Editor: Jim Elliott
Contributors: Alan Weinstein and Ginny Owen
Copy Editor: Anne Siefken
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NSF Director Rita Colwell made her initial appearance before Congress on the NSF budget since being named director, telling the House Appropriations Subcommittee on VA/HUD and Independent Agencies on 4 March that NSF's emphasis in the FY2000 budget request would be on information technology and biocomplexity.
At the same time, she reiterated her concern about the rapid increase in the federal share of life science funding, while that for physical sciences and engineering declined. "Over the past 25 years," she said, "the mix has changed significantly and dramatically, primarily through gains in biomedical fields and declines in the physical sciences and engineering. In 1970, the life sciences accounted for 29% of federal research spending. By 1997, its share had risen to 43%. Put another way, the share increased by half. Engineering, by contrast, saw its share decline by 12 percentage points over the same period, falling from 31% to 19% of the federal research portfolio. The share going to the physical sciences dropped by more than 5 points . . . Engineering and the physical sciences, taken together, accounted for 50% of the federal research spending in 1970. That's down to 33% today—a drop from half of the total to just one third. "The sharp nature of the shift in funding toward the biomedical fields has taken more than a few by surprise. I'd be the first to tell you about the great things that are happening in biomedical fields. Some funding has gone to my own research. But I also know that society cannot live by biomedical bread alone."
The FY2000 budget request for the agency is $3.95 billion, a 5.8% increase over the current level, she said, "an outstanding request" given the constraints imposed on discretionary spending. The headliner in this year's budget is the new initiative for information technology (IT), she explained. "As Internet growth has gone through the roof, IT has become the essential fuel for the nation's economic engine." Estimates, she said, indicate that IT has generated one-third of the recent growth in the U.S. economy. It now accounts for 7.4 million jobs, she said.
In FY2000, the Information Technology Initiative (IT2) will total $366 million across six agencies, of which the NSF share is $146 million. "IT2 is an investment that will strengthen the entire research and education enterprise," Colwell emphasized, benefitting every field, every discipline and every level of education. When we bring faster computers to weather forecasting," she continued, "we save lives, we protect buildings and even more, by getting better advance warning of El Niño, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other severe events. My own research on climate and infectious diseases (El Niño and cholera) has made this dramatically clear to me."
The same sense of imperative, she said, exists with the second initiative presented in the budget request, called biocomplexity—a multidisciplinary approach to understanding our world's environment. Scientists, she said, for generations have studied parts of our environmental system and now is the time for a better understanding of how those parts function together.
She suggested that one payoff from that effort would be better environmental decision making on the part of the government. "Ecological forecasting, as some call it," she explained, "could have far-reaching benefits for agriculture and other industries dependent on changes in the environment."
Eamon Kelly, National Science Board Chairman, also was a witness at the subcommittee hearing. Kelly told the subcommittee that the government does not spend enough on research, underlining that NSF's budget request of less than $4 billion in not nearly enough when measured against the U.S. $8.5 trillion economy.
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NASA Administrator Dan Goldin has told the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics that funding for science and technology at his agency has increased in recent years and predicted that science flights will grow in number in the next few years. At his appearance at the late February hearing, Goldin testified that the percentage of NASA's budget devoted to science and technology had increased from 31% in FY91 to 41% today and is planned to grow to 45% in FY2004. At the same time, he said, the percentage of NASA's budget devoted to human spaceflight has declined from 48% in FY91 to 40% today. "As a result," he explained, "our budget is much more balanced." Science spacecraft flights are due to increase from an annual rate of two in the early 1990s to seven at the present time to an average of 14 a year between FY2000 and FY2004.
Goldin told the subcommittee that the International Space Station will cost more money, but he said, while agreeing the Russians do not have a very good track record, he opposes an immediate budgetary move that could be interpreted by the Russians as a signal that they could back off from their commitments.
Representative George Brown (D-CA) asked about a replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). NASA is developing a much more powerful instrument that would be ready by FY2007. While Goldin did not announce the decision before the subcommittee, NASA announced on 10 March that it intends to conduct an emergency HST repair mission this October. The spacecraft has lost two of its six gyros and needs three to carry out its scientific investigations.
Goldin also was asked why NASA is asking for less money for academic programs ($100 million in FY2000 versus $138.5 million in FY99). Goldin said it was necessary to make this cut to comply with the budget caps. However, he said he would work with committee members to see if something could be done.
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President Clinton announced on 8 March that as coastal communities in Honduras battered by Hurricane Mitch begin to rebuild their infrastructure, a team of experts from the University of Puerto Rico Sea Grant Program will assess and address the communities' educational and technical support needs. The president made the announcement during his tour of the disaster-struck area.
The National Sea Grant Office of the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is releasing approximately $95 000 in rapid-response funds to the Puerto Rico program to deploy a reconnaissance team this spring to Puerto Cortes, Tela, La Ceiba, and the Islas de la Bahia. The project is expected to provide the foundation for future application of a sustained, long-term technology transfer program in both Honduras and Nicaragua. Team members will meet with local and community leaders and will review information, including field data gathered by other agencies.
"As the people of Honduras begin the massive task of rebuilding their infrastructure, the United States is committed to providing them with the best available information to help minimize the impact of any future disasters," President Clinton said. "NOAA's university-based Sea Grant Program is uniquely positioned to help the government and universities of Honduras establish a national extension education program to improve citizen decision making during and after the reconstruction process."
A Puerto Rico Sea Grant team of interdisciplinary technical and outreach experts will be assembled to conduct needs assessment evaluations of communities in Honduras. Experts in civil and coastal engineering, coastal planning, marine recreation and water quality, fisheries, aquaculture, and tourism will be part of the assessment team. Also included are Honduran students from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez to aid in the development of a culturally and politically sensitive program through contacts with Honduran universities, local authorities, and nongovernmental agencies.
The team will meet with other U.S. government agencies such as NOAA's National Weather Service, U.S. Geological Survey, FEMA, and the U.S. State Department to coordinate activities and avoid duplication of effort. The team will make two trips to Honduras to meet with local community leaders. Together they will develop and conduct a series of nine workshops and consultations whose topic will be determined on the needs and priorities as identified by the Honduran communities. An estimated 300 local and regional decision makers, including resource managers, members of academia, planners, nongovernmental organizations, municipal administrators, private industry representatives, fishermen, and members of the news media, are expected to participate in the workshops and consultative sessions.
The goals include:
Sea Grant was chartered by Congress in 1966 and is part of NOAA's OAR line office. It is an extramural component of NOAA's research and outreach efforts organized into 29 State Sea Grant Programs involving over 200 universities, and thousands of people. It is funded at approximately $57.5 million for FY99. Sea Grant is a partnership among government, academia, industry, scientists, and private citizens to solve coastal problems and develop marine resources. Long-term economic development, environmental stewardship, and responsible use of America's coastal, ocean, and Great Lakes resources are at the heart of Sea Grant's mission. Sea Grant's challenge is to guarantee optimal use of these resources, while ensuring that they provide sustainable, long-term benefits.
NOAA's Puerto Rico Sea Grant Program has been headquartered at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, Puerto Rico since 1990. It will bring to Honduras rebuilding effort a well-established bilingual network of linkages to the international scientific community and the Hispanic people of the United States, Central and Latin America. They have expertise in facilitating action-oriented workshops that have a track record of effectively addressing local communities short and long-term needs and are part of an ongoing research effort that has made contributions to prognostication, evacuation plans and recuperation guidelines for natural catastrophes ranging from hurricanes to tsunamis.
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AMS Executive Director Ron McPherson remembers how, when he was a student many years ago, a teacher who had a very great influence on him advised him that, "No honest scientist would ever soil his hands with policy questions." He recalled that experience during a speech before a group of educators at the 12th Conference on Satellites and Education at West Chester University, West Chester, Pennsylvania, on 11 March. The speech was entitled, "Weather and Climate Forecasting, Satellites and Public Policy."
"It comes as no surprise," he told the group, "that there is now no one in policy level positions in the federal government with a background in the atmospheric sciences. So, policy decisions that affect everyone who is subject to the weather, for example, every one of you in this room, are being made by lawyers, accountants, and others without real knowledge of the atmosphere and how it works. The deficiency needs to be corrected, and you, as educators, are in a position to contribute."
He said science and the practice of meteorology and the related sciences have matured to a level such that weather forecasts are now sufficiently accurate and reliable that people are making decisions based on them. "Not that forecasts are perfect," he explained, "they aren't, and never will be. But they are good enough to be useful, and people have come to realize that."
The two policy issues he raised were:
Before launching into his discussion of policy issues, Dr. McPherson reviewed the modern weather forecasting process and the role of current and future satellites in weather forecasting. For most of the twentieth century, he said, meteorological observations were exchanged freely among nations of the world. "This was a fundamental element in international meteorology; so fundamental, in fact, that it was never written down in a formal agreement," he explained. "The practice operated such that each national meteorological service made observations of the temperature, pressure, wind, and humidity in its own airspace, for its own use. Recognizing that each service also required its neighbors' observations, the data were freely and openly exchanged by means of telecommunication circuits. This practice was regarded as a fair and reasonable sharing of the cost among the taxpayers of many nations, each contributing according to its own ability and its own requirements."
However, he continued, when nations began to realize that observations might have economic value, some of the national meteorological services of Western Europe began attempts to recover some of the costs of operating their services by engaging in commercial sales of weather and climate information, including observations.
In the eyes of the Europeans, he said, the United States was giving away observations paid for by European taxpayers and the commercial activities of the national meteorological services. Some of the recipients were U.S. private sector firms doing business in Europe and elsewhere and, in Europe, these firms were using the European data to compete with the commercial activities of the European national meteorological services. These firms were perceived to be competing with an unfair advantage, because they had obtained the data for "free."
In U.S. eyes, though, McPherson said, the U.S. private sector firms were not obtaining European data free of charge, but rather as part of the international exchange of data, to which the U.S. was a major contributor. It was true that the U.S. private sector firms had not contributed to the cost of European observations, but they had contributed to the U.S. observations through their corporate taxes, and the Europeans certainly were not shy in obtaining those observations freely and using them to support their operations, including their commercial activities.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, as governments in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere entered into large-scale downsizing of budgets, staff, and services, European national weather services increased their dependence on commercial activities as a matter of survival, McPherson said. Tension between the European view and the U.S. view increased as a result. And at the 12th World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Congress in Geneva, an agreement was reached after very difficult negotiations.
The meeting resulted in the adoption of WMO Resolution 40, he said, which established two categories of observations: basic and additional. In spite of the resolution, European—United States tensions continued. European countries classified as "additional" far more data than the agreement envisioned, McPherson explained. And when Internet capabilities made access to data very easy, the Europeans demanded that the United States not merely advise potential users of restricted data, but also to cease making it available on the Internet.
The topic is expected to be raised again when the new WMO Congress convenes in May. "It is conceivable," McPherson said, "that lack of a resolution could lead to a 'data war,' which at its extreme would result in no exchange of data. Clearly this would not be in the best interest of human society. "Why is this important to you? It's, very simply, that if the standoff continues, international cooperation in meteorology, both in the operations and research, will suffer. Collaborations between scientists and between weather services will be inhibited, and the economic efficiency derived from free-market competition in the private sector will be suppressed. The users of weather and climate information will be less well served than would be the case with completely free and unrestricted exchange of weather observations, he suggested.
The next issue, McPherson said, is a proposal that the U.S. government obtain the space-based wind and moisture profiles . . . through purchasing observations, or the use of observations, from private sector companies who would develop, launch, and operate satellite systems to provide these data.
In the proposals now being discussed, he continued, the government would contract to purchase atmospheric observations with a specified level of quality, accuracy, resolution, and coverage, for a price which would provide a reasonable revenue stream to the provider. If the government purchased the data, the government could decide to continue the practice of free and unrestricted exchange of data between nations. However, because by doing so the provider would be deprived of other markets to sell the data and enhance the provider's profit margin, the provider undoubtedly would require a much greater price to compensate for the loss of other markets.
Alternatively, he said, the government could purchase only the use of the data. This would allow the government to incorporate the wind and moisture data in government models to improve their performance and, thus, improve the basic meteorological information available to the general public and to value-added entrepreneurs, but it would not permit the government to re-export the original observations. Thus, he explained, "the principle of free and unrestricted data exchange would be diminished."
Enormous progress has been made in solving the problem of weather forecasting in the twentieth century, McPherson said. "The problem is not completely solved yet," he explained, "but the science has reached a very high level of maturity, thanks to observations, research, and high-performance computers. As a result, meteorological services have also improved such that people now have enough confidence to base personal decisions on the weather forecast, and they have developed enough sophistication to understand the level of uncertainty in the forecast and to use that in making their decisions.
"Increasingly, institutions are making decisions with major economic significance in which weather and climate information are a major input. Thus, the societal and economic value of weather and climate information is on the rise. "Policy issues affecting the atmospheric and related sciences, which were relatively insignificant even 10 years ago, must now be considered carefully, for bad policy decisions might impact the availability, quality, and usefulness of such information.
"I urge you . . . to inform yourselves about these and other policy issues that bear on the availability of weather services in this country. And . . . I urge you to convey to your students the importance of paying attention to policy issues. Or, at least, be neutral . . . please don't say no honest person could ever soil his or her hands with policy issues.'"
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NOAA scientists report that a strengthening La Niña has influenced weather patterns that sent Alaskan temperatures to -47° F and wind chills to -90°F in late January and early February, brought flooding and heavy snow to the west, warmth to the east and extreme weather from South America to Asia.
Many forecast models indicated this transition and that the La Niña would continue to develop. Now, six months later, scientists at the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center, Camp Springs, Maryland, say that the event has grown into one of the strongest La Niña episodes of the past 50 years. "This La Niña provides the physical link between many of the unusual weather patterns seen recently in far-flung parts of the globe," said John Janowiak, one of the scientists. "While parts of Alaska have experienced severe cold, most of the lower 48 states, especially those in the southern tier, have enjoyed record-breaking warm temperatures."
Except for California, the rest of the lower 48 states experienced a much warmer-than-normal November 1998–January 1999. Temperatures in many states ranked within the 10 warmest November–January periods of the century, officials said. The United States as a whole experienced the third warmest November-January in the past 104 years, they said, resulting in a 10% energy savings, more than a 20% savings over the southern-tier states and a nearly 50% savings in Florida.
The La Niña contributed to the series of huge storms that hit the Pacific Northwest and blasted Washington, Oregon, and northern California with hurricane-force winds, heavy rains, and mountain snows. As a result, many sections of the northern-tier states in the west have experienced precipitation totals that are in the top 10 of the century.
Global La Niña impacts include heavy rains, severe storms, and flooding in southern Africa, drought in Kenya and Tanzania, flooding in the Philippines and Indonesia and abnormal wetness in northern South America. The same regions suffered opposite impacts during the 1997/98 El Niño.
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To keep up with the rapid pace of scientific and technological innovation and ensure that services will be more useful and reliable in the future, the National Weather Service should develop a long-term plan to aggressively incorporate new developments in weather analysis and predictions, says a committee of the National Research Council in a new report, A Vision for the National Weather Service: Road Map for the Future. These advances have the potential to bring "enormous benefits to the nation" by greatly improving the quality, accuracy, and timeliness of weather forecasts and data, the report says. The report is the last in a series of major reviews, conducted by the Research Council since 1990, of weather service modernization and restructuring efforts.
Weather forecasts and warnings have improved dramatically in the past several years, and major scientific advances and innovative technologies under development promise to enhance weather services significantly in the coming decades. As the National Weather Service gathers more sophisticated data and adapts advanced modeling systems for daily operations, better forecasting will likely spur new markets for weather and environmental information. For example, commercial providers might use the data to develop forecasts targeted toward the transportation, agricultural, or forestry industries. Forecasts could be developed to predict environmental hazards in the atmosphere, or solar storms and their impact on electric power distribution, communications, and navigational equipment.
The success of the weather service will depend largely on its ability to develop sophisticated models of the atmosphere, which will require state-of-the-art computers and modeling programs. Congress and the White House should provide support for procuring and maintaining high-level supercomputer capabilities. Several other countries already have such systems, which are fundamental for advanced weather forecasting.
Moreover, the weather service should actively support and participate in national and international research enterprises in weather, hydrology, climate, and the environmental sciences, the committee said. The agency should continue taking the lead in encouraging international cooperation in exchanging data, which will provide the foundation for global weather forecasting. In addition, strategic partnerships should be formed nationally with other government agencies, commercial weather services, and research laboratories, the committee said. Such partnerships would enable a much broader variety of users to benefit from weather data.
Rather than periodically overhauling operations, the weather service should introduce new technologies gradually to avoid organizational upheavals and eliminate obsolete equipment as needed, the report says. An adequate research and development staff should be maintained at national weather centers to regularly evaluate alternative technologies and rapidly test new forecasting concepts. Independent engineers and scientists should provide guidance throughout the process. The committee envisioned several types of services that might reasonably be available by 2025 if the weather service builds on scientific and technological advances. Some examples are:
Providing detailed global forecasts and models. Because improved satellite data would be more widely available at lower costs, a worldwide information network could be formed through which weather centers analyze atmospheric and ocean patterns to predict precipitation systems, tropical cyclones, thunderstorms, heavy rainfalls and snowfalls, turbulence, air pollution, and other phenomena. Short-term forecasts would be highly automated and their accuracy would be greatly improved.
Predicting long-term climate conditions and monitoring air quality. Two-year forecasts of climate conditions would be made regionally. Such forecasts could be used to identify the best times for planting crops or an appropriate location for a business. In addition, modeling capabilities could track atmospheric movement of ozone, carbon monoxide, aerosols, and other chemicals that affect human health. Environment officials would use these data to create forecasts that help people avoid dangerously high levels of pollutants.
Improving severe-weather warnings. Special high-resolution models will run in real time as hurricanes, blizzards, or other threatening storms move into an area. Although these models will be similar to those used today, they would be far more powerful, covering much larger areas and using more sophisticated data. Information from these models would be used not only for warnings, but also for environmental monitoring and water resources management.
The study was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The National Research Council is the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. It is a private, nonprofit institution that provides independent advice on science and technology issues under a congressional charter.
A Vision for the National Weather Service: Road Map for the Future is available from the National Academy Press for $18.00 (prepaid) plus shipping charges of $4.00 for the first copy and $.50 for each additional copy; (202) 334-3313 or (800)-624-6242.
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Greenland's southeastern glaciers are rapidly thinning and their lower elevations may be particularly sensitive to potential climate changes, a NASA study suggests.
"The results of this study are important in that they could represent the first indication of an increase in the speed of outlet glaciers," said Bill Krabill, principal investigator at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Virginia. An outlet glacier acts as a major ice drainage region for an ice sheet. "The excess volume of ice transported by these glaciers has had a negligible effect on global sea level thus far, but if it accelerates or becomes more widespread, it would begin to have a detectable impact on sea level," Krabill said.
In the 5 March issue of SCIENCE, researchers report the glacial thinning is too large to have resulted from increased ice-surface melting or decreased snowfall. The researchers believe the thinning, as much as 30 feet over five years in some locations, is the result of increasing discharge speeds of glaciers flowing into the Atlantic Ocean. Krabill said surface-melt water might be seeping to the bottom of glaciers. Such seepage may be reducing the friction between the ice and the rock below it, enabling the glaciers to slide with less friction across the bedrock and thus allow more ice to slip off into the ocean, according to Krabill.
"The results of this study are significant because they provide the first evidence of widespread thinning of low-elevation parts of one of the great polar ice sheets. The results also suggest that the thinning outlet glaciers must be flowing faster than necessary to remove the annual accumulation of snow within their basins," said Krabill. "Why they are behaving like this is a mystery," said Krabill, "but it might indicate that the coastal margins of ice sheets are capable of responding quite rapidly to external changes, such as a potential warming of the climate." Researchers noted that while some internal areas of Greenland that were surveyed showed ice thickening, areas along the coast showed ice thinning. "Taken as a whole, the surveyed region is in negative balance," Krabill said.
In 1993 and 1994, NASA researchers surveyed the Greenland ice sheet using an airborne laser altimeter flown on a NASA P-3 aircraft and measured the thickness of the entire ice sheet. Ten flight lines flown in 1993 in Southern Greenland were resurveyed in 1998. The flight lines in Northern Greenland flown in 1994 will be resurveyed in May 1999. Throughout the study, pilots have used the Global Positioning System and other navigational equipment to fly the same flight path some 400 meters above the icy surface. The results showed three areas in the south accumulating at rates up to 10 inches per year. These areas located in the internal sections of Greenland are in regions of high snowfall. In the outer regions of the ice sheets, the researchers reported large areas of thinning, with the rate of thinning increasing rapidly toward the ocean. Most rapid thinning rates (more than 3 feet per year) were observed in the lower depths of east coast outlet glaciers, the researchers reported.
The researchers noted that the areas of thinning in the east also saw warmer than normal temperatures for 1993–98. "However, we also observe areas of thinning near the West coast, where many locations were cooler than normal," the researchers reported. These surveys have established baseline datasets that will be extended with information from NASA's ICESAT spacecraft. The ICESAT satellite laser altimeter will be launched in 2001 to measure ice-surface elevations in Greenland and Antarctica.
Further information on the Greenland mapping project, including the technology behind the science, can be found on the Web at http://aol.wff.nasa.gov/aoltm.html.
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NASA will be involved in the launch of 11 Earth Science satellites this year, marking a banner year for the agency in its attempt to study the interaction among the land, oceans, and the atmosphere. The primary component of the program is the Earth Observing System (EOS), a 15-year effort to identify and track human-induced changes in the global climate.
Landsat-7 and Terra (formerly EOS-AM1) are the primary missions of the 11 in which NASA will be involved during the year. That number of missions will make 1999 the busiest ever in NASA's environmental program, according to Ghassem Asrar, associate administrator of the agency's Office of Earth Science. The data to be gathered by the missions are expected to have a huge impact on Earth science, according to scientists who are anxiously awaiting the data that will be gathered by Landsat and Terra. The problems that delayed the launches of those satellites have been corrected, Asrar said.
NASA has qualified the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observations Systems Data Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, as the data archive, processing and distribution point for Landsat-7, according to Asrar, and the agency is working to qualify similar facilities for Terra at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, and at NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. Asrar said these facilities will have the capability to handle data from other satellites slated to fly this year.
The Earth Science launches in which NASA is involved this year include, South Africa's SunSat and Denmark's Orsted satellites, GOES-L, Landsat-7, NASA's Quick Scatterometer, Terra, the Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission, NASA's Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor, NASA's Earth Observer-1, Argentina's Satellite de Aplicaciones Cientificas-C (Sac-C), and NOAA-L
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The "S" marks the spot for scientists trying to forecast solar eruptions that can damage satellites, disrupt communications networks, and cause power outages. Using the Japanese Yohkoh spacecraft, NASA-sponsored scientists have discovered that an S-shaped structure often appears on the sun in advance of a violent eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, that is as powerful as billions of nuclear explosions.
"Early warnings of approaching solar storms could prove useful to power companies, the communications industry and organizations that operate spacecraft, including NASA," said Dr. George Withbroe, science director for Sun–Earth Connection research at NASA Headquarters. "This is a major step forward in understanding these tremendous storms."
"S marks the spot," said Dr. Alphonse Sterling of Computational Physics, Inc., Fairfax, Virginia, detailed to the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), Japan. "We have found a strong correlation between an S-shaped pattern on the Sun, called a sigmoid, and the likelihood that an ejection will occur from that region within days. Each sigmoid is like a loaded gun that we now know has a high probability of going off."
"The S-shaped regions are the dangerous ones," said Dr. Richard Canfield, a research professor of physics at Montana State University, and lead author on a paper to be published in the 15 March issue of Geophysical Research Letters. "As soon as we can recognize an S-shaped region, we know that it is more likely to erupt. Other common structures look like a butterfly, quite symmetric, and these rarely erupt."
The sigmoid structures are likely the result of twisted solar magnetic fields, said Dr. Sarah Gibson of the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. "The key to the coronal mass ejection is its magnetic field, which can structure and propel the mass outward," said Gibson.
Coronal mass ejections are violent discharges of electrically charged gas from the sun's corona, or outer atmosphere. The largest explosions in the solar system, they hurl up to 10 billion tons of gas into space at speeds of 1–2 million miles an hour. The outbursts occur several times a day, but not all are hurled toward Earth.
Images from various spacecraft have provided often spectacular images and information after a coronal mass ejection had already erupted, but scientists have been trying for some time to identify a precursor for these events. Sterling and Dr. Hugh Hudson of the Solar Physics Research Corporation, Tucson, Arizona, working at ISAS, first observed a relationship between a sigmoid shape before a coronal mass ejection, and an arch-shape afterwards. Later, Hudson and others found the same pattern in several other ejections. That finding prompted Canfield, Hudson, and Dr. David McKenzie, a research scientist at Montana State University, to look for a statistical correlation between the sigmoid shape and subsequent eruptions. They viewed a total of two years of daily X-ray images from the Japanese/US/UK Soft X-ray Telescope on Yohkoh. The composite pictures, 50 images each day, were made into movies for analysis.
"We need to get past simple classifications such as, 'Is it sigmoidal or not, is the sunspot big or small,' and get to quantitative measurements that answer, 'how twisted are the magnetic fields, how big is the spot'," Canfield said. "As well, we want to know in which direction the ejection is going to go and how many regions are likely to erupt." Ultimately, Canfield continued, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may be able to include warnings of coronal mass ejections in its space weather forecasts. NOAA is building a Solar X-ray Imager similar to that on Yohkoh, scheduled for launch next year, he said.
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NASA's New Millennium program has selected four concepts for further study as candidates for its Earth Observing 3 (EO-3) mission, technologies that could revolutionize space-based Earth observations, according to Dr. Ghassem Asrar, NASA's Associate Administrator for Earth Science. Each concept is designed to test innovative approaches for observing Earth's surface and atmosphere from positions outside low-Earth orbits, with an emphasis on advanced measurement technologies.
The primary goal of the New Millennium program is to identify, develop and validate key instrument and spacecraft technologies that can lower cost and increase performance of science missions in the twenty-first century.
"The technologies under consideration for these missions will revolutionize space-based Earth observations, due to their unique spatial, spectral and temporal characteristics, and capture aspects not previously possible of the earth's dynamic atmosphere," said Asrar.
The selected concepts are:
These concepts were selected from 24 proposals submitted in response to a NASA Research Announcement released in September 1997. The selection process included evaluations of each proposal by external science and technology peer reviewers, along with two panel sessions with leading NASA scientists and technologists to categorize each proposal.
Each of the concept providers is responsible for forming a team to conduct a six-month study effort, at the end of which they will each produce peer-reviewed study reports. At least one will be selected by the Office of Earth Science to enter the full implementation phase. Final selection is targeted for September 1999.
The first New Millennium program Earth-orbiting mission, Earth Observing-1 (EO-1), is scheduled for launch in December 1999. It will demonstrate an advanced land imager system and hyperspectral imaging technologies that may eventually replace the current measurement approach used by Landsat satellites. Further information about EO-1 is available at URL: http://eo1.gsfc.nasa.gov/NUwww/miscPages/home.html
Earth Observing-2 will fly an infrared laser in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle to demonstrate the capabilities of a space-based lidar to accurately measure atmospheric winds from the Earth's surface to a height of about ten miles. This flight is scheduled for launch in early 2001. Details are available at URL: http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/sparcle/
The New Millennium program is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for NASA's Office of Space Science and Office of Earth Science, Washington, D.C. Further information about the New Millennium program is available at URL: http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/
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NASA will launch a Space Shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in October so astronauts can replace portions of the spacecraft's pointing system, which has begun to fail.
Hubble is operating normally and continuing to conduct its scientific observations, but only three of its six gyroscopes, which allow the telescope to point at stars, planets and other targets, are working properly. Two have failed and another is acting abnormally. If fewer than three gyroscopes are operating, Hubble cannot continue its science mission and automatically places itself in a protective "safe mode."
"The Hubble Space Telescope is the crown jewel of NASA's space observatories, and we need to do everything within reason to maintain the scientific output of this national treasure," said Dr. Edward Weiler, associate administrator for the Office of Space Science, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. "We appreciate the rapid response of the Space Shuttle community to this request."
"When Hubble reached the point of having no back-up gyros, our flight rules said we must look at what we term a 'call-up mission' to correct the situation," said Dr. John H. Campbell, the telescope's Project Director at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. "Since we are already involved in preparations for the scheduled third servicing mission next year, we essentially decided to divide the planned mission into two flights and reduce the workload on each."
A team of veteran astronauts had already begun training to install the new instruments and upgrade the telescope's systems. NASA astronauts Steven L. Smith, C. Michael Foale, John M. Grunsfeld and European Space Agency astronaut Claude Nicollier will perform the spacewalks on both servicing missions. Smith is the payload commander for the missions, coordinating the astronauts' space-walking activities. A flight crew for the servicing missions will be selected in the near future.
In addition to replacing all six gyroscopes on the October flight, the crew will replace a guidance sensor and the spacecraft's computer. The new computer will reduce the burden of flight software maintenance and significantly lower costs. A voltage/temperature kit will be installed to protect spacecraft batteries from overcharging and overheating when the spacecraft goes into safe mode. A new transmitter will replace a failed spare currently aboard the spacecraft, and a spare solid state recorder will be installed to allow efficient handling of high-volume data. Both missions will replace telescope insulation that has degraded. The insulation is necessary to control the internal temperature on the Hubble.
The later servicing mission will focus on installing the Advanced Camera for Surveys. With its new imaging capabilities, this camera will be 10 times more powerful than the present Faint Object Camera. New efficient rigid solar arrays will replace the existing solar arrays. Astronauts also will install the Aft-Shroud Cooling System. This new system is designed to carry heat away from the scientific instruments and to allow the instruments to operate better at lower temperatures. The cooling system allows multiple instruments to operate simultaneously, helping the science team maintain the program's high productivity.
In addition, an advanced cooling system will be installed on the Near-Infrared Camera and Multiobject Spectrometer, which became dormant after its solid nitrogen coolant was exhausted in January 1999.
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Lockheed Martin and NASA reportedly are involved in final discussions for the launch of a polar-orbiting Earth Science satellite from the spaceport at Kodiak Island, Alaska.
The publication Space Week, in its 1 March edition, reported that the satellite would be launched on an Athena rockets in what likely would be the first orbital mission originating from the spaceport on Kodiak Island, Alaska.
The NASA payload under discussion, according to the publication, is the Vegetation Canopy Lidar satellite, planned for launch in mid-2000. Originally, the payload was to be launched aboard a Pegasus XL rocket, built by Orbital Sciences Corp., Dulles, Virginia.
NASA spokesman Allen Kenitzer said the switch to the Athena was not prompted by weight growth of the payload, according to Space Week. Pegasus XL can place a 345-kilogram payload into polar, low Earth orbit. Athena can loft 520 kilograms into that orbit.
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from Zhenya Gallon, UCAR
Two research aircraft and 100 scientists and support staff have headed to the South Pacific to study what some have called the world's cleanest air. The 10 March–30 April flights are part of the second Pacific Exploratory Mission to the Tropics (PEM-Tropics B). Nine principal investigators from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are participating in the mission, which is part of the Global Tropospheric Experiment sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Researchers will gather data on the chemical species that affect formation of tropospheric ozone and sulfate aerosols. The goal is to determine how well the earth's atmosphere cleanses itself. This chemical process, called oxidation, includes removal of gases that would otherwise be warming the troposphere or causing stratospheric ozone depletion. The Tropics play a key role in determining the global oxidizing power of the atmosphere because the high levels of humidity and ultraviolet radiation found there promote the formation of oxidizing molecules.
PEM researchers aboard the NASA-Ames DC-8 jet and the NASA-Goddard P-3B turboprop will measure hundreds of chemical species and compounds using 35 instruments. The aircraft will be deployed from sites in Hawaii, Christmas Island, Tahiti, American Samoa, Easter Island, and Fiji to cover an area ranging roughly from the Cook Islands to the west coast of South America. Over 30 principal investigators from 17 U.S. universities and research laboratories are involved in the experiment.
The chemistry of the tropical Pacific's troposphere (the atmosphere's lowest layer, which reaches an average height of 16 kilometers, or 10 miles, over the Tropics) was largely unknown until the PEM-Tropics A mission in 1996, when researchers took extensive measurements during the Southern Hemisphere's dry season from August to October. They found significant levels of human-generated pollution, primarily from fires set to clear land for agriculture in Africa and possibly South America. PEM-Tropics B is returning during the wet season, when the impact of biomass burning in the Southern Hemisphere is expected to be much lower.
"We will have so many airborne instruments taking measurements that we'll be able to draw some conclusions about the chemistry of sulfate aerosols and the chemistry that's responsible for production and loss of tropospheric ozone," explains NCAR scientist Brian Ridley. The ability of sulfate aerosols to reflect the sun's radiation may be one reason that increasing greenhouse gases have not warmed the earth as much as some climate models have predicted. Sulfates also contribute to local pollution and acid rain. While the sources of tropospheric ozone include biomass burning and urban smog, this trace gas is also involved in the oxidizing process. Understanding the life cycle of ozone in the troposphere is vital to understanding the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere.
NCAR scientist Lee Mauldin is creating a Web site for the PEM mission aimed at K–12 students around the world (http://www.acd.ucar.edu/pem). He'll provide twice-weekly updates on what it's like to do science over the South Pacific. Mauldin will post photos of the mission in action; a link to his electronic mailbox will allow students to ask questions and see answers on the site. Contact him at mauldin@ucar.edu On the Web: PEM Field Mission: http://www.nasa.gov ; #PEM TROPICS-B Student site: http://www.acd.ucar.edu/pem
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Scientists from the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are working with two Australian groups to improve coral reef monitoring and help promote early warnings of future bleaching events. The scientists are making extensive use of satellites and computerized expert systems.
The reefs are extremely important and fragile ecosystems. They thrive as long as temperatures remain at or below certain temperatures for a given site. An increase of 1° or 2° above the usual maximum temperatures can be deadly to these animals. The temperature range for corals to thrive varies from site to site by only a few degrees. While many corals normally recover from short bleaching events, long-term or frequent bleaching may severely weaken the corals, leaving them more vulnerable to disease, damage, or death.
Current NOAA satellite and expert system observations indicate that temperature conditions around the Great Barrier Reef have been close to the bleaching threshold temperatures since mid-January. However, scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS), the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), and reef users have not reported any major bleaching so far.
Al Strong of NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service uses satellites to measure sea surface temperatures and identify HotSpots, warmer-than-usual areas in the oceans where bleaching could take place. Strong has been able to predict coral reef bleaching events over large ocean areas since 1997.
Part of the collaboration with the Australians aims to see how precisely satellites can predict the location of bleaching. Terry Done, AIMS senior principal research scientist, said, "The strength of the NOAA HotSpots is in locating the broad general areas where one might look for bleaching. Our teams are seeing great patchiness in bleaching within these broad areas, so with NOAA, we are going to see how far we can push the satellite technology to explain what we actually see on the reefs."
Jim Hendee of NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, Florida, has developed a suite of computerized "expert systems" to automatically scan weather data from U.S. and Australian weather stations. One system provides an alert via e-mail or the World Wide Web when conditions are thought to be conducive to coral bleaching. "Coral reefs, the rainforests of the sea, are some of the oldest and most biologically diverse ecosystems on earth," NOAA Administrator D. James Baker said. "Important assets to local and national economies, they produce fisheries for food, materials for new medicines, and income from tourism and recreation, as well as protect coastal communities from storms."
Coral bleaching can be a sign that the coral is being stressed by a number of factors, including pollution, sedimentation, high light levels, reduced water levels, or changes in salinity. Increases in water temperature of one degree or more for one month above the summer maximum often result in extensive coral bleaching, making coral reefs under these HotSpots prime candidates for bleaching events.
About 50 countries have reported coral bleaching to some degree in their reefs since 1997, Strong reports. He is among several authors who are publishing these unprecedented results, primarily over the Eastern Hemisphere coral reefs, in an upcoming issue of the scientific journal Ambio. During the El Niño of 1982–83, large areas of coral reefs around the world, including the Great Barrier Reef, were severely damaged by high water temperatures associated with coral bleaching.
Bleaching and other problems facing coral reefs were discussed at the first meeting of the Coral Reef Task Force in Key Biscayne, Florida, last October. The Coral Reef Task Force was created by an executive order signed 11 June 1998, by President Clinton.
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President Clinton has nominated Captain Nicholas A. Prahl of the NOAA Corps to head up NOAA's Atlantic and Pacific Marine Centers. If confirmed by the Senate, Prahl will receive the rank of rear admiral, lower half when he officially assumes his new duties.
Prahl's most recent assignment was as acting director of the Office of the Coast Survey, part of NOAA's National Ocean Service, where he managed the nation's nautical charting program. He will replace Rear Admiral John C. Albright, director of the marine centers, who plans to retire on 1 May.
The marine centers are part of the Office of NOAA Corps Operations, composed of civilians and commissioned officers of the NOAA Corps, the nation's seventh uniformed service. ONCO operates and manages NOAA's fleet of environmental research and survey ships and aircraft. The ships support the management of the nation's ocean fisheries; provide nautical charts for at-sea navigation to commercial, recreational, and military ships; and conduct coastal and deep water oceanography, including climate and global change studies. Of the 15 ships, eight are managed by the Atlantic Marine Center in Norfolk, Virginia, and seven by the Pacific Marine Center in Seattle, Washington.
"Captain Prahl is a truly outstanding officer with a proven track record. I'm confident that in his very capable hands, NOAA programs will receive the best ship support and service possible as we continue to expand our knowledge of the global environment," Albright said.
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Rear Admiral William L. Stubblefield retired as director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Corps and Office of NOAA Corps Operations, after a distinguished career in uniformed service that spanned 35 years, with 29 years at NOAA.
The Office of NOAA Corps Operations, composed of civilians and commissioned officers of the NOAA Corps, the nation's seventh uniformed service, operates and manages NOAA's fleet of environmental research and survey ships and aircraft. These ships support the management of the nation's ocean fisheries; provide nautical charts for at-sea navigation to commercial, recreational, and military ships; and conduct coastal and deep water oceanography, including climate and global change studies. The aircraft are the nation's premier means of conducting research inside hurricanes; providing the amount of snow pack necessary for predicting spring flooding in the midwest; and conducting coastline mapping and airport surveys.
Director since 1995, Stubblefield shepherded the NOAA Corps through its most troubled times, when it faced a four-year recruitment freeze and was targeted for disestablishment. Under his leadership, the Office of NOAA Corps Operations was streamlined to become more cost efficient while increasing the level of program support. The NOAA Commissioned Corps was recently authorized to continue its service to the nation at least through the year 2003, due in large part to Stubblefield's efforts.
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Donald J. Campbell, director of the NASA Glenn Research Center, has been named the 1998 Laboratory Director of the Year by the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer.
The award, presented by the consortium annually, honors laboratory directors who have made exemplary contributions to the overall advancement of technology transfer for economic development.
Campbell was selected in recognition of his successful efforts to broaden the commercialization of the NASA center's technologies. In the last five years, at least 20 new products have been created because of center-developed technologies. The Glenn Research Center formerly was known as the Lewis Research Center.
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In its 8 February issue, Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine awarded one of its annual Laurels in the electronics category to two researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research for their lead role in developing a new method of measuring atmospheric turbulence from commercial aircraft. The magazine honored Larry Cornman and Tenny Lindholm for developing technology and beginning the implementation of an aircraft-based system to gather detailed turbulence data. The data will be obtained automatically by aircraft during revenue operations and periodically data-linked to the ground, where it will be used to improve current forecast models and, ultimately, warn flight crews of hazardous conditions ahead. The FAA- (Federal Aviation Administration) funded program, spearheaded by NCAR and initially implemented by United Airlines and Allied Signal, eventually will include aircraft from other airlines for a total of up to 350 transports flying routes over the United States and across the Pacific Ocean.
The research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation through an interagency agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration's Aviation Weather Development Program. Corinne Morse, also at NCAR, was the lead software engineer on the project.
This year's award is Cornman's second Laurel from the magazine. In 1990 he was recognized for his work on the Low-Level Wind Shear Alert System, developed at NCAR with FAA funding. The system is now deployed at airports around the country. Cornman has worked for the past decade on methods of detecting and forecasting turbulence in the United States and elsewhere. He holds undergraduate degrees in both mathematics and physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a graduate degree in physics from the University of Colorado.
Lindholm, a former Air Force pilot, is a specialist in matching the needs of weather information users with the research and development activities of scientists and engineers. He earned a bachelor's degree from the U.S. Air Force Academy in aeronautical engineering and three master's degrees from different institutions. Lindholm has worked on all aspects of the uplink and downlink of weather information for over five years.
"I'm very pleased that Aviation Week recognizes the importance of turbulence research," says Cornman. "I used to call turbulence the 'silent problem' of aviation safety. Maybe now it's finding a voice."
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As the Newsletter goes to press, word has been received that Penny Dalton, formerly minority senior staff member with the Senate Oceans and Fisheries Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, has been named assistant administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). She will be replacing Roland Schmitten, who is moving to the Department of Commerce where he will assume duties as Assistant Deputy Secretary of Commerce for International Affairs. No other details are available at this time.
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