Editor: Jim Elliott
Contributors: Alan Weinstein and Ginny Owen
Copy Editor: Anne Siefken
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
from Reuters
A high-level global panel, alarmed by increasing pollution of the oceans and the threat to marine life, called for an independent body along the lines of Amnesty International to act as world marine watchdog. The call came in as the official report of the Independent World Commission on the Oceans, which is to be presented to the United Nations General Assembly in November.
"The explosive increase in human activity, growing global interdependence, and rapid technological progress are exerting a profound influence on the ability of ocean ecosystems to generate value for humankind," the report warned. It said once productive fishing grounds had become seriously depleted, marine pollution was getting worse, the rapid growth in world population was increasing pressure on the sea, and there were increasing problems of piracy and other crime.
Former Portuguese Prime Minister Mario Soares, who chaired the commission, told a news conference in London that the proposed World Ocean Affairs laboratory would act as the equivalent in global maritime affairs to Amnesty International in human rights issues. "It would have the same role in verifying infringements and trying to control behavior," he said. The report said the observatory would produce periodic "state of the oceans" reports, plus ad hoc studies of urgent issues.
It suggested its work be supplemented by the convening every three or four years of an Independent World Ocean Forum and by the appointment of an Ocean Guardian, or global ombudsman. Iit called for bodies to be set up in regions of the world to coordinate action by different countries for protection of the marine environment and fish stocks.
The report also said there is a need for a fundamental revision of international law on naval warfare, which has remained essentially unaltered for almost a century. "This appears to be an opportune time for new lawmaking initiatives, the importance of which is underscored by the growth of overlapping and contradictory claims to the oceans and their resources, with their potential for incidents that pose a threat to peace," it said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed the report, noting that the General Assembly has declared 1998 "Save our Seas" year "For far too long, we have regarded the oceans' resources as inexhaustible," he said in a video message to the conference. "We have viewed the oceans as a bottomless receptacle for unlimited waste."
In his preface to the report, Soares agreed. "History's judgment of the present generation may be extremely harsh where the preservation of the oceans is concerned," he wrote. "It is vital, therefore, that we reverse the dominant tendencies."
Other members of the Commission included former Dutch Prime Minister, Ruud Lubbers, Japan's Shadow Minister for Economy and Finance, Yoshio Suzuki, Brazilian Science and Technology Minister, Jose Israel Vargas, and U.S. Congressman Patrick Kennedy.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
Information about China's severe summer flooding has been placed online, according to the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, has included on the World Wide Web a brief narrative, satellite images of river flooding, and daily and monthly climatic data. The daily and monthly data were produced from a sophisticated system of programs that decode and provide quality control for the synoptic data. Data included is China's official report of over 3000 deaths and more than $20 billion (U.S. dollars) in damages.
The Web page is accessible via: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/reports/weather-events.html. Additional climatic extremes and events information is accessible via: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/climate/severeweather/severeweather.html.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
NASA and NOAA satellites show that the Antarctic ozone hole covers the largest expanse of territory since the depletion developed in the early 1980s. The measurements were obtained this year between mid-August and early October using the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instrument aboard NASA's Earth Probe (TOMS-EP) satellite and the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Instrument (SBUV) aboard the NOAA-14 satellite.
"This is the largest Antarctic ozone hole we've ever seen, and it's nearly the deepest," said Dr. Richard McPeters, principal investigator for Earth Probe TOMS. This year's hole, currently about 27 million square kilometers (10 million miles), is larger than the area of North America. Last year at this time, the hole was as much as 19 million square kilometers, according to NOAA officials. Values of the amount of ozone over a large portion of Antarctica currently are about 100 Dobson units, compared with an average global value of about 330 Dobson units, they explained. A Dobson Unit is a quantity used to define the amount of ozone in a column directly over the surface of the earth at a given location.
The NOAA scientists also report that average atmospheric temperatures at an altitude of 20 kilometers (12 miles) above the region are among the lowest observed in the past 20 years. These low temperatures, they reported, lead to the creation of polar atmospheric cloud particles which are necessary for ozone destruction by chemicals to take place. The decrease in ozone could result in more acute solar or ultraviolet radiation exposure in southern Chile and Argentina if the ozone hole were to pass over that region. One of the primary concerns with an ozone hole of this size is that as the hole breaks up, the ozone-depleted air will diffuse and reduce the overall ozone levels in the midlatitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. The ozone losses are caused by chlorine and bromine compounds released by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and halons.
"Understanding depletion of the atmosphere's ozone is a serous issue for the international scientific community," said Walter Planet, a physicist with NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS). The increased amounts of ultraviolet radiation that reach the earth's surface have the potential of increasing the incidence of skin cancer and cataracts in humans, harming some crops and interfering with marine life, he said.
NOAA also made measurements of the vertical ozone profile with balloons at the South Pole, officials noted. Those measurements indicate that in September the ozone decrease in the altitude region where the ozone hole forms (7–13 miles) occurred at a rapid rate similar to recent years and reached near record low values in early October, according to Dave Hoffman, director of NOAA's Climate Modeling and Diagnostic Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.
"The 7– 13-mile region of the atmosphere contains polar stratospheric clouds in winter, which are necessary for the unusual chlorine-related ozone destruction which occurs following sunrise in the spring. More clouds form when the stratosphere is colder, and 1998 was one of the colder years on record," Hoffman said. "The most likely reasons for the stratosphere becoming colder on the average are related to climate change and the loss of ozone which acts as a heater as it absorbs harmful solar ultraviolet radiation while protecting the biosphere."
In 1993, according to Hoffman, ozone in the 7- to 13-mile altitude range nearly disappeared, and the amount of ozone overhead at the South Pole dropped to 86 Dobson Units on 12 October. This year by 1 October, total ozone had dropped to about 97 Dobson Units, the lowest recorded at the South Pole with the exception of 1993. During the last several years, ozone depletion has extended to higher altitudes as chlorine has increased slightly and temperatures have fallen. As a result of international agreements known as the Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances and its amendments, chlorine levels from CFCs already have peaked in the lower atmosphere and should peak in the Antarctic stratosphere within a few years.
"An ozone hole of substantial depth and size is likely to continue to form for the next few years or until the stratospheric chlorine amount drops to its pre-ozone hole values," explained Paul Newman, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "The decrease in chlorine in our atmosphere is analogous to using a small air cleaner to recycle all of the air in a large indoor sports stadium—it will take a very, very long time."
NOAA has placed an image of this year's record-breaking ozone hole over Antarctica on the World Wide Web. The address is: http://nic.fb4.noaa.gov/. Click onto stratosphere. Then click onto daily total ozone.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
August 1998 was the warmest August on record globally, the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced. The average global temperature (land and sea) for the month was 61.4°F , which is 1.3° above the long-term mean of 60.1° for August. August 1998 broke the previous record of 61.1° set in 1997.
For the year to date, from January through August, the average global temperature of 58.5° F was also 1.3° above the long-term mean of 57.2°. The long-term mean is based on data from 1880 to 1997.
During August, surface warmth was evident over much of the globe, with cool areas in Europe, Alaska, Siberia, Bangladesh, the South Atlantic, and the Central Pacific. In the Central Pacific, sea surface temperatures were below normal, commonly referred to as La Niña, although ocean temperatures off the northwest South American Coast remained warm.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
Nationally, January–August has been the fifth wettest and fourth warmest on record. For the year to date, the nation has had 22.77 inches of precipitation. The normal for the period is 20.05 inches. The wettest January–August was in 1979, with 23.34 inches of precipitation.
The year 1934 was the warmest January–August with a record 56.9°. In 1998, the temperature for the period was 56.2°. The normal for January–August is 54.3°.
Regionally, in the West it was the wettest January–August on record. The West had 20.88 inches of precipitation, compared with a normal of 10.33 inches. Other regions in the upper 10% of the wettest years on record were the Northeast, East, North Central, Central, and the Northwest.
In the Northeast, it was the warmest January–August on record, with an average temperature of 50.9°. The normal for the region is 47.3°. Other regions in the upper 10% of all years on record were the East North Central, Central, South, and Northwest.
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center is the world's largest active archive of weather data. The preliminary temperature and precipitation rankings are available from the center by calling: 828-271-4800 or on the World Wide Web at: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/documentlibrary/cvb.html.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
National Weather Service Director Jack Kelly outlined his vision for NWS' future for the Washington, D.C. chapter of the AMS at its late summer meeting on 17 September. He emphasized a goal of "no surprises" for short term forecasts and told 80 listeners from government and the private sector that reducing false alarms will be a number one priority. He predicted that contributions toward these objectives will become elements written into the annual performance rating of individual employees.
Kelly said a favorable budget outlook this year will enable NWS to meet modernization goals. With the expected completion of the AWIPS network by the end of 1999 and with new skills and technologies in place, he sees the focus of the Weather Service shifting to creation of better products.
As one harbinger of the future, Kelly alerted listeners to an October NWS Headquarters seminar on the societal impacts of weather by Roger Pielke, Jr., of NCAR's Environmental and Societal Impacts Group. "Weather information can be expected to take on a changing and more prominent role in the needs of decision makers," according to Pielke, "As society changes, so too must its weather services."
Pielke's seminar is the first in a number of such "vision" presentations planned for coming months, Kelly said.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
The NWS announced recently that its Aviation Weather Center (AWC) in Kansas City will soon be operating a new computer system that allows the center access to more international meteorological products to improve global aviation information for U.S. and foreign air carriers.
The new system, known as the Alden WAFS/STAR4 system, is designed to receive, display, and manipulate aviation weather information distributed by the World Area Forecast System (WAFS). The NWS is purchasing the system under an existing contract, officials explained. The Aviation Weather Center will use the data from the new system for producing flight planning documentation provided to airlines and other major air carriers.
WAFS is sponsored by the International Civil Aviation Organization and the World Meteorological Organization, both part of the United Nations. Using satellite communications technology, WAFS is designed to provide broadcasts of weather data needed by aircraft operators around the world. The WAFS provides aviation weather information from three geostationary satellites, providing worldwide coverage that is economically available to all countries, officials said.
"Access to weather information from around the globe will improve the accuracy of weather forecasts that the Aviation Weather Center provides to domestic and international airlines traveling to foreign destinations and in and out of the United States," said James Henderson, deputy director of the AWC. "The Alden system allows us to access additional critical data that meteorologists need to issue better forecasts and improve flight safety and efficiency."
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
The National Weather Service has awarded a contract to lease a new supercomputer that will significantly improve its weather, flood and climate forecasts for the country from International Business Machines (IBM), the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced.
The four-year, $35.6 million contract, awarded to IBM of Somers, New York, was signed today and is contingent on the availability of funding.
The new high-performance Class VIII computing system will allow the National Weather Service's National Centers for Environmental Prediction in Camp Springs, Maryland, to operate more sophisticated models of the atmosphere and oceans to improve weather, flood, and climate forecasts for the country. A Class VIII computer is a system representative of the eighth generation of high-performance computers, where each generation represents approximately a 5- to 10-fold increase in sustained computational power over the previous generation.
"Accurate weather forecasting is one of the great scientific achievements of the 20th century. We have reached unprecedented levels of accuracy in recent years as a result of much research, modernization, and improvements such as supercomputers, radars, satellites, and other technologies," said Department of Commerce Secretary William M. Daley. "We eagerly await the next generation of computational power because we know we can do even better in the future."
The new system will use a highly parallel computer architecture to immediately provide a significant increase in computational capacity as compared to the current system, a Cray C-90 supercomputer from Silicon Graphics, Incorporated. The new supercomputer, which will be housed at the Suitland Federal Center in Suitland, Maryland, will be installed beginning in December 1998 and will be integrated into routine operations beginning in the spring of 1999. The transition of operations to the new system will be completed in late 1999.
"The accuracy of environmental forecast models today is approaching levels undreamed of 10 years ago," said D. James Baker, under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. "As a result of this new supercomputer, the National Weather Service can run higher resolution models with improved physics to produce forecasts with better resolution and accuracy and valid at longer time scales than ever before." Baker added, "The expanded models are computationally demanding and require the robust and reliable capabilities that will be available from the IBM system. Supercomputers are the key to advances in weather forecasting."
Numerical weather models provide important guidance to weather forecasters. The models incorporate a variety of observations including temperature, wind, precipitation, pressure, and a host of other meteorological information from sources on the ground, in the air and in space. The observations are processed by powerful computers that then generate predictions for forecasters, allowing them to anticipate weather conditions from hours to weeks in advance, or, as in the case of the recent El Niño, even many months in advance.
The contract with IBM will deliver a complete system to NOAA, including a full range of hardware (storage devices, communications interfaces, and other peripherals), software, system maintenance and support, and consulting services.
The contract is the result of a streamlined, competitive procurement process initiated by the Department of Commerce and conducted on a full and open basis, allowing all domestic and foreign companies to participate.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
All three of NOAA's hurricane hunting aircraft, described by NOAA as Miss Piggy, Kermit, and Gonzo, flew around and through Hurricane Georges, marking the first time all three worked in conjunction with each other during flights through Cuban airspace.
Hurricane aircraft almost never fly over land because hurricanes spawn tornadoes. They fly through hurricanes over the open seas, according to Jim McFadden of NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center(AOC) at McDill Air Force Base, Florida. However, the National Hurricane Center requested that the aircraft fly over the Cuban land area because the eye of Georges was over Cuba, and forecasters thought determining its exact position was imperative.
NOAA is the only federal agency with hurricane tracking capabilities that is authorized by Cuba to fly in its airspace. The AOC is part of the Office of NOAA Corps Operations.
The three planes involved were two P3 Orions and a Gulfstream IV jet. The P3s, nicknamed Miss Piggy and Kermit, penetrate the eyewall repeatedly at altitudes up to 20 000 feet and as low as 1,500 feet. The Gulfstream IV, nicknamed Gonzo, is used to paint a detailed picture of the upper atmosphere surrounding hurricanes. It flies 100 to 300 miles from the eye of the hurricane at altitudes up to 45 000 feet. The G-IV data, combined with the P-3 data, have improved track and intensity forecasts by up to 25%, officials noted.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
When a hurricane's spinning mass of rain, lightning, and wind reaches shore the last thing you want to do is drive a truck directly into its path. Unless you are atmospheric scientist Joshua Wurman, that is, and you have mounted a large Doppler radar unit on the back of your truck.
For the second time this summer, Wurman and a research team from the University of Oklahoma drove two such "Doppler on Wheels" units into the face of a hurricane reaching landfall—Hurricane Georges. With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Wurman studies patterns in hurricane winds that may help in forecasting the evolution of these storms once they hit land. "Hurricanes spawn damaging winds well inland," said Wurman, "but they can also cause tornadoes and flooding. We are trying to figure out how patterns of winds and rain develop in hurricanes and determine why and where a storm will produce floods and funnel clouds."
For many years, meteorologists have used Doppler radar at fixed locations to monitor weather patterns, as seen in weather forecasts on television. Due to advances in technology, Doppler radar has evolved to the point where it can be mounted to mobile platforms like Wurman's Doppler on Wheels. The vehicle itself is an odd-looking configuration of generators, equipment and an operator cabin welded to a large flatbed truck. The most prominent feature, however, is the large conical base and wide dish of the Doppler radar. "Considering that one radar unit is pink and yellow, and the other is blue and green, we do get our fair share of funny looks as we're heading to a storm," said Wurman.
"The biggest advantage of `Doppler on Wheels' is that Wurman can collect more data with better precision," said Stephan Nelson, program manager in the NSF's division of atmospheric sciences, which funds Wurman's research. "Hurricanes rarely oblige to move in the path of two correctly spaced Doppler systems. Since we can't move the storm, it's awfully convenient that we can move the radar."
In addition to studying hurricanes, these trucks have also been used to study tornadoes. Since the project began in 1995, researchers have taken advantage of the mobility of Doppler on Wheels to map, for the first time, tornado winds. With these Doppler maps of tornadoes, they gained new insight into how tornadoes form and evolve. In August, Wurman's team took the mobile radar systems to meet Hurricane Bonnie in North Carolina. While riding through 12 hours of storm, these researchers were the first to observe hurricane wind streaks, intense bursts of wind over a short distance. The wind streaks detected in Bonnie were similar to those that Wurman initially observed during his first hurricane mission in 1996. "These are probably the hallmarks of a landing hurricane," said Wurman.
Wind streaks, he hypothesized, are probably caused by boundary layer rolls, portions of the storm where the wind is influenced by the friction between the earth's surface and storm. Peak speeds of these wind streaks can be as much as 50 miles per hour (mph) higher than average winds. "Obviously, short bursts of 120-mph winds can do a lot more damage to houses and trees than 70-mph winds can," Wurman says.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
Spectacular satellite images of Hurricane Georges, including a color montage showing the hurricane's progression from 18-28 September, are available on the World Wide Web, NOAA officials have announced.
The images are from GOES-8, NOAA-12, and NOAA-14. The site is: http://www.osei.noaa.gov/georges.html.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
The USGS Hurricane Response Team, working with other federal agencies, played a key role in providing information on storm surges during recent hurricanes.
The team, located in Miami, monitored the effects of a potentially damaging hurricane, most recently Hurricane Georges, to the southeast coast of the United States, coordinating efforts necessary to assure that USGS information, critical to a possible emergency relief effort involving human life and property, was available to local officials and the general public during the height of the storm.
In addition to providing real-time, surface-water data, continuously relayed during the storm to satellites from a network of USGS freshwater gaging stations, the USGS worked with the U.S. Corps of Engineers, FEMA, NWS, and the National Hurricane Center, offering assistance with the collection of data to document coastal storm surge, a potentially dangerous and little understood phenomenon.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
The USGS Coastal and Marine Program's Storm Response Project is improving its ability to predict coastal change during extreme storms. Using pre- and post-storm aerial video and scanning airborne laser surveys, researchers can assess the geologic impacts to beaches and dunes. Initial assessment of the aerial video surveys of the coastal change resulting from Hurricane Bonnie indicates that the damage was far less than expected.
In 1996, Hurricane Fran struck this same stretch of coast, inflicting extensive damage, USGS officials explained. In places where Fran cut new inlets and destroyed all property, Hurricane Bonnie had a much reduced effect. Both storms, prior to landfall, followed nearly identical tracks and were classified as Category 3 with sustained winds of 115 mph. Fran, however, hit the coast at low tide and over a few hours moved inland. In contrast, Bonnie stalled at the coast, remaining in roughly the same position for nearly three consecutive high tides. The research challenge with the Hurricane Bonnie assessments, officials said, will be to understand why did it not have a greater impact on the coast?
Sequences of photos showing the impacts of Hurricanes Fran and Bonnie can be viewed on the Internet at: http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/bonnie/.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
Real-time data on coastal storms, on movement of sand that buries harbor entrances and inlets, and on the impact of winds on shoreline processes will soon be available through a new nearshore observatory planned off the south coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and affiliated with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) are undertaking the project.
"As oceanography continues to evolve from an exploratory endeavor, requiring long-term, multiparameter measurements, the ability to make observations of ocean processes over periods of years is becoming increasingly important," says Larry Clark, program director in NSF's division of ocean sciences, which funded the project. "Recent technological advances have enabled the establishment of seafloor observatories that are connected to shore by a dedicated cable. The ability to continuously receive and record oceanographic data and communicate with scientific instruments on the seafloor promises to advance ocean science knowledge and predictive capabilities."
The Katama Observatory will be developed, built, and installed off Edgartown on the island's south coast. The observatory will collect information 24 hours a day for studies of coastal meteorology, air–sea interaction, sediment transport, benthic biological processes, and gas transfer. The data will be shared in real-time with local officials, students, other scientists, and the public through the Internet.
The observatory will be barely visible to the public, because much of the hardware will be offshore and all cables will be underground. It will consist of a small shore station, a 20-foot tall meteorological mast with atmospheric sensors, and two nodes for oceanic sensors located on the seafloor in approximately 35 and 50 feet of water. The shore station will be located above the highest high-tide mark at the Katama Air Park in Edgartown near the hangar facilities. The shore station will be connected to the existing local power lines and will also have a backup generator that will automatically engage during power failures, such as during hurricanes and Nor'easters. An instrumented mast will be erected close to shore to provide a continuous stream of atmospheric data, such as wind speed and direction, temperature and humidity, solar and infrared radiation, and carbon dioxide concentrations. The meteorological mast will look much like a heavy-duty flag pole and is expected to be placed near the Katama Lifeguard House. It will be the first extensively instrumented nearshore meteorological station in the region.
The shore station, meteorological mast, and oceanic nodes will be connected together with underground cable that will be placed beneath the airfield runway, under Herring Creek, Atlantic Drive, the dunes, and South Beach. The cable will be installed through a technique called directional drilling and will run underground from the shore station, under the beach and out to sea, such that no part of the cable is visible.
Data from all sensors will be transmitted via the cable from the nodes to a computer in the shore station, where it will be logged continuously and made available to scientists and the public through Internet connections.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
NOAA's National Hurricane Center near Miami, Florida, maintains a constant watch of oceanic storm-breeding areas for tropical disturbances that may herald the formation of a hurricane. If a disturbance intensifies into a tropical storm, with rotary circulation and wind speeds above 39 miles an hour, the center will give the storm a name from of list of predetermined names.
A separate list of names (from a list of six) is used each year. After all the sets have been used, they will be used again. The 1998 names, for example, will be used again to name storms in the year 2004.
The letters Q, U, X, Y, and Z are not included because of the scarcity of names beginning with those letters. In addition, after major land-falling storms having major economic impact, the names are retired.
The lists for 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001 are:
| 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 |
| Alex | Arlene | Alberto | Allison |
| Bonnie | Bret | Beryl | Barry |
| Charley | Cindy | Chris | Chantal |
| Danielle | Dennis | Debby | Dean |
| Earl | Emily | Ernesto | Erin |
| Frances | Floyd | Florence | Felix |
| Georges | Gert | Gordon | Gabrielle |
| Hermine | Harvey | Helene | Humberto |
| Ivan | Irene | Isaac | Iris |
| Jeanne | Jose | Joyce | Jerry |
| Karl | Katrina | Keith | Karen |
| Lisa | Lenny | Leslie | Lorenzo |
| Mitch | Maria | Michael | Michelle |
| Nicole | Nate | Nadine | Noel |
| Otto | Ophelia | Oscar | Olga |
| Paula | Philippe | Patty | Pablo |
| Richard | Rita | Rafael | Rebekah |
| Shary | Stan | Sandy | Sebastien |
| Tomas | Tammy | Tony | Tanya |
| Virginie | Vince | Valerie | Van |
| Walter | Wilma | William | Wendy |
The name lists have an international flavor because hurricanes affect other nations and are tracked by the public and weather services of other countries other than the United States. Names for these lists are selected from library sources and agreed upon by nations involved during international meetings of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
NASA marked its 40th anniversary officially on 1 October, but Administrator Dan Goldin in a speech to employees promised that the celebration would continue to the end of the year and that the agency will look forward to many other accomplishments in the future.
Noting that the agency was created in 1958 with a preamble to an act directing the agency "to provide research into the problems of flight within and outside the earth's atmosphere and for other purposes," Goldin said the agency will nod to the past on 29 October when Senator John Glenn joins the crew of STS-95 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery. Before that launch, NASA will rocket the Deep Space I mission into orbit on 25 October to demonstrate the first ion propulsion engine to operate in deep space.
NASA plans to return to Mars with the launches of the Mars Polar Orbiter in December 1998 and the Mars Lander in January 1999. The agency will turn its attention toward our own planet with the launch on 24 November of QuikScat, that will study ocean winds and add to our knowledge of El Niño, and the EOS-AM-1 satellite is scheduled for the summer of 1999, Goldin said. "Since its inception," he explained, "NASA has accomplished many great scientific and technological feats...Perhaps more importantly, NASA's exploration of space has taught humankind to view the earth and the universe in a new way."
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
For the first time in history, NASA is releasing dramatic images documenting the earth's changing biology, both on land and in the oceans, as observed from space for one continuous year.
The changing seasons of life, the "pulse of the planet," are being monitored by the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS), which was launched on 1 August 1997, and has continuously produced data since 18 September 1997. The SeaWiFS mission is the first NASA Earth Science data purchase in which industry led the development of the full mission.
"Although originally designed to observe the oceans, SeaWiFS provides a unique capability to study the land and atmospheric processes as well," said Dr. Gene Feldman, oceanographer, who heads SeaWiFS' data processing team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. "As a result, we can monitor changes in the global biosphere with a single sensor over land and ocean."
Among the highlights of SeaWiFS' first continuous year of observation were new insights into the impact of the El Niño climate anomaly on ocean life. Further, SeaWiFS was able to monitor a variety of natural disasters, including fires in Florida, Mexico, Canada, Indonesia, and Russia; floods in China; dust storms in the Sahara and Gobi Deserts; and the progress of hurricanes, such as Bonnie and Danielle.
SeaWiFS enabled scientists to witness the ocean transition from El Niño to La Niña conditions in the Equatorial Pacific, specifically around the Galapagos Island. The instrument also allowed researchers to observe the striking speed with which the ocean returned to its pre-El Niño state. While El Niño essentially shut down the highly productive Equatorial Pacific ecosystem, the subsequent La Niña resulted in unprecedented phytoplankton blooms, which stretched across the entire basin from the South American coast to the Western Pacific warm pool.
Phytoplankton are microscopic marine plants that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for internal use. Scientists are eager to understand this exchange of carbon dioxide and the role it plays in the global climate.
"One of the most fascinating events witnessed in the global ocean was the Spring bloom in the North Atlantic," said Dr. Charles McClain, SeaWiFS project scientist. "While many regions of the ocean experience a spring bloom, the event in the North Atlantic was the most dramatic."
During the winter, storms and surface cooling mix the surface waters of the Atlantic, replenishing the nutrient supply from the deep, cold, nutrient-rich waters. Once sunlight is sufficient to support plant growth, phytoplankton populations explode and persist for nearly three months until nutrients are depleted. This bloom migrates northward following the sun throughout the spring and summer.
Unexpected phenomena observed by SeaWiFS, according to McClain, were the massive blooms of coccolithophores, a unique type of phytoplankton in the Bering Sea. These blooms may have a significant impact on fish populations in this area, one of the most productive fishery regions in the global ocean.
During the summer–fall of 1997 and spring of 1998, expansive blooms of coccolithophores occurred along the Alaskan shelf. These were the first observations of blooms of this magnitude in the Bering Sea. Coccolithophores shed vast numbers of white carbonate platelets which cloud the water. "The net result was fish that normally spawn in the adjacent rivers could not traverse the bloom in order to enter the rivers to spawn. In addition, local bird and marine mammal populations had high mortality rates due to starvation because the fish migrated to other waters," said McClain.
NASA is leading an international collaboration using SeaWiFS data. More than 800 scientists representing 35 countries already have registered to use the data. There are over 50 ground stations throughout the world that receive data from the spacecraft. In addition, the unique government–industry partnership with ORBIMAGE, Dulles Virginia, represents a new way of doing business for NASA.
Remarkable images from this mission are available on the World Wide Web at URL: http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEAWIFS.html.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
In yet another major step to save the American taxpayer money, NASA has awarded a $3.44 billion contract to Lockheed Martin Space Operations Co., Houston, Texas, to manage the agency's space operations activities.
The Consolidated Space Operations contractor will manage all of NASA's data collection, telemetry and communication operations supporting its Earth-orbiting satellites, planetary exploration, and human space flight activities. The contract shifts management responsibility from five NASA centers to a single entity, which is an unprecedented step for an operation of this magnitude. This effort is being closely observed by other government agencies that also are reviewing consolidating their operations.
"Since becoming NASA administrator I have committed myself to reviewing the way NASA does business and challenging the NASA team to look at ways to streamline operations and make them more efficient. This contract is projected to save the American taxpayers approximately $1.4 billion over 10 years," said Daniel S. Goldin.
The basic contract amounts to $1.90 billion for a duration of five years, including a three-month phase-in period. The contract runs from October 1998 to December 2003. The award also contains options totaling $1.54 billion, which includes a five-year extension of the basic effort (January 2004–December 2008); additional options for work at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, and enhanced mission and data service support to the International Space Station program.
"Lockheed Martin was selected based on the overall best value of the company's proposal that will significantly improve the efficiency of NASA's traditional mission and data services infrastructure," said Joseph Rothenberg, associate administrator for Space Flight, Washington, D.C.
Under the contract guidelines, NASA will adopt a plan that calls for implementing private sector commercial practices, products, services and technology. NASA expects the contractor to reduce overlap, eliminate duplication, and increase efficiency by streamlining service delivery processes. NASA also expects Lockheed Martin to "commercialize" or "privatize" government systems where the offset will lower the life-cycle cost of space flight missions. The range of the contract's services will include data acquisition from a spacecraft, data transmission to the end user, data processing and storage, ground and space communications, and mission control center operations.
The Lockheed Martin Space Operations Co. team includes Allied Technical Services Corp., with Computer Sciences Co., Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Inc., GTE Government Systems, GHG Corp., Cimarron, and more than 40 other subcontractors.
The work will be performed at five NASA locations including the Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas; Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland; Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama; Kennedy Space Center, Florida; and the contractor-operated Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
The NASA Management Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California, has awarded a new five-year contract to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena to continue managing and operating JPL for NASA as a federally funded research and development center through the year 2003.
"NASA and Caltech have a long and successful history of studying the earth and exploring space together through the work of JPL, and this new contract enables that productive relationship to continue," said Dr. Wesley T. Huntress Jr., NASA associate administrator for space science.
The estimated annual value of the cost-plus-award-fee contract is $1.25 billion, for an estimated total contract value of $6.25 billion. The contract supports a variety of ongoing and planned activities, including the Mars Surveyor robotic exploration program; the Cassini mission to Saturn; NASA Origins Program missions such as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility; Earth-observing spacecraft such as the upcoming QuikScat mission; and the Deep Space Network of communications antennas.
Further information about JPL and the programs that it manages for NASA is available on the Internet at the following address: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
NASA has selected five companies to perform space transportation architecture studies to help develop approaches to meet the agency's future human space flight requirements with significant reductions in cost.
The studies are expected to provide information to support future policy decisions determining if the Space Shuttle system should be replaced: if so, when; if not, what upgrade strategy is required to continue safe and affordable Space Shuttle flights.
The companies selected for the one-year study contracts are Boeing Information, Space and Defense Systems, Seal Beach, California; Kelly Space and Technology, San Bernardino, California; Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, Colorado; Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Virginia, and Space Access, LLC, Palmdale, California.
The study contracts will involve different numbers of tasks and will range in value from $1–$2 million each.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
House Science Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) issued a statement on 24 September criticizing NASA and the Clinton Administration for treating Russia as an equal partner in the International Space Station (ISS) when it is unable to fulfill its obligations as a partner.
Sensenbrenner said: "NASA's announcement today is a long overdue acknowledgment that Russia is unable to fulfill its obligations as a partner in the construction and operation of the International Space Station and removes any doubt that putting Russia in the critical path was an expensive mistake. NASA's request that the American taxpayer now pay for that mistake while simultaneously treating Russia as an equal partner is unacceptable. The United States should not set the precedent of paying for another country to be a partner in an international science project.
"If the United States is to assume greater financial responsibilities, the international agreement with Russia should be renegotiated to reflect Russia's reduced contribution. American companies and workers should be given the opportunity to perform these services instead of simply sending more money overseas. I oppose the administration's scheme to turn a vital and important science program like the Space Station into more Russian foreign aid. "During the past three years, the Science Committee, on a bipartisan basis, has pressed the administration to develop a long-term plan for eliminating the dependence of the International Space Station on Russian flight hardware. That unwillingness led the administration to adopt short-term, ad hoc measures that temporarily resolved immediate problems but contributed to the program's growing cost."
He noted that "just over a month ago" the White House testified before the committee that "the best information we have at the moment does not lead us to make the judgment that we need to jump to the conclusion that the Russians will not be able to meet any of their commitments." He reported that the White House officials made the statement "while the Russian economy was in the midst of collapse and after three years of repeated Russian failures to adequately fund Moscow's obligations to the International Space Station partnership."
NASA has come up with a plan to purchase goods and services that the Russians had committed to supplying. According to associate administrator for Human Space Flight, Joe Rothenberg, NASA plans to ask Congress and the administration for the go-ahead to spend up to $660 million over the next four years to ensure continued progress on those elements to be supplied by Russia.
NASA estimates that this is about one-half the cost of the items. "We can't be sure they'll come up with the other half, though," Rothenberg said. Under this plan, NASA was to spend $60 million in September and an additional $40 million throughout the rest of the year. It could spend up to an additional $150 a million in each of the next three years under the plan.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
Ghassem Asrar, associate administrator of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, has told Congress that repairing the ground system problems that delayed the launch of NASA's EOS-AM1 satellite can be carried out within budget, but will require some scaling back of the ground data system's capabilities.
Testifying before the House Science Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, Asrar said that NASA will work with prime contractor Raytheon to deliver a scaled-back data system within budget and in time to support the delayed AMS-1 and Landsat-7 missions. NASA and Raytheon currently are assessing how much capability they will be forced to give up to stay within the 1999 proposed budget of $256 million.
Asrar promised to inform Congress by the end of January 1999 how much money the Earth Science enterprise would need to restore forfeited ground requirements. He also told the subcommittee that Landsat-7, the land-imaging satellite that missed its July launch date because of an electrical supply problem, has been repaired and is on schedule for a March 1999 launch.
At the same time, he told committee members that AM-1, grounded in June for problems with its flight operations segment of the EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS) that manages the flow of scientific data from the EOS satellites, will not be launched before June 1999. EOSDIS is the $850 million ground system responsible for managing the flow of scientific data from the satellites and is NASA's primary activity to gauge the effect of human activity on global climate.
Subcommittee Chairman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) called the hearing to address the delays in the missions under the Earth Science Enterprise, a program that has cost taxpayers more than $8.5 billion since its inception as the Mission to Planet Earth program in 1992. Asrar was grilled on the causes of the program delays, but praised for his progress in reducing the enterprise's uncosted carryovers. The estimated uncosted carryover from 1998 is $550 million, a $146 million improvement over 1997, according to Asrar. He pledged to reduce the balance further $350–$400 million—about 25%–30% of the Earth Science Enterprise 1999 budget request by 1 October 1999.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
On the night of 27 August, the earth's upper atmosphere was bathed briefly by an invisible burst of gamma and X-ray radiations from a mysterious star 20 000 light-years away—the most powerful to strike the earth from beyond the solar system ever detected. Scientists said the radiation posed no health risks to humans.
The pulse had a significant effect on the upper atmosphere, according to Umran Inan, professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University and head of the research group at Stanford that observed the disturbance. It was the first time that a significant change in earth's environment has been traced to energy from a distant star. "It was as if night was briefly turned into day in the ionosphere," said Inan. "It was so powerful that it blasted sensitive detectors to maximum or offscale on at least seven scientific spacecraft to Earth orbit and around the solar system."
The wave hit the night side of the Earth and ionized (or knocked electrons out of) the atoms in the upper atmosphere to a level seen only during daytime. The wave of radiation emanated from a newly discovered type of star called a magnetar. Magnetars are dense balls of super heavy matter, no larger than a city but weighing more than the sun. They have the greatest magnetic field known in the universe, so intense that it powers a steady glow of x-rays from the star's surface, often punctuated by brief, intense gamma-ray flashes and, occasionally, by cataclysmic flares like the one observed in August.
The ionosphere is the portion of the atmosphere between 60 and 80 kilometers (54–73 miles) in altitude that plays an important role in radio communications.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
A Leonid meteor storm on 17 November will pose an elevated, but not serious, threat to spacecraft in the vicinity of Earth for about a half a day, according to NASA and Defense Department officials. The annual Leonid shower, this year a storm, is expected to have an intensity not seen in more than three decades. The event could provide a dramatic "light show" for some parts of the world, particularly East Asia and the western Pacific region.
The Leonid meteors originate from the debris released from the Comet Tempel-Tuttle, which completes an orbit around the sun every 33 years, leaving a trail of debris much as dust and other tiny particles. The comet passed perihelion, its closest approach to the sun, in early 1998, setting the stage for probable meteor storms in 1998 and 1999, officials said.
Conditions exist for encountering larger than normal numbers of meteors, or "shooting stars", streaking through the earth's atmosphere at rates of thousands an hour. The meteors will disintegrate upon entering the earth's atmosphere and pose no threat to aircraft or the earth's surface. Leonid meteors travel at about 45 miles per second compared to about 12 miles per second for typical meteors, officials explained. This risk of physical or electrical damage to near-Earth spacecraft thus will be greater than normal, they said.
Space operations have developed comprehensive strategies to limit the potential effects of the storm. Crews have anomaly resolution procedures in place that are based on years of experience and numerous recovery actions. Several contingency plans exist that deal with specific anomalies for each constellation of spacecraft. NASA and the Air Force Space Command will conduct studies of the 1998 storm and will use these data in forecasting the potential 1999 storm.
Additional information on the expected Leonid storm can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.nasa.gov and http://www.spacecom.af.mil. Simple software to calculate the probability of impacts by Leonid meteors on spacecraft in Earth orbit can be found on the Web at http://see.msfc.nasa.gov.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
Sixteen sailors left Charleston, South Carolina on 26 September on a round-the-world solo boat race that will last over the next seven months. The sailors will make three planned stops. First, in Cape Town, South Africa, where they will restart on 5 December. From there, they go to Auckland, New Zealand, and they will begin their second leg on 6 February. The final stop will be in Punta del Este, Uruguay, where they will set sail on their final leg on 10 April, finishing their journey in Charleston in April or May.
The contestants in the 27 000-mile race all are equipped with emergency equipment that will allow NOAA to help them if disaster strikes, just as NOAA had done earlier this year with the failed attempt of Steve Fossett to fly around the world nonstop in a balloon and with Tori Murden when her boat capsized during her attempt to be the first woman to row across the Atlantic alone. In both cases, emergency transmitters aboard their craft allowed rescue units to reach them after NOAA satellites picked up their emergency signals.
The solo contestants are equipped with two emergency position-indicating radio beacons (EPIRBS) and Argos transmitters. Some of the EPIRBS are new models that provide near instantaneous detection and location information to NOAA so that rescue forces can be dispatched. The new models encode the location determined from an internal Global Positioning System (GPS) into the EPIRB's data stream. The Argos transmitters are providing tracking information for the race organizers. "These sailors and the race organizers are truly sea-smart for carrying emergency beacons and Argos equipment, said James Bailey, chief of NOAA's Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking (SARSAT) office. "In an emergency, the equipment can mean the difference between life and death, as we have seen in previous races."
The COSPAS-SARSAT system uses a constellation of satellites in low and geostationary orbits to detect and locate emergency beacons from vessels and aircraft in distress. NOAA represents the United States in this program, provides satellites platforms and ground equipment and operates the U.S. Mission Control Center. Russia, France, and a number of other nations also are involved in the program.
Since the inception of the system in 1982, more than 9,000 lives have been saved.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
from M. Stonner, National Science Foundation
Representative Vern Ehlers unveiled the report of the National Science Policy Study "Unlocking Our Future" at a press conference 24 September. Joining Rep. Ehlers with praise for the report were Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich; Science Committee Chairman, Rep. James Sensenbrenner; Rep. George Brown; MIT President Charles Vest, and Homer Neal of the University of Michigan.
The main recommendations of the report included continued strong and stable federal support for basic research; increased use of partnerships among government, industry, and higher education, as well as U.S. participation in truly collaborative international research; improving math and science education at every level; and increased emphasis on the research community's need to communicate its value to the public in terms that the public can understand.
Speaker Gingrich emphasized the value of having mechanisms to support radical ideas, such as prizes for solutions to specifically identified problems, and the need for clear communication and rapid dissemination of research results. He stated that he will ask the Science Committee to work closely with the Education and Workforce Committee to consider ways of improving math and science education.
When asked where he plans to go from here, Rep. Ehlers indicated that he will seek Committee approval of the report, then a House Resolution endorsing its recommendations. He noted that it is the first broad science policy statement originating in the House and that he will look for formal Senate endorsement as well.
The full report is available online at http://www.house.gov/science/science_policy_study.htm.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
For the first time in the Navy's history, a group of fifth graders from Cranston, Rhode Island, has named the navy's newest oceanographic survey ship, the USNS Bruce Heezen.
The ship was named for Bruce Heezen (pronounced HAY-zin), a 20th century pioneering marine investigator who aided in the understanding of plate tectonics and who produced the famous Heezen-Tharp physiographic maps of all the major oceans of the world.
The name, submitted by the Oak Lawn Elementary School group, came in a nationwide contest to find a name for the new ship and was selected from nearly 2,000 entries.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
Some travel support for U.S. scientists for the 7th WMO Scientific Conference on Weather Modification, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 17–22 February 1999, may become available from the National Science Foundation. This travel grant will be administered by the American Meteorological Society and requests for support must be made to that organization. As has been the case from previous International Travel Grants, requests for travel support will be reviewed by an ad hoc committee appointed by the AMS. Applications should be submitted as soon as possible. Applications will be reviewed by mid-November and travel awards announced by 1 December, if any funds are available.
The travel grant is designed to support attendance by U.S. scientists at international meetings. The term "U.S. scientist," however, is interpreted broadly and usually includes foreign nationals currently working in the United States or attending U.S. universities. Scientists playing an active role in the Conference will generally receive priority for financial support. Attendance at multiple international meetings during the same trip is viewed favorably.
To stretch the limited travel funds available, support is usually restricted to round-trip airfare (U.S. carrier), using discount tickets whenever possible. If a scientist's airfare can be reimbursed from an outside source, such as a university travel fund, support for per diem expenses may be considered. Since the funds for this travel grant will be provided by NSF, U.S. government employees and NCAR scientists are usually considered to be ineligible for this support. Plans at this time are to provide grants of approximately $1,500. Special consideration will be given to recent Ph.D scientists and graduate students.
More information and an application form is available on the AMS Web site, or it can be obtained by contacting Keith Seitter at AMS Headquarters [telephone (617) 227-2426, ext. 220; fax (617) 742-8718] or Harold Orville at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology [telephone (605) 394-2291; fax (605) 394-6061].
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |
Arthur G. Stephenson, president of Oceaneering Advanced Technologies, Houston, Texas, has been named to become the next director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Stephenson assumed his new position on 28 September. He has more than 30 years experience as a manager in spacecraft and high technology systems. He will replace Marshall Deputy Director Carolyn Griner who has served in an acting capacity and will assist in the transition.
Stephenson holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Redlands. He is a senior member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
| Top of Document | Newsletter Home Page | AMS Home Page |