Posted on 06/30/2011 8:00:10 PM PDT by smokingfrog
If the U.S. Congress does not provide the necessary funding to build and launch the country's planned next-generation weather satellite, meteorologists' ability to accurately predict the weather will be hobbled.
That was the warning delivered Tuesday in Boulder by Kathryn Sullivan, assistant administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Sullivan was visiting Ball Aerospace, which has been chosen by NOAA to build the body of the weather satellite, known as the Joint Polar Satellite System.
JPSS was originally scheduled for launch in 2014. But Congress' inability to pass a new budget in 2011 meant that the funding for building JPSS stayed at 2010 levels. President Barack Obama had asked to increase funding for the project from $382 million to $1.06 billion so that contractors, including Ball, could get to work on building both the spacecraft and the instruments that will ride on board.
The JPSS launch has been now been delayed by 18 months to late 2016, which means that that the satellite may not make it to space in time to pick up where its predecessor leaves off, Sullivan said. A gap in data would have serious impacts on forecasters' ability to predict the weather and give advance warning for severe weather events.
"It means that the confidence you can have for a 10-day forecast retreats to a three- to five-day outlook," Sullivan said.
Ninety-three percent of the data that goes into the National Weather Service's numerical weather prediction model comes from satellites, and the majority of the satellite data comes from polar-orbiting satellites, like the future JPSS satellite, Sullivan said. A gap in that data -- which may happen even if Congress fully funds the project beginning in fiscal year 2012 -- will make forecasts less accurate.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycamera.com ...
Hey, quick, anybody out there have any confidence at all in those 10 day outlooks?
Well, if they hadn’t purposely blown up the last one during the ascent stage of launch, funding might not have been a problem.
Hell no. Old Farmer’s Almanac is probably just as useful as NWS.
“If the U.S. Congress does not provide the necessary funding to build and launch the country’s planned next-generation weather satellite, meteorologists’ ability to accurately predict the weather will be hobbled.”
Don’t care. 5 days out is good enough. Weather heads cannot get it right 1 day out. Not spending a billion so they can still get it wrong.
Plus the data is useless. I can save the government a cool billion.. Watch.... The data shows global warming,
They want to blame the delay in funding on congress not passing a budget. She should have asked O why he didn’t pass a budget when the dems had had both sen and house before Jan?
What a coincidence. Obama mentions that the weather service will be impacted by the budget issues. Then the very next day, this story appears in the MSM. Is this a coincidence or was it planted here as part of a plan?????
Farmer’s Almanac and open the kitchen window.
We are broke.
Just a coincidence. /s
I don’t mean to start a libertarian WOD holy war, but please realize the there are over 180 medicinal marijuana clinics in Boulder. I don’t have big expectations for any new technology coming from that particular People’s Republic.
If the USA hadn’t frittered away trillions waging wars and rebuilding other countries, we could have done a lot more for our own country. Curing cancer, Alzheimers and having more helpful important functions such as accurate long term weather forecasting, and forecasting earthquakes are but a few that could have been helped enormously by using the costs of a few months of these wars.
When was the last time that the USA was actually defending our own borders with our military, instead of having them places we have no business being?
We fight wars for other nations and get nothing in return for the process. These other nations should be paying mightily for our security forces.
Sorry. The Democrats have decided it is a priority to study space therefore they have allocated all extra funding for Pell Grants to boost the cosmetologist graduation rate.
More Obama bullshit. We have other weather satellites and so does the rest of the world. I’m old entire to remember TIROS, NIMBUS, etc.
And in a temporary pinch, we can always buy one from somebody - France, Israel, Iran, No. Korea, Red China, Russia, etc.
In fact, we can probably go to “Satellites R Us” and get one.
How about buying one from private industry in the U.S.? That’s a job creator, isn’t it?
This should not be a problem as they can just fudge the weather data like they have been fudging the climate data.
Forecasting (guessing?) couldn’t get much worse than it already is, so I say cut all of it.
That 9 O’clock news forecast is about as useful as the rest of the broadcast. However, using NOAA’s aviation weather, which has no BS, just pure observations, forecasting when it might snow three weeks out is child’s play. In fact, many of us plan work from home days around such forecasts of when it might snow. When it is thunderstorming outside and has been all day I can use NOAA’s weather observations and find that magic window of when things will settle down for a perfect flight.
It isn’t NOAA, it’s all those talking heads on the news stations trying to inject their opinions.
Defund and close whatever department of NASA James Hansen works in, permanently, and transfer the funds to the satellite project.
Done deal.
In my area they are all weather girls and they are dressed like they are in a nightclub.
If old fear cards fail childern,police,firemen create a new one budget card.
Been living just fine for 57 years with out it. Pay down the debt
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