between those who understand technology and those who do not.
“I believe it is imperative for the future of our nation, and for NASA, to continue our push to encourage women, minorities, and persons with disabilities to pursue careers in math, science, engineering, and technology.”
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The Association of Environmental Data Users in Europe (AEDUE), a group representing 17 private sector meteorological agencies, has sent a letter to the Commission of the European Communities expressing their concern regarding the administrative, technical, and financial restrictions on access to essential data imposed by National Meteorological Services (NMS's) in Europe.
The letter, signed by Dr. Pirkko Saarikivi, managing director, Weather Service Finland Ltd. Coordinating Agency, AEDUE, states that "these restrictions are having a profound impact on the ability of private sector agencies to function at their highest and are limiting the development of the market for European meteorological services.
"As set forth in the ECOMET Agreement of 1992, the National Meteorological Services of individual countries control the acquisition and exchange of national and international meteorological information (including observations and numerical model data). Over the course of the decade, however, the NMS's have focused less on exchange and more on consolidating the information they have gathered or developed (which has been paid for by national tax contributions) for their own purposes. As a result, researchers and commercial users outside of the national weather services are left at a tremendous disadvantage.
"This situation is unfair and clearly runs contrary to the spirit of open markets in the new unified Europe. Furthermore, it places European private weather service providers in an unfavorable position compared to competitors outside Europe. Like other industries, meteorology companies are globalizing rapidly and to do so successfully requires unfettered access to information.Unless decisive steps are taken to reduce barriers for the free exchange of information between NMS’s and others in the field, we are convinced that U.S. and Japanese meteorological agencies will dominate the European weather services market within two to three years.
"The elimination of all barriers to the free and open access to meteorological information is essential to the development of the European weather market. The AEDUE is requesting that the European Commission:
1. Conduct a study of the current situation in the European weather services market by collecting and comparing economic information from ECOMET members, in particular as regard the revenues collected from their own commercial divisions as well as from other service providers;
2. Investigate the financial viability of ECOMET without governmental subsidies;
3. Take appropriate action to ensure that the full set of observational and model data available operationally to the NMS are provided online at no or nominal cost to all interested parties, and until this has been achieved, require that the commercial divisions of the public agencies pay in full for the total operational data set they have access to.
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DynCorp Information Systems, LLC (DIS), a subsidiary of DynCorp, was recently awarded a contract by the National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS).
Through this contract, awarded on 12 June 2000, DIS will analyze operational considerations associated with broadcasting the next generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) images via commercial C-Band satellite systems.
This study contract is a follow-on to previous study work done on behalf of NESDIS. This nine-month contract requires DIS to develop preliminary system designs and quantify the relationship among performance, equipment complexity, and cost for broadcasting the next generation GOES images to users in North America, South America, and other Western Hemisphere locations. DIS will analyze the advantages/disadvantages of dedicated satellite uplink facilities versus the use of commercial teleports, and estimate the cost of trunking data from the GOES processing location (Wallops Island, Virginia) to a number of proposed uplink facility locations.
Finally, DIS will compare the operational requirements of the future GOES data distribution system with operational characteristics of various system architectures and prepare a series of recommendations. Using the study information, recommendations, and options provided by DIS, NESDIS will be able to develop the requirements and specifications needed to procure the systems and/or services required to ensure timely and cost-effective distribution of the data from the next generation of GOES.
DynCorp, with world headquarters in Reston, Virginia, is a leading multinational information technology and outsourcing services. The company employs more than 19 000 technology and technical professionals who work at more than 550 company and customer locations around the world. DynCorp Information Systems is a leading provider of telecommunications and networking services. The company, which was purchased by DynCorp in 1999, was previously a unit of GTE Corporation.
Additional information on DynCorp is available on the Internet at http://www.dyncorp.com.
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Real-time access to data from one of the world’s largest privately funded mesoscale observing networks (mesonet) is now available via the Internet. Data from more than 140 wind monitoring stations located in coastal areas around the United States and Southeastern Canada is available at http://www.iWindsurf.com. Temporal resolution is five minutes and spatial resolution in areas such as Cape Cod is as high as 4 km.
In 1986, windsurfer and engineer Phillip Atkinson started installing a network of wind sensors at key sailing spots in New England . That network became the foundation of The Wind Hot Line (WHL), which operated primarily on the East Coast. The WHL has since installed a network in Tokyo, Japan, as well as stations in support of the 1996 Olympics in Savannah, Georgia, and the America’s Cup yachting competition in Auckland, New Zealand. On the West Coast, a company known as Call of the Wind founded by Jim Martin was hard at work developing a similar network of sensors along the California Coast. The company extended the technology to deliver the mesonet information via alpha-numeric pagers.
In step with the growth of the Internet, Call of the Wind and Wind Hot Line independently made their data available to users via Web pages enhanced with graphic and forecast information. Recently, these two services combined to make all their data available in real time at iWindsurf.com.
Users of the network include more than just windsurfing enthusiasts. Big boat sailors, emergency response managers, forecasters, and researchers also make use of the information. Chris Bedford of Sailing Weather Services uses iWindsurf.com data to support coastal forecasts. “The iWindsurf.com data is an important help to my everyday operations,” says Bedford, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist specializing in weather support to competitive sailors. “With their mesonet, I can get information at much higher resolution than NOAA Buoy and NWS data. There is a huge untapped potential in the network. Routine access to high resolution wind data in the coastal zone is long overdue.”
Other applications of the mesonet data include numerical model initialization and verification. During the 1992 North Cape Oil Spill off Charleston, Rhode Island, Applied Science Associates ran hydrodynamic models to predict the dispersion of the oil. Of the NOAA, USCG, and WHL wind data used in their modeling, only the WHL data had sufficient temporal and spatial resolution to help correctly predict where the oil would wash up on Block Island. More recently, the mesonet provided verification to a mesoscale modeling study in the Chesapeake Bay region. In a proposed study for 2001, iWindsurf.com will install 15 new stations in the Southern Chesapeake to form a 10-km resolution mesonet for use in mesoscale model verification.
In addition to real-time mesonet data, site specific wind forecasts for popular windsurfing venues are available at iWindsurf.com. The spatial and temporal resolution of these forecasts would not be possible were it not for the network’s ability to provide data to the forecast team. It is not uncommon for the team to see and react to events too localized or brief to show up in the standard NOAA dataset. Future plans include multimedia, Web-based forecasts with text, graphics, and streaming audio. Further expansion of the mesonet is also planned.
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Gregory L. Rohde, assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information hosted a roundtable on 17 July to highlight the need for the use of additional technologies to alert the public to emergencies ranging from natural disasters to chemicals spills. The event was cosponsored by the All-Hazard Interagency Working Group.
Rohde said, "The weather radio service provided by the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been, and continues to be, the mainstay of our weather warning systems. But there is much that communications industries working with state, local, and federal government can do to provide the public with timely warnings in case of an emergency to augment those services. The purpose of this event is to explore how new communications technologies can improve severe weather warnings and other emergencies."
NTIA announced the roundtable in a Federal Register notice. The notice asked for comment by 18 August on a series of questions, including whether it is technologically feasible to deliver hazard warnings through wireless devices, over the Internet, via telephones using call warnings and through other means. The notice also seeks comments on the roadblocks to using these technologies and what public policies need to be changed to foster broader dissemination of new technologies. Reply comments are due 1 September. The notice as well as the comments and replies will be posted to the NTIA Web site at http://www.ntia.doc.gov .
NTIA serves as the principal adviser to the president, vice president, and secretary of commerce on domestic and international communications and information policies and represents the Executive Branch before Congress, other Federal agencies, foreign governments, and international organizations.
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A Life Sciences study at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida indicates that rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, partially caused by the burning of fossil fuels, could spur plant growth globally. Higher levels of the gas also could change the survival odds of certain plants, insects, and animals and thus the balance of those species in various ecosystems around the world, according to the study.
The study is a collaborative research project being conducted by NASA and the Smithsonian Institution with support from the Department of Energy and participation from a number of other government agencies and various universities.
“Levels of carbon dioxide continue to rise in our environment, so it is important for us to understand the effects,” said Dr. Bert Drake, the Smithsonian’s principal investigator on the project. “We still have a lot to learn, but now at least we have a rich dataset.”
Researchers learned through the study that although scrub oaks grow faster in a CO2-rich environment, their leaves are less nutrient rich. That means insects that feed upon the leaves spend more time feeding, have more exposure to predators and thus higher death rates.
“All the small changes created by CO2 add up and could cause major changes it’s impossible to imagine,” Drake explained. “By studying the reaction of a natural ecosystem to high CO2 levels we will have a better idea of what we may be facing in years to come.”
Five scientists from NASA and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland, work at a site north of the Florida space center to monitor experiments and keep the site running. In addition, about 15 scientists and students from the University of Northern Arizona, Old Dominion University, University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, and the Desert Research Institute participate in studies at the site.
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NASA researchers at the Langley Research Center have developed a new technology that they hope will help ease some of the frustration travelers' face with flight delays and will allow them to reach their destinations faster.
The researchers at the Hampton, Virginia, facility have designed a system to predict aircraft wake turbulence on final approach to landing so airliners can be spaced more safely and efficiently. The technology is called AVOSS, or Aircraft Vortex Spacing System.
“All aircraft produce wave vortices, sort of like two small horizontal tornadoes trailing behind the wingtips,” explained AVOSS Principal Investigator David Hinton. “The larger and heavier the plane the stronger the wake.”
That means small aircraft that follow larger ones can encounter turbulence if they are not kept far enough apart, he said, adding that the turbulence can be severe enough to cause a plane to crash.
AVOSS determines how winds and other atmospheric conditions affect the wake vortex patterns of different types of aircraft. The system uses a type of laser radar, or lidar technology, to confirm the accuracy of those forecasts. All this information is processed by computers, which then can provide safe spacing criteria.
Weather plays a big part in the motion and decay rate of these trailing twisters. Until now, there has been no system to predict accurately wake vortex patterns and quantify the spacing needed for safety. The lack of this kind of data forces air traffic controllers to use rigidly fixed distances to separate different classes of aircraft during bad weather, causing unnecessary air traffic delays that disrupt flight schedules and increase costs.
AVOSS can provide the information. Initial test results from the system installed at the Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport in Texas show that AVOSS can increase individual runway capacity as much as 15%, depending on weather conditions and the number of “heavy” aircraft arriving.
Additional testing was planned in Dallas in July. A paper on this subject will appear in the September Bulletin.
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The Marine Technology Society’s annual meeting, to be held at the Baltimore Convention Center 16–19 November, will examine the oceans’ influence on the economy, climate, coastal development, and future.
NOAA Administrator Dr. D. James Baker will chair this year’s conference, and Dr. W. Stanley Wilson, NOAA deputy chief scientist, is the conference vice chair. Topics to be discussed during morning plenary sessions include “Exploration in the Sea: The Ocean as a Frontier;” “Economics: the Ocean and Business;” “The Coastal Ocean: Balancing Competing Uses;” and “The Global Ocean: Influencing Weather and Climate.” Each afternoon, track sessions will be held from 1:00 to 3:00 and from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.
The tracks, or technical sessions, will cover a wide variety of topics, including applied ocean sciences; ocean measuring systems, marine resources; ocean and coastal engineering; data processing and management communications; maritime commerce and charting; vehicles, platforms, and advanced technology; marine policy, and education.
NOAA plans to host an open house on two of its coastal vessels, the 90-foot Rude and the 65-foot Hydrographer. The Coast Guard plans an open house on one of its newest buoy tenders, the James Rankin. The EPA will feature the Peter Anderson, an environmental research platform, and planners expect visits by Army Corps of Engineers and Navy vessels.
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Cities and states may soon have a new, high-tech tool to monitor automotive air pollution. As envisioned, NASA’s atmospheric remote sensing technology will be adapted to an autonomous roadside system to monitor motor vehicle emissions. Cars and trucks will pass through a low-power light beam without stopping or slowing down. Sensor technology instantly will analyze vehicle exhaust pollutants important to local and state governments working to meet federally mandated air quality standards.
“Taking an accurate reading of several exhaust products as a car passes by is a formidable challenge,” said Glen Sachse, senior research scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. “We want to take a measurement of all the gases of interest every one-thousandth of a second over a period of a half-second. Fortunately, our newest remote sensing technology has that capability.”
Sachse is one of six team members who invented the highly sensitive, electro–optical system at the core of the technology. NASA and SPX Service Solutions, Warren, Michigan, jointly announced on 18 July that the patented NASA technology has been licensed exclusively to SPX for use in developing a new remote sensing device to monitor motor vehicle exhaust.
SPX hopes to offer a basic unit by the end of 2000, according to Craig Rendahl, remote sensing business leader for SPX. This second-generation product will contain many other features, including the capability to test heavy-duty diesel vehicles, he said. “With the number of vehicles on the road increasing every year, we believe there is a significant global market for technology of this nature,” he explained.
In a process called “clean screening,” drivers who formerly took their vehicles in for an annual emission inspection would receive a notice in the mail certifying that their vehicle has passed twice in a 12-month period and that they do not have to submit to an emission test—at least that’s the expected outcome for most drivers.
As individual roadside exhaust measurements are taken, the vehicle’s license plate would be photographed and the data would be transmitted to a central collecting point, saving drivers who had passed both time and money. Drivers who fail would be identified for additional testing and possible emissions-related repairs.
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NOAA has developed a new report on the Internet that provides a wide range of information and statistics about tornadoes. The report, entitled, “1998–1999 Tornadoes and Long-Term Tornado Climatology,” is available at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/climate/severeweather/tornadoes.html.
Published by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, the report describes the 1998 and 1999 tornado seasons in detail, provides a list of all documented F5 tornadoes from 1880–1999, and includes color maps of state-by-state, long-term annual averages for tornadoes. The Web page also provides links to a number of other reports and sources of information.
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The Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) has updated the “Trends Online” section, “Global and Hemispheric Temperature Anomalies-Land and Marine Instrumental Records” through 1999.
The data, contributed by P.D. Jones, T.J. Osborn and K.R. Briffa, of the University of East Anglia (Norwich, United Kingdom), and D.E. Parker, of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research (Bracknell, United Kingdom) and prepared by DCIAC’s Dale Kaiser, were corrected for nonclimatic errors, such as station shifts and instrument changes, officials announced.
The resulting dataset has been used extensively in various Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, and the global-mean temperature changes evident in the record have been interpreted in terms of anthropogenic forcing influences and natural variability.
Trends in annual mean temperature anomalies for the globe show relatively stable temperatures from the beginning of the record about 1910. It was followed with relatively rapid and steady warming through the early 1940s, followed by another period of relatively stable temperatures through the mid-1970s, then another rapid rise similar to that earlier in the century.
The 1999 global mean temperature anomaly was +0.33°C above the 1961–90 mean temperature. This represents a cooling compared to 1998’s record anomaly of +0.59° and can be accounted partially for by La Niña conditions replacing El Niño conditions that dominated in early 1998.
Still, 1999 ranks as the fifth warmest year in the global record, and the seven warmest years of the global record all have occurred since 1990. These are, in descending order, 1998, 1997, 1995, 1990, 1999, 1991, and 1994.
The section is available at http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/temp/jonescru/jones.html.
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A weather study conducted at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) could lead to improved lightning avoidance rules and fewer launch scrubs for the Space Shuttle and other launch vehicles at both KSC and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, according to NASA officials.
A team of NASA and university scientists is gathering data from the air, using a specially equipped Cessna Citation jet aircraft, and from the ground with Cape Canaveral Spaceport’s extensive weather monitoring system.
Weather is the greatest cause for launch delays. Approximately 30% of the delays and scrubs are related to natural and triggered lightning avoidance rules, called lightning launch criteria (LLC), according to Dr. Frank Merceret, KSC’s Applied Meteorology Unit chief and program manager for the research project.
“Those national criteria prohibit launching any space vehicle under certain lightning danger conditions,” he explained. “Because many factors related to the genesis of lightning are incompletely understood, the criteria have been set conservatively.”
NASA officials explained that a launch vehicle and its plume ascending through an anvil cloud can trigger lightning at lower electric field levels than required for natural lightning. That is because the vehicle and its plume act as a conductor and thus decreases the electric field strength necessary to initiate a lightning flash. Such triggered lightning can disrupt or damage vehicles and their electronics. Just such an occurrence happened in 1987 when an Atlas-Centaur rocket and its payload were destroyed when the launch triggered lightning.
To prevent such accidents, the national Lightning Advisory Panel modified the lightning rules. The panel, composed of representatives from various government agencies and academia, continues to review and modify those lightning launch commit criteria, which apply both to KSC and Vandenberg.
The current study is using airborne devices that measure electric fields, called field mills. Six of the field mills, attached to a Cessna Citation owned and operated by the University of North Dakota, are being flown into anvil clouds in the KSC area. The aircraft also is equipped with cloud physics probes that measure the size, shape, and number of ice and water particles in the clouds. The electric fields within the anvil clouds are a major focus of the study because the LLC relating to these anvil-shaped storm clouds show significant potential for improvement as soon as the behavior of these fields is better understood, officials said.
The electric field data generated by the airborne field mills will be correlated with the cloud physics data and data generated from ground mill stations at KSC, as well as a mobile field mill unit being driven by graduate student researchers from The University of Arizona. The field mill data also will be compared to data generated by the rest of the Eastern Range’s weather monitoring system, including radar, wind profilers, and weather towers.
The payoff for such a study, officials noted, could be significant, because the scrub of a Shuttle launch costs about $300 000. The study is being funded through savings created from KSC and the 45th Space Wing’s Joint Base Operations Contract. Additional related airborne studies are planned for 2001 if funding is available, officials said.
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The century old mystery of Earth’s “Chandler wobble” has been solved, according to a report in the August issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
The Chandler wobble, named for its 1891 discoverer Seth Carlo Chandler Jr., an American businessman turned astronomer, is one of several wobbling motions exhibited by the earth as it rotates on its axis, much as a top wobbles as it spins.
Scientists have been intrigued by the mystery even though it has been under observation for over a century. Its period is only around 433 days, or just 1.2 years, meaning that it takes that amount of time to complete one wobble. The amplitude of the wobble amounts to about 20 feet at the North Pole. Scientists calculate that the wobble would be damped down, or reduced to zero, in 68 years unless some force were constantly acting to reinvigorate it.
But what is the force that causes it? Over the years, various theories have been put forward, such as atmospheric phenomena, continental water storage (changes in snow cover, river runoff, lake levels, or reservoir capacities), interaction at the boundary of the earth’s core and its surrounding mantle and earthquakes.
Author of the report is Richard S. Gross of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. He reports that the principal cause of the Chandler wobble is fluctuating pressure on the bottom of the ocean, caused by temperature and salinity changes and wind-driven changes in the circulation of the oceans. He determined this by applying numerical models of the oceans, which only recently have become available through the work of other researchers, to data on the Chandler wobble obtained during the years 1985–95.
Gross calculated that two-thirds of the Chandler wobble is caused by ocean-bottom pressure changes and the remaining one-third by fluctuations in atmospheric pressure. He said the effect of atmospheric winds and ocean currents on the wobble are negible.
Gross credits the wide distribution of the data that support his calculations to the creation in 1988 of the International Earth Rotation Service, based in Paris, France. Through its various bureaus, Gross writes, IERS enables the kind of interdisciplinary research that led to his solution.
Gross’s research was supported by NASA’s Office of Earth Science.
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Dr. Bill Hogarth, who heads NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Southeast Region, has been appointed deputy director of NMFS, the No. 2 position at that agency. The appointment was effective 1 August.
He replaces Dr. Andrew Rosenberg, who is leaving NOAA to become Dean of the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture at the University of New Hampshire.
A Virginia native, he has managed the southeast region for the past year. Carol Ballew, deputy regional administrator, will take over management of the region temporarily.
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Russell A. Moll has been named director of California Sea Grant, part of NOAA’s National Sea Grant College Program.
Moll, who is president of the Sea Grant Association, previously served as director of the Michigan Sea Grant program, where he also had filled the position as assistant director for eight years.
He also has spent two years as associate program director for the Biological Oceanography Program of the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Moll has traveled, studied, and published extensively on the Great Lakes, nearshore marine environment, and temperate and tropical rivers. He earned his Ph.D. degree in 1974 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
California Sea Grant, one of 29 university-based programs in a national network around the country, is based at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla, California.
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Digital Cyclone, Inc. recently appointed Ron Trenda Director of Meteorological Operations. Trenda will manage Digital Cyclone’s extensive team of meteorologists to work with the company’s local TV and newspaper affiliate partners and business-to-business clients. As Director of Meteorological Operations, Trenda will lead efforts to maintain the integrity of the company’s highly focused weather information.
Trenda currently runs Weather Trends, based in Minnetonka, Minnesota, providing detailed weather data to a number of corporate and legal clients, including local golf courses and golf associations. He appears on-air for WCCO-TV in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and has worked at Twin Cities stations KARE-TV, KMSP-TV, and KSTP-TV. Trenda also contributes weather forecasts for the Star Tribune newspaper.
Trenda has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin, his AMS Seal, and is the Vice Chair for the local chapter of the American Meteorological Society
Based in Minnetonka, Minnesota, Digital Cyclone was founded in 1998, and is led by Paul Douglas, chief meteorologist at WCCO-TV in the Twin Cities; Craig Burfeind, founder and former chief technologist at EarthWatch Communications; and John Culliton, former WCCO-TV general manager and former CBS vice president. The company will market My-Cast, its first product, which launches this summer, through media partners in more than 50 of the top markets in North America.
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