• In particular, there is ‘’substantial concern” about the pending loss of an important satellite-based instrument employed by tropical weather forecasters and hurricane researchers.
The QuikSCAT information helps scientists estimate wind speeds at the ocean’s surface. That information contributes to year-round forecasts of marine conditions, and it’s crucially important to hurricane specialists, helping them assess the strength of storms that are far from land and often enabling the identification of new tropical systems.
OUTDATED DEVICE
But the device is well past its designed lifetime, which was expected to end by 2002, and budget concerns and technical compromises prompted NOAA to replace it with a less sophisticated instrument that still hasn’t been launched, the committee said.
• Much of NASA’s budget and many of its scientists are being diverted to the human space program that was reenergized by President Bush’s proposal to send astronauts back to the moon and onward to Mars.
The president’s 2007 budget reduced NASA’s research and analysis budget for science missions 15 percent compared to 2005. Since 2000, the agency’s earth-science budget has been slashed 30 percent. That caused the elimination of some projects, including measurements of solar radiation and Earth radiation that could help scientists understand global warming.
