ATMOSPHERIC BLIND SPOT: Budget cuts are forcing U.S. government scientists to stop monitoring rising levels of greenhouse gases.
Image: flickr/mikemol
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spends roughly $6 million per year to sample carbon dioxide, methane and nearly 20 other gases using a global network of ground stations, tall towers and aircraft.
But faced with shrinking budgets and an uncertain fiscal future, NOAA has stopped measuring greenhouse gas levels at a dozen ground stations, eliminated some aircraft monitoring and cut the frequency of remaining measurements in half. The agency scrapped plans to expand its network of tall towers and is now moving to shut down some of the seven existing sites.
The cuts come at a time when governments are pushing for more detailed information about sources and sinks of greenhouse gases. Scientists say the decision to shrink NOAA's monitoring network -- the world's largest -- threatens their ability to provide those answers.
"The reality is that countries are making commitments that will cost millions, if not billions, of investment in climate-related work, and governments want more certainty about what's happening, what other countries are doing," said Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project. "We barely have enough to provide what a lot of agencies are asking for. The prospect of having fewer sampling stations around the world is a frightening one."
Canadell is one of more than 50 researchers who signed a letter, published last week in the journal Science, warning that additional cuts to NOAA's monitoring program could harm U.S. national security and render useless the hundreds of millions of dollars that several nations, including the United States, have spent developing new CO2-monitoring satellites.
Putting a crimp in long-term monitoring
The situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.
Last year, NOAA sought $5.5 billion but received $600 million less with Congress slashing the agency's ocean, fisheries and research accounts. Lawmakers also approved legislation that mandates automatic, across-the-board spending cuts beginning in January.
Agency sources said they have been told to expect a budget cut of at least 5 percent for fiscal 2013, which begins Oct. 1.
"What you've got is a critical and small -- in terms of dollars -- operation that is being subjected to targeted strain," said Scott Lehman, a research professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said of NOAA's monitoring effort. "You don't balance the federal budget on the strength of $6 million programs."
NOAA's greenhouse gas monitoring network continues work that began in 1958, when Charles Keeling, a geochemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, began measuring atmospheric CO2 levels at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.
Keeling's monitoring produced the now-famous "Keeling curve," a graph showing the steady growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the last 54 years, from 315 parts per million in 1958 to roughly 392 parts per million today.
"Without that, all we are, scientifically, is totally blind about what's happening in the atmosphere," said Taro Takahashi, an ocean scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
NOAA began making its own measurements of CO2 at Mauna Loa in 1974, an effort that eventually expanded to roughly 100 sites around the world where the agency monitors 20 gases that affect the global carbon cycle using samples collected by ground stations and observatories, tall towers and aircraft (ClimateWire, Dec. 14, 2009).
"We like long-term measurements," said Pieter Tans, who leads NOAA's greenhouse gas monitoring effort, which is based at the agency's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. "We'd like at certain sites to stay there for many decades, because trends in the differences between sites tell you something about emissions, about changes in uptake or output in large regions."
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10 Comments
Add CommentIt is all about priorities in times of limited resources. NOAA is playing games by shutting dowm the stations to try to get additional funding when they could have cut costs in other areas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGet used to it. The ostriches who ignore the almost 16 trillion dollar federal debt are getting a wake up call in all facets of government spending...and these are nothing compared to what is yet to come.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUS Federal funding of science is going to be decimated. Fewer 'formal' science dollars is just a tip of a larger iceberg of cutbacks looming. Most of it will be indirect through cuts in Military weapons projects, Health research, etc.
Cutting research dollars has always been a false path to a better economy. This is the true "head in the sand" stance. Restoring taxes to their proper levels will do a much better job of sustaining the economy and solve the budget deficits than these types of cuts. Climate data is necessary to all our efforts to avert a global disaster far beyond the deficit impacts on the world's budgets.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat;s the difference? The warmists report the data based on what they wish it was. Why give more money to "scientists" like that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Climate data is necessary to all our efforts to avert a global disaster far beyond the deficit impacts on the world's budgets."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy?...We already know that the end is nigh. Those 'models' have us all perishing a dozen times over from some disaster of global warming.
Cuts are no longer 'a choice'. The cookie jar is full of IOU's. There is no extra money hidden under the government's bed.
oh, look, we agree <g>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYep, regardless of anything, there will be cuts everywhere, even in science. Regardless of right or wrong.
As long as people don't forget that it is Bush jr who put the US in this situation. Obama is only trying to mend what Bush caused. Not that he is doing a perfect job of it, but I believe the other guy would have done even worse. And the new other guy promising zillion of jobs? He who became a multi-millionaire by killing US jobs? How ridiculous!
(BTW, why the Dems don't insist on who opened "Guano" or who got them in the wars or who bankrupted the country is something that amazes me every day.)
I see vitriol in many of these responses. I'm always sorry to see that. The organization referred to, BTW, is not one involved so much in modeling, but provides high quality, long-term observations and serves as the backbone of global monitoring networks for greenhouse gases, stratospheric ozone, ozone depleting gases, aerosols, and surface radiation. The scientific papers that come from these observations most often refute extreme claims on either end of the spectrum, but are welcome by all, since they fundamentally are grounded by high quality observations and cannot be refuted by arm waving and hyperbole. The letter in Science, written by Earth-system scientists from around the world, simply laments the decline in funding and the loss of observing systems and scientists as a result. Observations lost today cannot be obtained tomorrow. It's sad, because these observations are extremely cheap. For example, the funding for a recent, failed satellite launch would support this organization's measurements and research for 50+ years. One will never balance the federal budget, or come even close to it, by cutting this and other efficient organizations like it within government. Such cuts are the equivalent to cutting one's nose off to spite his face.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe NOAA has a huge budget but has put keeping the stations in question a lower priority to other expenses in their budget. The NOAA needs better management to be effective within the funds available.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see many have 'ideas' about how to solve the issue but none of the authors seem willing to seek office to help realize these 'ideas'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt just has to be someone else who needs advice.
Kind of funny.
I sense a more vaguely defined desire to just have
things work out OK so no one has to worry. Its called
American dismissiveness.
Can this be mitigated? Is it possible to bring political pressure to bear on those members of the House responsible for the cuts? Who are they? Which committees are responsible? Their members?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps it's time to kick butt and take names. This is an EXTREMELY irresponsible move on the part of the politicians who've made the decisions.