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William Hooke, director of AMS’ Atmospheric Policy Program, was recently appointed to the National Research Council’s Natural Disaster Roundtable. Hooke’s appointment is from 1 August 2002 until 1 August 2004. Hooke was also asked to chair the roundtable for the next two years.
The roundtable’s mission is to facilitate and enhance communication and the exchange of ideas among scientists, practitioners, and policymakers in order to identify urgent and important issues related to the understanding and mitigation of natural disasters.
The Natural Disasters Roundtable (NDR) holds three public forums a year in Washington, D.C., on topics related to natural and technological disasters. For online information on the roundtable see http://www4.nationalacademies.org/cger/bond.nsf/web/homepage?OpenDocument.
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) is working hard on strengthening its efforts in environmental sciences and education. The foundation has prepared a 30-page document that provides the environmental education community with an opportunity to not only become familiar with NSF thinking on these issues but to make suggestions on how it can make its efforts more effective and useful to the overall field. AMS members are encouraged to review the document and provide comments by the deadline of 10 August.
For more information and to make comments, please see http://www.nsf.gov/ere.
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On 29 July 2002, by e-mail ballot, the AMS Council overwhelmingly approved a proposal to restructure the AMS Corporation and Institutional Memberships (CIM). The proposal was originally drafted by the AMS Private Sector Coordinator, and received the strong endorsement of the AMS Executive Committee (EC).
The goals of the CIM restructuring are as follows:
The specific elements of the restructuring are as follows.
1) For 2003, a new level of Publications CIM will be created with only publication discounts as a benefit of membership. The annual dues will be $600. Any organization, private or public, may qualify for the Publication CIM if it desires to support the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrologic sciences or their application.
2) For 2003, a new level of Small Business CIM will be created with base annual dues of $350. The annual dues actually paid may be reduced from the base amount if the small business corporation and institutional member employs one or more individual full (or higher) members (i.e., AMS members that are eligible to vote). If one full (or higher) member is employed, the reduction will be $70, for net CIM annual dues of $280. If two or more full (or higher) members are employed, the reduction will be $140, for net CIM annual dues of $210.
Any organization, private or public, may qualify for the Small Business CIM if it has the equivalent of five or fewer full time employees, and if it desires to support the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrologic sciences or their application. Benefits of the Small Business CIM are as follows: a complimentary subscription to BAMS; invitations to all meetings for corporate members such as the Corporate Forum and the new Users Conference; complimentary monthly listing in the BAMS list of corporate members; complimentary participation in Annual Meeting Career Fair; complimentary use of a new, Small Business CIM logo; complimentary membership plaque; complimentary listing in the forthcoming Online Guide to Member Products and Services; one or more complimentary registrations to the 2003 Users Conference, and additional reduced-cost registrations to the 2003 Users Conference; and a 25% CIM discount from published base fees for all AMS advertising, and eligibility for volume discounts.
Note: Small Business CIMs will not be eligible for publication discounts, exhibiting discounts, or exhibiting preferences.
3) For 2003, the present Contributing and Regular CIM levels will be merged into a new Regular CIM, with base dues of $1000. The annual dues actually paid may be reduced from the base amount if the regular corporation and institutional member employs one or more individual full (or higher) members. If one full (or higher) member is employed, the reduction will be $70, for net CIM annual dues of $930. If two or more full (or higher) members are employed, the reduction will be $140, for net CIM annual dues of $860. Any organization, private or public, may qualify for the Regular CIM if it desires to support the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrologic sciences or their application. Benefits of the new Regular CIM will be somewhat better than those of the present Contributing CIM, and will include publication discounts, an increased advertising discount rate, exhibiting discounts, exhibiting preferences, the right to participate in all meetings and activities designed to benefit corporate members, including the annual Corporate Forum and Users Conference, one or more complimentary registrations to the 2003 Users Conference, and additional reduced-cost registrations to the 2003 Users Conference.
4) Benefits for the Sustaining CIM will be somewhat better in 2003 and will include publication discounts, an increased advertising discount rate, exhibiting discounts, exhibiting preferences, the right to participate in all meetings and activities designed to benefit corporate members, including the annual Corporate Forum and Users Conference, one or more complimentary registrations to the 2003 Users Conference, and additional reduced-cost registrations to the 2003 Users Conference.
For more details contact R. Gary Rasmussen, AMS Private Sector Coordinator, at (617) 227-2426, ext. 338.
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In a development related to the restructuring of the AMS Corporation and Institutional Memberships (CIM; see the previous article), in 2003 AMS will increase the CIM advertising discount rate from 10% to 25%. This increased discount rate will benefit Small Business, Regular, and Sustaining CIMs.
To be able to increase this discount rate from 10% to 25% without losing revenue, it will be necessary to increase advertising base fees by 20% in 2003. However, because of the increased base fees and greater discount rate, the Society will be able to avoid increases in the actual advertising fees paid in 2003 by small business, regular, and sustaining corporation and institutional members. Only non-CIM advertisers will realize an actual fee increase of 20%.
This is a purposeful step intended to provide fee stability for CIMs and an additional financial incentive for nonmember advertisers to become corporation and institutional members. Fortunately, the coincident restructuring of advertising fees and corporate memberships allows us to extend the improved 25% CIM advertising discount to Small Business CIMs. Small business, regular, and sustaining corporation and institutional members will benefit in 2003 by seeing no effective increase in advertising fees.
All three classes of CIM will benefit again in the future from the increased discount rate with each future increase of advertising fees.
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For the past four years, Subaru has hosted the popular “Outback Rendezvous” event providing a hands-on outdoor experience for its customers. Attendance topped 7,000 participants in 2001. This year’s event is scheduled for the weekend of 7–8 September 2002, at Green Lakes State Park, in Fayetteville, New York.
To provide the Subaru partners with an opportunity to interact with Subaru customers in an environment immersed in the culture and core values of Subaru, they have initiated exciting changes in 2002. The vision is to create a more exclusive and experiential event called “Subaru Rendezvous.”
This year, the expanded program includes an opening and a closing ceremony, live entertainment, exclusive appearances from Subaru athletes, professional driving instruction, and more.
The American Meteorological Society’s Central New York Chapter has offered to get involved with this exciting program. Mark Wysocki and David Longley, chapter co-presidents will have pamphlets/brochures with the main theme of “Be prepared.” They will describe severe weather tips for outdoor activities and short-term forecasting techniques.
AMS members in the New York area are invited to join Wysocki and Longley at Green Lakes State Park and learn more about the AMS partnership with Subaru and its other partners.
Subaru has been involved in supporting the AMS Education Program, helping to bring teachers to the annual meeting, for more than four years. Subaru and the AMS officially joined forces in 2001 to further the goals of the AMS education programs. Subaru, recognizing the value of science education, helped kick off the AMS 21st Century Campaign with the largest-ever corporate contribution to the AMS. The multiyear contribution of $125,000 per year provides funding for graduate fellowships, undergraduate scholarships, and K–12 teacher training. The new relationship between Subaru of America and the AMS also includes discounted pricing on new vehicles to AMS members.
The AMS 21st Century Campaign—Science, Service, Society—will provide a focused institutional mechanism for AMS members to make meaningful contributions to the advancement of their science and to societal betterment. This campaign supports the goals of the AMS 10-year vision, which is to employ the remarkable advances in the atmospheric and related sciences and services for the benefit of society as a whole. The AMS 21st Century Campaign ensures a strong future for the atmospheric and related sciences and services.
For more information on Subaru’s partnerships with organizations such as the AMS visit www.subaru.com (click on Outdoor Life).
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A Weather Board of Trade is scheduled to open in the next few weeks allowing companies and individuals with a weather risk to lessen their vulnerability. Dan Parker, the chief executive of the board, says he has regulatory approval from the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and is negotiating with another major U.S.-based exchange to share technology.
Weather derivatives trading jumped 72% in the year ended 31 March, and is now a $4.3 billion industry, according to a recent survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Weather Risk Management Association.
The new board of trade includes Entergy-Koch Trading and Elemente Re, two of the nation’s top traders of weather derivatives, among its charter members.
Entergy-Koch, a joint venture between Koch Industries and Entergy, a Louisiana utility company, was formed a little more than a year ago. It has quickly grown into a top player in weather trading.
The Weather Board of Trade will use the Normal Departure Index or Nordix, a platform Parker patented, to allow traders to buy and sell options based on variations from normal temperature and rainfall.
“The current products in weather risk management are based primarily on heating and cooling degree days,” Parker said in an interview with the Wichita, Kansas, Eagle. “Those products tend to be of value to energy producers and utilities but less applicable to broad-based use.”
The Nordix value will be a daily number, calculated from actual weather conditions and will use bids and offers like any futures contract. Parker sees the new board of trade as a valuable tool for construction companies, farmers, theme park owners and others whose business profits and losses are often determined by weather conditions.
Parker said the goal of the Weather Board of Trade is to complement the existing Chicago and New York Mercantile Exchange products in weather derivatives, not to replace them. Weather derivatives are contracts tailored to specific customers, usually large ones. They function like insurance. Nordix options will not be tailored to a specific customer. They are simply a product whose value is based on how greatly actual weather varies from “average” or “normal.” They function like commodity futures.
For more information see www.weatherboardoftrade.com.
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America’s Clean Water Foundation (ACWF) is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the enactment of the Clean Water Act this October. As part of the events, the ACWF—in cooperation with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Commerce, the U.S. Geological Survey, and NOAA—will host a national forum to bring together approximately 200 government and private sector leaders from throughout the United States and the world. This three-day forum will consist of a series of educational, work group, and plenary sessions on technical and policy issues concerning international water resource protection issues. These sessions will be conducted or facilitated by national and international experts and leaders in the field of water resource and watershed protection. The end product of this forum will be preparation and distribution of a report of forum proceedings and recommendations. The date and location for this event will be 30 October–1 November 2002 in Washington, D.C. For further details see www.yearofcleanwater.org.
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The International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF) is hosting “Wildfire 2002: Surviving in the Interface Danger Zone,” in Kansas City, Missouri, 4–6 December 2002. The conference is designed to addresses the fastest growing fire problem in the United States, Canada, and perhaps even the world: the wildland–urban interface. According to the IAWF, virtually every fire department faces some type of wildland–urban interface threat, either directly within the community or through area, regional, or statewide mutual aid. The conference will bring wildland and structural firefighters together with other industry professionals to discuss wildland–urban interface fire challenges.
For more information see www.iawfonline.org.
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According to an article in the Toronto Star (10 July 2002) Canada is closing its premier ozone monitoring laboratory because of budget cuts.
The federal ozone observatory near Eureka on Ellesmere Island, operating since 1993, is “being quietly mothballed by the federal environment department to save an estimated $300,000 a year for the cash-starved meteorological service.”
“The closing could not have come at a worse time,” said Michael Kurylo, a top U.S. atmospheric scientist who heads a global network of ozone observatories. Kurylo is also in charge of upper atmospheric research for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Other NASA experts have recently warned that the ozone layer over the Arctic, which has dropped by as much as 45% in some years, could disappear entirely as many as five times over the next three decades.
The main job of the Arctic Stratospheric Ozone Observatory (ASTRO), according to the article, is tracking the ozone layer 10 to 40 km overhead, where ozone-destroying chlorine is still increasing, despite a ban on production of chlorine-containing chemicals known as CFCs.
The Eureka station is one of only two fully equipped ozone observatories in the high Arctic and the most valuable because of its unique location, said Kurylo, who is co-chair of the Network for the Detection of Stratospheric Change.
“The next decade is the peak of vulnerability for ozone over the Arctic and Eureka sits in the best spot for study, at the edge of the vortex of the coldest polar air,” Kurylo was quoted as saying in the article.
An independent international panel that reviewed the research program of the Meteorological Service of Canada, the article said, also stressed the vital importance of the Eureka observatory to the world. Because climate change is expected to worsen ozone depletion the measurements made at Eureka “are a clear Canadian priority,” the panel concluded in a recently published report.
Climate change speeds up ozone depletion because the stratosphere cools as the earth’s surface warms. The cooler temperatures encourage formation of ice crystals in stratosphere clouds that provide a surface where chlorine can attack the ozone.
Colder Arctic winters also produce the stratosphere clouds, which require the spring sun to spark the ozone destruction. Also, sulphuric acid clouds from volcanoes provide a surface for the ozone-destroying chemical reaction, said NASA scientist Azadeh Tabazadeh, which could lead to 100% depletion of Arctic ozone under certain conditions.
Tabazadeh and her colleagues found that the volcanic plume from the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines reached the lower stratosphere over the Arctic within a few months and greatly enlarged the area of ozone loss.
A combination of cold winters and volcanic plumes thick enough to create an Arctic ozone hole could happen as many as five times over the next 30 years, according to computer projections by Tabazadeh.
The measurements that would have been made at the Eureka observatory are crucial to checking such computer models, said Kurylo in the article.
“It’s a sad commentary on the state of affairs for the funding of science when $300,000 a year is too much for something as important as Eureka,” he said. The closing also cuts off Canada’s newest satellite, a $42 million spacecraft being launched in January, from the instruments at Eureka needed to double-check its measurements of the upper atmosphere, the article stated.
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The Federal Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Dr. David Kemp, met in Washington in early July with Dr. Paula Dobriansky, U.S. undersecretary of state, to discuss the Australia–U.S. Climate Action Partnership. Kemp and Dobriansky announced the first set of cooperative projects to be implemented under the partnership.
“These 19 projects will make a real contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to increasing the world’s scientific understanding of climate change,” Kemp said.
“The government is committed to practical, effective action on climate change. The partnership with the U.S. demonstrates Australia’s commitment to working with other countries to develop an effective and robust global regime that involves all major greenhouse gas emitters, including developing countries,” added Kemp.
Australia and the U.S. will cooperate in the following key areas:
For complete statements about the partnership see http://www.ea.gov.au/minister/env/2002/mr09july02.html.
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Energy Bill Conference
The Senate and House of Representatives’ energy bills remain in conference committee, and the consensus of some staff who are involved in negotiations seems to be that some kind of proposal will emerge. Fundamentally, the controversial items from both the House and Senate bills will probably drop out and the items on which both sides of the House (and Democrats and Republicans) can agree on will remain. The bill contains so many items that there are fairly large areas of mutual agreement that it will most likely offer enough substance for the conference committee to report on a bill that can rightfully be called energy legislation. The climate change portions of the Senate energy bill that address the structure of the U.S. Global Change and Research Program (or whatever such efforts will be called in the future) will probably be among those provisions that survive—though there are other “climate change” items that are quite controversial and may not.
National Science Foundation “Doubling” Authorization
In June, the House of Representatives by an overwhelming margin, passed H.R. 4664, providing for a “doubling” in the budget of the National Science Foundation (NSF) from approximately $5 billion per year to $10 billion, with the effort slated to begin in FY03.
The legislation is now in the Senate (also H.R. 4664, meaning a duplicate of the House bill), where it will be considered by Sen. Kennedy’s (D-Massachusetts) Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
If the committee favorably reports the bill, the full Senate will then consider it. And while there is perhaps somewhat less enthusiasm in the Senate than the House for this concept, it looks as if NSF’s time has finally come for a doubling of its own, as members of Congress recognize that the physical sciences (including, mathematics and the atmospheric and related sciences) are as important as the health sciences; in fact, they often underpin developments in the health sciences as such figures as Harold Varmous, former head of the NIH, have argued for a number of years.
With the extraordinarily heavy work load in Congress currently (and especially in the Senate, which tends to work more slowly and deliberately than the House), it is difficult to say when the HELP Committee will consider the bill, but a top staff member indicated that the bill will, in fact, be taken up by the committee. Assuming the committee passes the bill, it should go to the floor of the Senate, as it would probably be a relatively popular and noncontroversial measure, meaning that bringing it up and considering it in the full Senate would not take a lot of time during a period of intense Senate activity.
NSF Math and Science Education Programs
A bill authorizing math and science education programs at NSF (i.e., establishing their broad outlines), which has been passed by the House of Representatives, will probably be addressed by the Senate this session. The bill (S. 1262) will be considered by Senator Edward Kennedy’s (D-Massachusetts) Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee sometime after Congress returns from its August recess. It is not yet on the Committee’s calendar for “mark up” (i.e., when the committee considers the bill and any amendments, and then votes on whether to pass it on to the full Senate for consideration), but a top committee staff member has indicated that the committee in fact will consider the bill.
S. 1262 is very similar to the House bill (H.R. 1858) but is not a duplicate. As a consequence, before the bill becomes law, if both branches of Congress pass their versions, they will have to reconcile them in a conference committee composed of members from both branches. This ad hoc committee then produces duplicate bills for each chamber to vote on.
As the bill was passed in the House and as it stands to be considered by the HELP Committee, it would alter requirements for nonprofit organizations eligible to receive funding in a way that could effectively exclude small- to medium-sized science and technology organizations like AMS. That is because the bill would authorize NSF to fund programs that involve a “partnership” between nonprofits and “local educational agencies” (LEA), for example, state educational agencies and local school districts.
Currently, AMS is responsible for “DataStreme” and “Water in the Earth System,” a nationwide program that involves partnerships with individual teachers who act as resource agents within their schools and school districts by teaching and mentoring other teachers—and by sitting on boards and commissions for curriculum reform and development. To require partnerships with LEAs would restrict medium and small scientific and technology societies and organizations to just one or a few school districts or states—if that—and would, therefore, most likely inhibit such educational efforts.
It appears, however, that there is some interest among staff on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers to consider altering the legislation to help ensure that smaller- and medium-sized national societies and organizations have a chance to participate in this NSF program. AMS is currently working with congressional staff to see what might be done to open up the meaning of “partnership” in the legislation, so that a broader range of science and technology organizations might be included as eligible for NSF funding and therefore become part of a broader and more effective mix of educational approaches.
Inland Flooding Bill
The House approved a bill to develop an inland flood warning system on 11 July. The bill passed by a vote of 413 to 3.
While the National Weather Service’s ability to accurately predict most flood events has improved, it is still more difficult to forecast coastal and estuary-inland flooding events that are caused by tropical cyclones. H.R. 2486, introduced by Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-North Carolina), authorizes $5 million over five years for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to improve the capability to predict inland flooding and to develop a flood warning index.
The flood warning index is designed to give the public and emergency management workers clearer and more comprehensive information on the dangers of anticipated floods. The bill also includes provisions to train appropriate personnel on how to predict and respond to floods, including risk management techniques.
The bill now moves to the Senate for consideration.
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Over a two-week period in July, three important events on Capitol Hill were held on climate change. The purpose of the two committee hearings and one briefing were to examine the administration’s position on climate change, as well as how—and to what extent—President Bush expects to tackle the problem.
The first two hearings, one held by the House Science Committee and the other by a subcommittee (Oceans, Atmosphere and Fisheries) of the Senate Commerce Committee, were oversight hearings during which representatives of the administration offered an outline of their thinking on how to approach the problem of climate change, as well as expected actions that will be taken. The hearings included a brief exploration of the president’s Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI), as well as its Climate Change Technology Initiative (CCTI), the first spearheaded by NOAA, the second by the Department of Energy.
Testifying at the House Science Committee hearing were the president’s top science policy advisor, Dr. John Marburger, director of the Office and Science and Technology Policy; Dr. James Mahoney, deputy director of NOAA; and Robert Card, undersecretary for energy, science, and the environmentat the Department of Energy. They explained the administration’s policy on climate change in broad conceptual terms but also some specific plans. The plans include an overall evaluation of current programs addressing climate change and the integration of CCRI and CCTI initiatives into the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
According to the presenters, the administration does accept that greenhouse gases are resulting in a net warming of the planet. Furthermore, it seems that it is in part as the result of man’s hand on nature; but the issue is of such potentially significant impact, especially to the economy, that more study needs to be done before substantial changes are made in the way the U.S. “does business.”
Witnesses were at once acknowledging the fact of climate change but expressing a reluctance to move forward legislatively, until additional science has been done. However, many, including members of the Science Committee, believe that the science has already been done, and it is now time for solutions in mitigation and adaptation. The administration, however, is not ready to make that move yet, fearing the consequences of any substantial action in the face of what they regard as substantial unknowns involving the complexity of “uncertainties.”
The reaction of the committee members was mixed, though the consensus seemed to be that the administration was moving too slowly; that it had been demonstrated that, in fact, climate change was occurring (with a net warming) and that, at least in part, it was the result of human activity, as expressed in the most recent IPCC report. Given that, most of the committee members, including individuals on both sides of the aisle (and prominently including the chairman), exhibited disappointment with what the witnesses were saying, especially that the administration only supported working toward a decrease in the rate of increase of the production of greenhouse gases. Why, they were asking, was the administration going so slowly—and calling, for the most, part only for additional study at this point—in making material changes in policy to address what they regards as a demonstrable and serious problem with consequences for, literally, hundreds of years.
At a hearing a few days later in the Senate, some members were harsher in their tone and attitude. The hearing was chaired by Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts); the witnesses were Mahoney and Marburger, joined by Jim Connaughton, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, and R. Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors.
Witnesses again offered the administration’s stance that with an issue that had so many implications—especially economic implications—the wise course at this point was continued study that would yield policy prescriptions. The witnesses expressed concern that modeling capabilities are still not precise enough to proceed with specific policy measures. The witnesses testified that the administration believes that the correct course of action was not to take aggressive and bold steps yet in mitigation and adaptation. As before, they emphasized that the current policy was not necessarily to reduce the output of greenhouse gases but merely to decrease the rate of increase. Theirs was what they regard as a cautious, prudent approach to the problem.
The reaction of the Senate was more aggressive and skeptical, with Sen. Kerry taking the lead in tough questioning. Citing a report issued by the EPA, and therefore effectively endorsed by the administration, the report warned of specific consequences of warming. If the administration endorsed this report, Kerry asked, did it not demand something more than the more cautious approach the administration would like to see in response to climate change.
Kerry also pressed certain witnesses—especially Hubbard and Connaughton—to endorse the recommendations in the report issued by this administration. They finally did so, tepidly, repeating assertions, however, that more study was needed before substantial efforts might begin at adaptation and mitigation. In the meantime, the scientists noted that it was sufficient at this time to focus on decreasing the rate of increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Senator Kerry did not accept this, however, arguing in effect that with the threat that warming of the planet presented, the wise course was to begin now with substantial efforts to ensure an actual decrease in the amounts of greenhouse gasses produced.
The third and final event on Capitol Hill was a briefing by Admiral Lautenbacher, Mahoney, and Dr. Daniel L. Albritton, director of the NOAA Aeronomy Lab in Boulder, Colorado. Albritton explained in relatively basic terms the science of climate change, while Mahoney and Lautenbacher explained the administration’s plans addressing climate change.
Lautenbacher and Mahoney explained the administration’s plans to evaluate current research and then decide on steps to take. As with the earlier hearings, they explained that the prudent course of action at this point, in the administration’s view, is continued study that would reduce uncertainties in the science. It was not time yet to take aggressive and bold steps in mitigation and adaptation, nor necessary to force by law a reduction in the output of greenhouse gases.
Senate Minority Staff Member Bryan Hannegan, staff scientist on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, responded in relatively favorable terms to the administration’s presentation, though perhaps urging a slightly more aggressive stance. Margaret Spring, majority staff member of the Oceans and Fisheries Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, was somewhat skeptical of what she perceived as the administration’s failure to recognize the depth of the problem, arguing that warming has been established essentially as scientific fact, and we should move forward more boldly on a number of fronts in addressing the problem.
This was an informational briefing, but as with the formal hearings by the oversight committees noted above, the briefing room was standing room only, indicating the depth of interest on Capitol Hill in these issues.
More information and testimony from these hearings is available on the Internet at http://www.house.gov/science/hearings.
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Because of the flurry of legislative activity at this time of the year, especially with the war on terrorism and the corporate corruption scandal—the appropriations process is even more behind schedule than usual. Normally, the 13 subcommittees of the House and Senate Appropriations Committee would have finished their work on funding for the federal government for FY03 by the end of August, and the bills would be voted on by the full committee and then the full Senate and House of Representatives. This year, the full Senate has cleared just two bills for conference with the House; the full House has passed only five.
Of particular interest to AMS are the Commerce, Justice, State, and the Judiciary (CJS) appropriations bills, as well as the Veterans Administration, Housing and Urban Development and Independent Agencies (VA-HUD) appropriations bills.
In the Senate, the full Appropriations Committee has passed the CJS appropriations bill, and while the overall funding level for the Commerce Department is down, NOAA overall has fared well, with the committee supporting the administration’s request for a 3% increase. That’s slightly over the rate of inflation, so—considering how tight the budget is this year for a number of reasons—that is a solid increase. Within that overall figure, a number of programs will get increased funding, a number will get decreased funding, some will be eliminated while others will be newly funded. It should be noted, for example, that the NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research climate change program has received a substantial increase in funding as part of the president’s Climate Change Research Initiative.
Unfortunately, this relatively swift action by the Senate has not been matched in the House, where the overall CJS allocation by the full Appropriations Committee has been a significant disappointment, well below last year’s. A source on the minority (Democratic) side indicates that CJS will be the last bill to be considered by the full committee. Members of the CJS subcommittee on both sides of the aisle indicate that they will not move on the bill until they receive a larger allocation. This situation occurs occasionally, and undoubtedly CJS will receive additional funds. This is especially true as it has homeland security responsibilities, as well as responsibilities to address the spate of corporate fraud, through the Justice Department and the SEC, respectively.
As for VA-HUD, the crucial funding of interest to AMS members is for the National Science Foundation (NSF). Originally, the administration called for an approximately 8% increase in its funding, but that included monies for programs transferred from NOAA, EPA, and USGS. Absent those funds, there was a 3% increase for NSF. The Senate VA-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee, as expected, however, refused to fund the program transfers, and the programs will therefore be returned to NOAA, EPA, and USGS—as there would be no funding in NSF for them.
However, the big (and surprising) news is that even with those programs returned to their former agencies, the subcommittee has decided to fund NSF with a close to 10% increase for FY03. This is exciting news because, while it is not the doubling hoped for in the NSF reauthorization bills discussed above, it is substantially more than the administration requested and even more than advocates for NSF had expected; indeed, it is something close to being on the road to doubling.
The question now with NSF funding is what the House will do, and the CJS subcommittee there has not produced a bill. But the pressure is on for doubling. There is a real possibility of the House of Representatives supporting a large increase as well. All the elements are nearly in place, with the result that the two sides may produce a budget number for NSF that will put that agency on the road to a funding level commensurate with its tremendous opportunities.
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In the past two issues of the newsletter, AMS has presented information on the subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee that handle spending bills covering NOAA, NASA, NSF, and the EPA. The Appropriations Subcommittee that funds the water programs at the U.S. Geological Survey is the Interior and Related Agencies Subcommittee, whose membership is named below.
We urge AMS members to become involved in discussing the issues of adequate funding with their members of Congress. AMS members can contact Doug Stone at (202) 737-9006, ext. 405, or stone@dc.ametsoc.org to get more information on the progress of the relevant legislation. Stone can provide information on the legislation and thoughts on how to best approach members of Congress. The committee may be reached at (202) 224-7233, and individual members of the House or Senate may be reached through the Capitol switchboard at (202) 225-3121 or (202) 224-3121, respectively.
Following is the membership of the House and Senate Interior and Related Agencies Subcommittee:
Senate majority:
Senate minority:
House of Representatives majority:
House of Representatives minority:
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As the traditional tornado season came to an end in July, tornado activity in the United States has remained low, according to National Weather Service. The unofficial count of 451 tornadoes reported by 24 July is half of the 10-year average of 914 tornadoes and the lowest midyear count since 1988.
This year, fewer tornadoes have also meant fewer deaths. As of 24 July, 11 people have been killed by tornadoes this year. “The 10-year average for deaths by July 24 is 46,” said Dan McCarthy, warning coordination meteorologist for NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center.
“A cold air outbreak in February and March, when tornadoes typically occur in the southeast, delayed the start of tornado season,” McCarthy said. This followed a winter when the position of the jet stream and resulting storm track prohibited tornado development. Drought may also be a factor in the low number of tornadoes this year, he added.
According to the Storm Prediction Center, only 11 years since 1950 have seen fewer tornadoes during the same period. On average, about 57 Americans are killed by tornadoes each year, with 1,200 injured. An average of 1,200 tornadoes cause more than $400 million in damages annually. Peak tornado activity occurs during the months of March through early July.
The most destructive and deadly tornado this year occurred in La Plata, Maryland, on 28 April, killing three people. Based on the damage, officials rated it an F4 on the Fujita Damage Scale.
Other deadly tornadoes that occurred that day were an F3 in Dongola, Illinois, which killed one person, and an F2 in Irvington, Kentucky, which also killed one. Two other April tornadoes each killed one person, an F3 on 21 April in Fairfield, Illinois, and an F3 on 27 April in Marble Hill, Missouri. On 5 May, an F2 tornado in Happy, Texas, killed two people, and four days later an F1 in Centralia, Illinois, also killed two.
Relevant Web sites include
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NOAA scientists are now officially confirming that El Niño is coming back and, while not as strong as the 1997–98 occurrence, a milder version will begin affecting weather in the United States this fall.
National Weather Service experts said mature El Niño likely will develop in the next few months as weather conditions in the tropical Pacific, including consecutive months of warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures and abnormally heavy rainfall in areas of South America met NOAA’s criteria for being classified an El Niño.
“This time around, El Niño will not be as powerful as the 1997–98 event, but we’ll track it closely for any change in predicted strength,” said Vernon Kousky, a meteorologist and climate specialist at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Maryland. Once it matures, he said, the El Niño should maintain a weak-to-moderate strength.
Data from NOAA’s network of monitoring buoys in the Pacific and from its environmental satellites in space detected above-average sea surface temperatures for several months in the waters of the equatorial Pacific, officials said. They explained that this usually triggers a chain reaction of atmospheric and weather changes around the globe, including warmer, rainy weather in the southern United States during winter and drier weather in much of Indonesia throughout El Niño’s cycle.
Kousky said El Niño typically does not affect summers in the United States, but historically it tends to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity. He added that El Niño may not be strong enough to be a factor in this year’s hurricane season. In May, NOAA officials released its Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook, which called for the potential of 9 to 13 storms, with 6 to 8 hurricanes, 2 to 3 classified as major (category 3 or above on the Saffir–Simpson scale.).
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NASA, NOAA, and U.S. Air Force officials are discussing whether to build a new generation of dual-use satellite (NPOESS) to study the role soot may play in atmospheric warming, according to a 10 June article in Aviation Week and Space Technology.
A satellite could be launched as early as 2006, according to Ghassem Asrar, NASA’s associate administrator for earth science. The spacecraft would supplement existing and planned instruments in studying the complex interactions behind the already-measured warming of the atmosphere, the article read.
While the Bush administration has conceded that human activity contributes to global warming, it rejects the Kyoto approach of controlling industrial carbon dioxide emissions in favor of further study to address crucial uncertainties about how human activities are changing the earth’s climate and environment, according to the article.
One technological approach would reduce the amount of black carbon aerosols, or soot, pumped into the atmosphere by incomplete burning of coal and diesel fuel. A team headed by James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has suggested that controlling emissions of soot and such non-carbon-dioxide greenhouse gases as methane, carbon monoxide, and chlorofluorocarbons could offset warming from solar energy trapped by carbon dioxide.
Black carbon soot absorbs energy from the sun rather than reflecting it, Hansen’s group reported. But it cautioned that there is no global program to monitor either sun-absorbing soot or other suspended particles that reflect solar energy.
Hansen has been working on a precision multispectral polarimeter to take the required measurements from space. The instrument would work in conjunction with a visible-light camera to define the scenes covered, infrared interferometry for temperature profiles, and a laser radar to produced vertical aerosol profiles, according to the article.
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The Secretaries of Energy, Commerce, and Agriculture, along with the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have submitted recommendations to President Bush that provide a blueprint for an expanded voluntary reporting system that encourages greenhouse gas emission reductions and creates a new, transferable credit system for those reductions.
The recommendations were outlined in a letter to the president signed by all four cabinet officers.
Officials said the initiative is an important tool for achieving President Bush’s goal to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of the American economy by 18% by 2012.
The recommendations follow the president’s climate change policy released earlier this year, which requested recommendations for improvements to the current voluntary emissions reduction registration program operated under the 1992 Energy Policy Act.
The recommendations highlight the need to create standardized, widely accepted, transparent accounting methods, support independent verification of registry reports, and provide credits for a broad range of actions.
The current voluntary reporting of greenhouse gases, created by the 1992 Energy Policy Act, has been operational since 1994 and is managed by the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA). EIA’s voluntary reporting of greenhouse gases contains reports from 222 corporations, associations, and individuals, officials stated.
For further information, see the U.S. Department of Energy press release at http://energy.gov/HQPress/releases02/julpr/pr02136_v.htm.
A copy of the letter to the White House is at http://energy.gov/HQPress/releases02/julpr/GreenhouseGasRegistryLetter.pdf.
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Above-normal temperatures and drier than normal conditions led to a worsening drought situation across large parts of the United States in June, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, in Asheville, N.C. By the end of the June, 36% of the contiguous United States was in severe to extreme drought based on a widely used measure of drought severity, the Palmer Drought Index.
The average temperature for the contiguous United States was 71.6°F (22.0°C) in June, 2.3°F greater than the 1895–2001 long-term mean for the month, making it the fifth warmest June on record. Abnormally warm temperatures occurred in the Southwest and northern Plains. Colorado and Nebraska had their second warmest June since statewide records began in 1895 while New Mexico and Nevada had their fifth warmest June. Near average temperatures covered much of the South and Northeast. Maine and New Hampshire had significantly cooler than average temperatures for the month.
The above-average warmth coincided with anomalously dry conditions in many areas. Fourteen states from the West Coast to the Mid-Atlantic had below average precipitation totals, and four states (Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and Nebraska) were much drier than average. In the East, drought conditions were most severe in an area stretching from central Virginia to central Georgia. The past 12 months were the driest July through June on record for North Carolina and South Carolina, and drought has affected parts of the region for much of the past four years. The total precipitation deficit since July 1998 exceeded 55 inches in Greenville and 65 inches in Columbia, S.C., at the end of June.
Severe to extreme drought continued throughout large parts of the western United States from Arizona and New Mexico to Montana, significantly affecting farming and the frequency of wildfires. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 80% of range and pastures were classified as poor to very poor in New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado in early July, with conditions worsening during June and early July in California, Wyoming, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. (see related story on drought forecast)
By the end of June 2002, nearly 2.8 million acres had burned in the United States, much of it in the West, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. This acreage is almost twice the total burned during the same period in 2000, one of the worst wildfire seasons in the past 50 years. In 2000, severe to extreme drought affected 19% of the nation at the end of June compared with 36% affected in 2002. The greatest reach coverage of drought area in the nation occurred in July 1934, when severe to extreme drought covered 63% of the contiguous United States.
The average global temperature for combined land and ocean surfaces during June 2002 (based on preliminary data) was 0.9°F (0.5°C) above the 1880–2001 long-term mean, the second warmest June since 1880 (the period of reliable instrumental records). The land surface temperature average was also the second warmest on record (1.4°F above average), and the global ocean surface temperature was 0.7°F above average, slightly cooler than June 1997 and June 1998.
The warmest globally averaged June temperature occurred only four years ago during the last El Niño episode. Weak to moderate El Niño conditions have again formed in the equatorial Pacific and further development is likely in the coming months.
For more information see: Climate of 2002—June in Historical Perspective online at http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2002/jun/jun02.html.
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Drought is developing in the Northeast, and continues to persist in the Mid-Atlantic and the western states. Meanwhile, the Southeast will likely see improving drought conditions, according to the latest drought outlook from NOAA’s National Weather Service, issued on 18 July.
New to the outlook this month, drought is expected to expand from Ohio and southeastern Michigan to Maine. Recent hot, dry weather has rapidly dried topsoils in the Ohio Valley and Northeast, and rainfall forecasts imply that conditions could worsen in coming months.
A trend toward below-normal rainfall is expected in the Mid-Atlantic states during August to October resulting in a persistent drought for much of the region.
The Southeast has a sizeable rainfall deficits, built up by nearly four years of drought. In some areas mean water shortages should continue even with a return to normal rainfall.
“Last month was the fifth warmest June in more than 108 years and several western states saw their driest first-half year on record,” said LeComte. “Drought in the Great Plains, which contributed to reducing the national winter wheat crop to its lowest level in 30 years, should start to see some improvement by October.”
Drought is expected to continue in the West until the mountain snowpacks build up next winter. The summer thunderstorm season, which began on schedule earlier this month, is expected to bring some short-term relief, especially in the Southwest. Also, short-term improvement from seasonal thunderstorms is anticipated for the central Rockies, eastern Great Basin, and much of the Southwest, while improvement should be more spotty from California northward to Oregon and eastward to Wyoming. Fire danger remains very high in many areas of the West and will likely stay high.
“No matter how you look at it, water shortages can be expected through October 2002 in most areas that are now experiencing drought,” said LeComte.
The drought has prompted Virginia Governor Mark Warner to ask the state’s meteorologists at the state’s radio and television stations to spread the word on the seriousness of the commonwealth’s drought and the need for audiences to conserve water.
At a briefing for the weather forecasters at Richmond’s State Library, said the drought situation is so serious that he is adding “another initiative” to the proposed sales tax increases and school partnerships he has been advocating and that is “praying for rain.”
The governor stressed the dire nature of the three-year-old drought’s effects on the state’s agriculture, forestry, and recreation, as well as water supplies.
“The implications are grave in terms of what is going to happen if we don’t get sustained rainfall in the next several weeks,” he said. The state’s ability to remedy the problem is limited,” he explained. “What can we do, beyond praying for rain and doing a few rain dances?” he asked.
One answer, he suggested, is for meteorologists to “stress to your audience how important it is for all of us to take water-conservation efforts. With these individual actions, the cumulative effect can really help us out,” he said.
For more on drought, see the NOAA U.S. Drought Assessment online at http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/drought_assessment.html, and NOAA’s Drought Information Center at http://www.drought.noaa.gov/.
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Researchers have found that the variety of vegetation and crops in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states has helped maintain a cooler, wetter climate, according to a NASA-funded study using a computer climate model.
Hydrometeorologists Jim Shuttleworth at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and L. Lu at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, found that when they introduced satellite measurements of the real patterns of vegetation in Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states into a computer model, the results generated extra convection in the atmosphere to give a cooler, wetter climate.
The study appeared in the June issue of the AMS Journal of Hydrometeorology.
Mixed vegetation impacts the atmosphere, weather, and climate through the proportion of sunlight that gets reflected from the land and heads out to space, the varying heights of trees and other plants exposed to the wind, and the effectiveness of different plant types when it comes to evaporating water.
For example, irrigated, lush croplands with plenty of water in the soil, warm the air less because they use more of the sun’s energy for evaporation , as compared to hot, dry bare soil. Along with differing temperatures, the varied heights of plants and trees in a region change the aerodynamics of the atmosphere, creating more circulation and rising air. When the rising air reaches the dew point in the cooler, upper atmosphere, it condenses into water droplets and forms clouds, the researchers explained.
For more information on this subject go online to http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory20020618mixed_veg.html.
Also, see the abstract for Lu and Shuttleworth (2002) in the Journal of Hydrometeorology.
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has launched a new weather buoy, which will give meteorologists at the National Weather Service’s Jacksonville, Florida, office more information to develop better marine weather forecasts. It also will provide oceanographers and biologists improved data on water movements below the surface, agency officials said.
The new buoy, funded through NOAA’s Coastal Storms Initiative, was deployed near the edge of the Gulf Stream 42 miles east of St. Augustine. The buoy, identified as 41012, joins two similar models off Florida’s Atlantic coast, officials said.
“The buoy fills a data gap of marine observations which help meteorologists understand current conditions over the water and issue more detailed forecasts,” said Dr. Paul Mooresboro, director of the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC), Stennis Space Center, Mississippi. “The new buoy is also what the marine community needs to ensure they have the latest observations to make safe decisions in the water.”
Data buoys collect real-time observations of wind speed, wave heights, and air and sea surface temperatures. The recently placed Buoy 41012, however, also reports the water’s salt content, a first for NDBC buoys, according to officials. Additionally, the buoy will give a vertical profile of ocean current measurements using an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler, which operates much like a Doppler weather radar. The profiler send sound waves in different directions toward the ocean floor and help detect shifts in ocean currents.
The new buoy’s real-time weather observations will be posted under the “Recent Data” section of the NDBC Web site, http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov. The latest observations also are available through the “Dial-a-Buoy system,” (228) 688-1948.
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NASA researchers, for the first time, have used a rainfall-measuring satellite to confirm that urban heat islands create more summer rain over and downwind of major cities, including Atlanta, Dallas, San Antonio, and Nashville.
Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd and colleagues at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, found that urban areas with high concentration of buildings, roads, and other artificial surfaces retain heat and lead to warmer surrounding temperature and create urban heat islands. The increased heat may promote rising air and alter the weather around cities. “Cities tend to be 1° to 10°F (0.56 to 5.6°C) warmer than surrounding suburbs and rural areas, and the added heat can destabilize and change the way air circulates around cities,” Shepherd said. Rising warm air may help produce clouds that result in more rainfall around urban areas.
Using the world’s first space-based rain radar aboard NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite, Shepherd and his colleagues found that mean monthly rainfall rates within 30–60 km (18–36 miles) downwind of the cities were, on average, about 28% greater than the upwind region. In some cities, the downwind area exhibited increases as high as 51%, the scientists reported in the July issue of the AMS Journal of Applied Meteorology.
For more complete information and images go to: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020613urbanrain.html.
Also, see the abstract for Shepherd et al. (2002) in the Journal of Applied Meteorology.
*Parts of this article were excerpted from the NASA News press release available online at http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/news-release/releases/2002/02-96.htm.
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As part of the Earth System Science Pathfinder small-satellite program, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will lead a mission to gain insight into how oceans affect and respond to climate change.
The mission, named Aquarius, will explore the saltiness of the seas in order to understand how the massive natural exchanges of water between the ocean, atmosphere, and sea ice influence the ocean circulation, climate, and weather.
“Aquarius will provide the first-ever global maps of salt concentration on the ocean surface, a key area of scientific uncertainty in the oceans’ capacity to store and transport heat, which in turn affects earth’s climate and the water cycle,” said Dr. Ghassem Asrar, Associate Administrator for Earth Science at NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
The Aquarius mission will be led by principal investigator Dr. Chester J. Koblinsky of Goddard. Goddard will build and calibrate the highly accurate radiometers that are crucial for the detection of ocean salinity and will manage the mission after launch and provide the science data center. The project is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
NASA will partner with the Argentine space program on the Aquarius mission, building on a successful long-standing relationship between NASA and Argentina. In all, over 17 universities and corporate and international partners will be involved in the Aquarius mission.
Aquarius is named after the Water Bearer constellation, because of its objective to explore the role of the water cycle in ocean circulation and climate. Aquarius will launch in 2007 and will orbit the earth for at least three years, repeating its global pattern every eight days. Within two months, Aquarius will collect as many sea surface salinity measurements as the entire 125-year historical record from ships and buoys, and provide the first measurements over the 25% of the ocean where no previous observations have been made.
According to Koblinsky, patterns of ocean surface salt concentration result from many factors: fresh water exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere (evaporation or precipitation), input from rivers and ground water, melting and freezing of polar ice, ocean currents, and mixing.
“Global salinity measurements will allow us to closely monitor these processes for the first time,” he says. “Global observations of sea surface salinity will also advance our understanding of ocean circulation and, perhaps, allow us to minimize the impacts of large-scale natural events in the future.”
Because fresh water is light and floats on the surface, while salty water is heavy and sinks, Koblinsky says changes in salt concentration at the ocean surface affect the weight of surface waters. At high latitudes, melting sea ice, increased precipitation, and/or river inputs will make surface waters less salty.
“This density change could diminish the overturning ocean circulation, which brings warm water poleward on the surface to replace the sinking water,” he says. “This would restrict the ocean–atmosphere heat pump that normally warms the atmosphere, leading to possible dramatic changes in climate.”
In the Tropics, increased precipitation can lead to fresh surface layers on the ocean, which heat up, and modify the energy exchange with the atmosphere, affecting El Niño and monsoon processes.
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NASA has selected the University of Colorado at Boulder to build two of the four instruments that will probe the shiny, silvery-blue polar mesospheric clouds that form 50 miles above earth’s polar regions each summer.
The $92 million NASA mission, known as Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere, or AIM, is part of the agency’s Small Explorer (SMEX) program, designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space for physics and aeronomy missions with small- to midsized spacecraft.
The university’s Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), which will control the AIM spacecraft from the Boulder campus, is expected to receive about $15 million over the six-year duration of the mission for instrument design and construction, data analysis, and satellite control, according to Gary Thomas of the laboratory.
LASP was selected to design and build the Cloud Imaging and Particle Size instrument, or CIPS, which will image the polar mesospheric clouds and the sizes of particles within them, Thomas said. In addition, LASP will design and build a Cosmic Dust Experiment to detect cosmic dust particles entering the atmosphere, explained Senior Research Scientist David Rusch, also of LASP.
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory will build an imaging ultraviolet interferometer, known as SHIMMER, for the AIM mission. Utah State University will build an instrument called SOFIE, an infrared solar occultation radiometer. Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. of Boulder will build the spacecraft.
Slated for launch in 2006, the AIM mission is being led by Principal Investigator James Russell III of Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia. The co-principal investigator is Scott Bailey, a former LASP researcher who received his doctorate from CU-Boulder and now is a faculty member at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. LASP’s Michael McGrath is AIM’s project manager.
Thomas, one of the world’s experts on the bizarre polar mesospheric clouds—also known as noctilucent clouds, predicted in 1944 that the noctilucent clouds would continue to brighten and would be visible over the continental United States by the 21st century. The clouds, which appear each year in the far northern and southern latitudes, were spotted over Colorado for the first time on 22 June 1999.
The AIM satellite will be launched into a polar orbit about 300 miles above the earth, Thomas said.
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NASA and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) have agreed to provide 90-m (295 foot) resolution digital-elevation mission data from sites outside the United States to qualified researchers, according to agency officials.
NASA decided to extend the release of detailed topographical maps collected during the 2000 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) beyond U.S. borders to the rest of the world because it allows researchers to see their country in a new way. Selected data also will be made available to the public officials said.
The two agencies also agreed to make public the mission’s research-quality 30-m (98 foot) resolution topographical data for the entire continental United States.
NIMA Director James Clapper and NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe signed the agreement in Washington, D.C., on 10 July.
“Americans take for granted the quality of U.S. topographical maps, but for millions of people around the world, particularly those in the frequently cloud-covered equatorial regions, the elevation maps created with these data will be 10 times more precise than the best available today,” said O’Keefe. “That kind of improvement will lead to significant advancements in aviation safety and mitigation of natural hazards and to smarter and more sustainable urban development, to name just a few applications.”
“SRTM is one of the best geospatial collection tools not only in NIMA’s experience, but in the history of mapping,” said Clapper. “This mission helps meet our strategic goal of providing the best geospatial information to our customers.
“For commercial and civil applications, the improved data are likely to find many uses that will save lives and enhance economic development around the world. Our team effort with NASA is a shining example of how we can adapt available technology in partnership with other federal agencies and civilian contractors to get world-class information.”
For practical benefits of space-based synthetic-aperture radar data, which can see through clouds and provide researchers with terrain data of exceptional quality, the data can be applied to uses as diverse as flood plain mapping and location of cellular telephone towers in mountainous regions.
With aviation safety, officials explained, more than 60% of fatal aviation accidents involve controlled flight into terrain due to poor visibility. By combining SRTM and Global Positioning System data, we can create a global terrain database and high-fidelity cockpit visualizations that virtually will display surrounding terrain, even in conditions of darkness or clouds, according to Ghassem Asrar, NASA’s associate administrator for earth science.
He said NASA is working with the FAA, the aviation industry, and the Department of Defense to develop these technologies, which promise to reduce the aviation accident rate significantly worldwide.
SRTM data are being processed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California, into research-quality digital-elevation models one continent at a time, officials said. When each continent is completed, the data will be sent to NIMA for additional finishing and then to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earth Resources Observation Systems Data Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for final archiving and distribution.
NASA began processing the data in response to requests of principal investigators and other qualified scientists. Under the terms of the new agreement, researchers will submit their requests for data to NASA/JPL. The requests will be reviewed by NASA and NIMA and the data will be released either for use by the approved researchers or for broad public access. Decisions on how data will be released will be made on a case-by-case basis, officials explained.
NASA began processing mission data in April 2002 and expects to have all mission data processed and delivered to NIMA by the end of this year. All international 90-m (295 foot) resolution data is expected to be available to the public no later than two years after JPL makes its final data delivery.
Still in discussion is a release policy for international 30-m (98 foot) resolution measurements, officials said. However, at the discretion of NIMA, some of that data may be made available in special situations where the information can help protect life and property, such as during volcanic eruptions and floods. NASA, however, will have access to such data for its sponsored scientific research.
The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (11–22 February 2000) made 3D measurements of more than 80% of earth’s landmass between 60°N and 56°S of the equator, areas home to nearly 95% of the world’s population.
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With a replacement propulsion system in place following a year-long launch delay, military planners now are proposing an October liftoff for Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F-16 spacecraft.
The spacecraft was within seconds of blastoff in January, however, a false indication of a stuck rocket fuel valve caused the launch attempt to be scrubbed. Later, the satellite’s guidance system started acting erratically due to a broken cable that previously had gone undetected and, had it been launched, it probably would not have reached orbit, officials believe.
To fix the guidance system, the satellite’s supply of hydrazine fuel had to be drained so workers could remove the spacecraft from the Titan 2 rocket and return it to a processing building.
With its guidance system fixed, the satellite was moved to the launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, reattached to the Titan 2 and a launch date of 1 February was planned.
However, before the hydrazine could be loaded in January, technicians uncovered a leak in one of four thrusters of the satellite’s propulsion system. A decision was made to remove the satellite from the rocket once again and return it to the processing facility. Colonel Randy Odle, system program director for DMSP, said extensive thruster and propulsion system anomaly resolution investigation and testing, and destructive physical analysis of two of the four hydrazine thrusters were carried out. They confirmed the presence of carbazic acid residue (a by-product of hydrazine and air interaction) contamination in each of the thrusters, he said.
“The contamination found in the two thrusters also implicated the remaining two thrusters and the entire propulsion system,” he explained. “As such, we decided to replace the hydrazine-contaminated F-16 propulsion system with one from another DMSP spacecraft.”
Liftoff is now scheduled for 6 October, Odle said.
An Air Force spokesman estimated the repairs cost about $4 million, pushing the DMSP F-16 mission costs to $454 million, including the satellite and rocket.
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NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey celebrated Landsat’s 30th anniversary of imaging the earth last month.
On 23 July 1972, NASA launched the first Landsat satellite, beginning the longest-running record of earth’s continental surfaces as seen from space—a record unmatched in quality, detail, coverage and importance. This 30-year archive of imagery, a scientific partnership between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), provides invaluable historical detail that helps us understand and protect our home planet.
In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the first Landsat launch, NASA and the USGS assembled an exhibit called “Landsat: Earth as Art.” These images, created by the USGS using Landsat 7 data, introduce the general public to the Landsat program, administered jointly by USGS and NASA. The USGS operates Landsat 5 and 7, and manages the national archive of data collected by all the Landsat satellites, distributing these data to researchers around the world.
The “Landsat: Earth as Art” exhibit highlights 41 images selected on the basis of aesthetic appeal. The exhibit opened 23 July at the Library of Congress in Washington. A selection of “Landsat: Earth as Art” images were on display in the Russell Senate Office Building Rotunda in Washington, 22–26 July. They will be displayed at the Arizona Science Center in Phoenix, Arizona, this fall. A similar exhibit is currently on display in Rapid City, South Dakota, at the Children’s Science Center.
The first Landsat—originally called ERTS, for Earth Resources Technology Satellite—was developed and launched by NASA in 1972. Landsat 5 is still transmitting images, and the Landsat 7 mission has built upon the historic strengths of the Landsat program. The low cost of Landsat 7 data, as well as the elimination of data copyright, has fostered an environment in which users are free to experiment with novel applications, and use large quantities of data for existing applications.
Data from Landsat satellites serve many purposes. Landsat satellites monitor important natural processes and human land use such as vegetation growth, deforestation, agriculture, coastal and river erosion, snow accumulation and fresh-water reservoir replenishment, and urbanization. The USGS uses Landsat data to spot the amount and condition of dry biomass on the ground, which are potential sources for feeding wildfires that can threaten humans, animals, and natural resources. Farmers and land managers use Landsat data to help increase crop yields and cut costs while reducing environmental pollution.
Continuity of data with previous Landsat missions is a fundamental goal of the Landsat program. Landsat Program Management (NASA and USGS) is required by public law to continue gathering and preserving this important scientific data. The planned follow-on to the Landsat program, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), is a cooperative effort between government and private industry to provide continuity of land surface measurements, with no data gaps, beyond Landsat 7.
For more on the Landsat mission, go online to http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/, and to http://landsat7.usgs.gov.
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NASA’s QuikSCAT satellite has confirmed a 30-year old largely unproven theory that there are two areas near the equator where the winds converge year after year and drive ocean circulation south of the equator. By analyzing winds, QuikSCAT has found a year-round southern and northern Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). This find is important to climate modelers and weather forecasters because it provides more detail on how the oceans and atmosphere interact near the equator.
The ITCZ is the region that circles the earth near the equator, where the trade winds of both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres come together. North of the equator, strong sun and warm water of the equator heats the air in the ITCZ, drawing air in from north and south and causing the air to rise. As the air rises it cools, releasing the accumulated moisture in an almost perpetual series of thunderstorms. Satellite data, however, has confirmed that there is an ITCZ north of the equator and a parallel ITCZ south of the equator.
Variation in the location of the ITCZ is important to people around the world because it affects the north–south atmospheric circulation, which redistributes energy. It drastically affects rainfall in many equatorial nations, resulting in the wet and dry seasons of the Tropics, rather than the cold and warm seasons of higher latitudes. Longer-term changes in the ITCZ can result in severe droughts or flooding in nearby areas.
“The double ITCZ is usually only identified in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans on a limited and seasonal basis,” said Timothy Liu, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, and lead researcher on the project. In the eastern Pacific Ocean, the southern ITCZ is usually seen in springtime. In the western Atlantic Ocean, the southern ITCZ was recently clearly identified only in the summertime.
However, QuikSCAT’s wind data has seen the southern ITCZ in all seasons across the entire Atlantic Ocean and the eastern Pacific. “QuikSCAT’s wind data confirms there is a double ITCZ, and that they exist all year long,” Liu said.
This is a major find for the science community, as the existence, location, and seasonality of the double ITCZ had remained controversial since 1969.
For most of the time, the southern ITCZ is weaker than the northern one, which is why it has been so hard to detect before. The southern ITCZ is weaker because it blows over cooler water that comes up from the lower depths of the ocean, called upwelling. Over cooler water, the air does not rise as easily as warm air, and the winds from higher altitudes are mixed less than they would be with warmer water and air. Cooler water therefore causes weaker surface winds. Therefore, the surface winds from the south slow down as they approach the equator, and this creates the southern ITCZ because the air gets squeezed together.
What is unique about the southern ITCZ is that there is not a north and south wind as with the northern ITCZ. The southern ITCZ only consists of a southern wind coming into the equator.
The SeaWinds instrument on QuikSCAT is a specialized microwave radar that measures both the speed and direction of winds near the ocean surface. Launched 19 June 1999, from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, the spacecraft operates in a sun-synchronous, near-polar orbit, circling the earth every 100 minutes, taking approximately 400,000 measurements over 90% of the earth’s surface each day.
These findings will be published in a paper entitled, “Double Intertropical Convergence Zones—A New Look Using a Scatterometer,” in an upcoming issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
For more information and images, go online to http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020711itczworks.html.
For more information on QuikSCAT, see http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/quikscat/quikindex.html.
Twice-daily maps of QuikSCAT winds over global oceans can be viewed and downloaded in near-real-time online at http://airsea-www.jpl.nasa.gov/seaflux/html/getdata.html.
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David Q. Wark, 84, a pioneering research meteorologist who developed techniques to accurately measure the temperature and humidity of the earth’s atmosphere using satellite technology, died 30 July in Laurel, Maryland. In the 1960s, while working for the U.S. Environmental Science Services Administration, Wark led basic theoretical and experimental research that provided the foundation for gathering and interpreting global meteorological data.
His work led to his recognition as one of the founding fathers of NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, which operates the country’s civil and military weather satellites.
Wark had a 55-year civil service career with NOAA and its predecessor agencies. He retired in 1999 but continued to work part time on technical remote sensing of atmospheric conditions.
He was born in Spokane, Washington, and raised there and in California. He graduated from Pasadena Junior College and the University of California at Berkeley, where he also received a doctorate in astronomy.
He began his career in 1942 as an astronomer with the U.S. Naval Observatory. He was a meteorologist for Pan America Airways and the California Institute of Technology before serving with the Naval Reserve during World War II.
He resumed his career as a meteorologist after the war, joining the U.S. Weather Bureau in 1946. He worked for the agency in France, Germany and Egypt. He also spent time with the U.S. Weather Bureau in San Francisco.
He was a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and a member of the American Astronomical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the American Geophysical Union. His honors include the Commerce Department Gold Medal and the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.
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Timothy L. Crawford of Idaho Falls, Idaho, was killed 2 August when his plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off of the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Crawford, who was the Director of NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory’s Field Research Division in Idaho Falls, was flying the light aircraft Long-EZ conducting atmospheric research. He was the only person in the plane. The accident is under investigation by federal authorities.
“We are deeply saddened by Tim’s death,” said David L. Evans, NOAA assistant administrator for oceanic and atmospheric research. “The personal loss is coupled with the loss of his special capabilities in studying the atmosphere. The particular project he was engaged in was uniquely NOAA—trying to better understand the interaction between the air and the ocean.”
Crawford was on a flight as part of the Coupled Boundary Layers Air–Sea Transfer Light Wind Research program (CBLAST-Low), which was measuring low-level turbulence off of the shores of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket.
This was the second year for the experiment—last year’s was conducted from late July to early August off the south shore of Martha’s Vineyard. Twenty missions were flown during the 2001 program. This year, flights were to be flown for about three weeks in August. The project was put on hold following the accident.
Data collected were to be used to better understand the air–sea interaction processes—how energy is exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean.
Crawford joined NOAA/ARL as a physical scientist in 1986; prior to that he was a research analyst and an environmental engineer for the Tennessee Valley Authority. Crawford held a Ph.D. M.E. in geophysical fluid dynamics, from the University of Waterloo (1977); an M.S. C.E. in air resources, from the University of Illinois (1972); and a B.S. M.E. in thermal sciences, from the University of Illinois (1971).
He was the recipient of numerous recognitions during his federal career, including the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal and the NOAA Administrator’s Award, both for design and application of airborne instrument systems.
Crawford constructed five experimental aircraft and held FAA aircraft builder and commercial instrument pilot licenses. He was a member of the AMS, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the American Geophysical Union, and the Experimental Aircraft Association.
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