Recently, a federal government report surfaced that states a plan exists to cut weather monitoring satellites from six to four. Those four satellites would concentrate on weather prediction and reduce the emphasis on global warming and climate research.

The U.S. federal government, led by the Bush White House, states that the reductions are due to cost concerns—specifically, the program is costing $10 billion, drastically up from the original cost of $6.5 billion. Instead of the extra satellites, the United States is planning to rely on weather satellites launched by the European Union.

U.S. government scientists warn that if this program is reduced in federal funding, then the United States will lose much of its ability to monitor global warming from satellites in space. They also contend that the reduction will place the country’s overall climate program at serious risk, especially with regard to the continuing study of ice sheets and caps, glacier sizes, surface levels of water bodies, snow cover, and atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) is the next-generation weather satellite system that has been under development since 1994. It will monitor the Earth’s atmosphere, weather, oceans, land surfaces, and near-space environment.

Due to cost overruns and technical glitches, the first launch of a NPOESS satellite, earlier scheduled for 2010, will probably not happen until at the earliest 2013 or 2014. Technical problems and cost overruns have centered on problems in sensor development.

Northrop Grumman Space Technology is the prime contractor for providing system integration for the NPOESS project. Raytheon, Ball Aerospace and Technologies, and Boeing are the three companies developing the sensors for the satellites.

NPOESS is a joint effort among the Department of Defense (U.S. Air Force), the Department of Commerce (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The new satellites would replace satellites now in orbit, which were independently built and operated by the defense organization Department of the Defense (DoD) and the civilian organization Department of Commerce (DoC).

The civilian part of the NPOESS project is called the Polar Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) program. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration runs POES.

The military part of the NPOESS project is called the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DNSP). The program, operated by NOAA, monitors meteorological, oceanographic, and solar-terrestrial physics for the DoD.

Initially the idea was to combine military and civilian uses for these new generation weather satellites in order to save over $1 billion.

Additional information on the problems with the NPOESS program that was reported about one year ago (June 9, 2006) can be found in the New York Times article “Officials Report Progress In Weather Satellite Effort”) by Kenneth Chang.  

If you have a subscription, you can also go to the New York Times website at: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0F12FE39550C7A8CDDAF0894DE404482&n=Top%2fNews%2fScience%2fTopics%2fGlobal%20Warming.

The NOAA website for NPOESS is found at: http://www.ipo.noaa.gov/.

The Ball Aerospace website for NPOESS is located at: http://www.ballaerospace.com/npoess.html.

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Climate  Earth  Global warming  NASA  Satellite services  Science  William Atkins