Scientists Warn of Diminished Earth Studies From Space

source: New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/sc...gewanted=print

January 16, 2007
Scientists Warn of Diminished Earth Studies From Space
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
The nation's ability to track retreating polar ice and shifting
patterns of drought, rainfall and other environmental changes is being
put "at great risk" by faltering efforts to replace aging
satellite-borne sensors, a panel convened by the country's leading
scientific advisory group said.

By 2010, the number of operating Earth-observing instruments on NASA
satellites, most of which are already past their planned lifetimes, is
likely to drop by 40 percent, the National Research Council of the
National Academies warned in a report posted on the Internet yesterday
at www.nas.edu.

The weakening of these monitoring efforts comes even as many scientists
and the Bush administration have been emphasizing their growing
importance, both to clarify risks from global warming and natural
hazards and to track the condition of forests, fisheries, water and
other resources.

Several prominent scientists welcomed the report, saying that while the
overall tightening of the federal budget played a role in threatening
Earth-observing efforts, a significant contributor was also President
Bush's recent call for NASA to focus on manned space missions.

"NASA has a mission ordering that starts with the presidential goals
- first of manned flight to Mars, and second, establishing a
permanent base on the Moon, and then third to examine Earth, which puts
Earth rather far down on the totem pole," said F. Sherwood Rowland,
an atmospheric chemist at the University of California, Irvine, who
shared a Nobel Prize for identifying threats to the ozone layer.

In an e-mail statement, John H. Marburger III, President Bush's
science adviser and director of the Office of Science and Technology
Policy, acknowledged that there were many challenges to maintaining and
improving Earth-observing systems, but said the administration was
committed to keeping them a "top science priority."

The report, "Earth Science and Applications From Space: National
Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond," proposed spending
roughly $7.5 billion in constant 2006 dollars on new instruments and
satellite missions through 2020, saying that would satisfy various
scientific and societal priorities while holding annual costs around
what they were, as a percentage of the economy, in 2000.

"We're trying to present a balanced, affordable program that spans
all the earth sciences," said Richard A. Anthes, the co-chairman of
the committee that wrote the report and the new president of the
American Meteorological Society.

The report is the latest in a string of findings from such panels
pointing to dangers from recent disinvestment in the long-term
monitoring of a fast-changing planet.

"This is the most critical time in human history, with the population
never before so big and with stresses growing on the Earth," Dr.
Anthes said. "We just want to get back to the United States being a
leader instead of someone you can't count on."

Satellite-borne instruments, using radar, lasers and other technology,
have revolutionized earth and climate science, allowing researchers to
accurately and efficiently track parameters like sea level and tiny
motions of the Earth from earthquakes, the amount of rain in a cyclone
and moisture in air, and the average temperature of various layers of
the atmosphere.

The committee identified significant gaps in instrumentation or plans
for satellites orbiting over the poles, around the Equator, and
positioned so that they remain stationary over spots on the rotating
Earth.

One of the most important aspects of such monitoring is launching new
satellites before old ones fail. Without this overlap, it is hard to
assemble meaningful long-term records that are sufficiently precise to
uncover trends, the report's authors said.

The report went beyond discussing ailing hardware and said the White
House science policy office should do more to ensure that society and
science were benefiting fully from the reams of data flowing from
orbiting instruments.

Senior officials at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration welcomed the report and said it would be considered as
they sought to sustain Earth observations in a time of tight budgets.

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