Image above: Rendering of GEOS Weather Satellite. From (http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/41226).
America and Europe face a "disaster in the making" because of Congress budget cuts to a critical weather satellite, one of Barack Obama's top science officials has warned.
The satellite crosses the Earth's poles 14 times a day, monitoring the atmosphere, clouds, ice, vegetation, and oceans. It provides 90% of the information used by the National Weather Service, UK Met Office and other European agencies to predict severe storms up to seven days in advance.
But Republican budget-cutting measures would knock out that critical capacity by delaying the launch of the next generation of polar-orbiting satellites, said Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (Noaa).
"It is a disaster in the making. It's an expression of the dysfunction in our system," said Lubchenco, who was speaking at a dinner on the sidelines of the Society of Environmental Journalists meeting in Miami.
It would cost three to five times more to rebuild the project after a gap than to keep the funds flowing. "It's insanity," Lubchenco said.
2011 has set new records for extreme weather events in the US and around the world, bringing hurricanes, heatwaves, floods, tornadoes, blizzards, droughts and wildfires. Ten of those events, including last August's devastating Hurricane Irene, inflicted damages of at least $1bn.
Climate change is expected to produce more extreme weather events in the future, making accurate long-range weather forecasts even more essential.
Forecasters say the information from the polar orbiters is critical to providing early notice of unusually powerful storms and tornadoes – buying time for governments and disaster responders in both the US and Europe.
Data from the satellite is shared equally between the US and the European satellite agency, EUmetsat, which passes the information on to the Met Office and other agencies.
But budget cuts could delay the launch of its successor by up to 18 months, essentially leaving US and European forecasters with a big blind spot starting in late 2016.
"It will be going backwards in 20 years' time," said Lubchenco.
A new polar-orbiting satellite is due for launch later this week. Its life expectancy is five years, which means Noaa needs to begin designing its replacement and preparing for its launch in this budget year, she said.
Noaa had originally asked for $1.06bn for its weather satellite programme, but Congress cut that sharply. It put some of the money back in the aftermath of last April's tornadoes, which killed hundreds across the south-east and in the town of Joplin, Missouri.
Mitch Goldberg, the scientist on Noaa's satellite programme, said the information and hi-resolution images from the polar orbiters were a big advance from earlier satellites.
During the 2010 Snowmageddon, information from the polar-orbiting satellite enabled Noaa scientists to accurately predict there would be 18-24in of snow up to a week before the storm, Goldberg said in a phone interview.
Forecasts without information from the polar-orbiting satellite predicted only 7-10in of snow, Goldberg said.
He said information from the satellite was also crucial to monitoring crops and wildfires, algae blooms and red tides.
But the accuracy of those forecasts were heavily dependent on maintaining a constant flow of data.
"It's all about the continuity," Goldberg said.
Video above: "2011 - A Year of Extreme Weather", by the Environmental Defense Fund. From (http://support.edf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Extreme_Weather_Video).
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