 stopped working in November. )
EARTH UNOBSERVED? A fleet of Earth-observing satellites is on its last legs. An antenna on QuikScat (shown) stopped working in November.
Image: NASA
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Satellites aren't built to last forever, so it's not a big surprise that the third and last laser on NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) quit working on October 11, outlasting its designed mission length by three and a half years. Since its launch in 2003 ICESat has been a critical instrument for continuously monitoring how much ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland are contributing to the rise of the world's oceans and how much the swath of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is thinning—both of which are occurring faster than projected.
The loss of ICESat, however, is a signal of what the future holds for NASA's ailing Earth Observing System (EOS), which is dying just as it is most needed to inform decisions and policy on climate change.
Today, 14 of the 15 satellites currently making climatic observations on Earth are far beyond their designed life-expectancies, with the exception being the Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM):
- Landsat 7
- Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM)
- Quik Scatterometer (QuikSCAT)
- Terra
- Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor Satellite (ACRIMSAT)
- Earth Observing 1
- Jason 1
- Aqua
- Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat)
- Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)
- Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE)
- Aura
- CloudSat
- Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO)
- Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)
Several of these are expected to "go dark" in the next two years, robbing scientists of critical data needed for monitoring climate change and verifying international agreements, just as a critical mass of global players is agreeing that such agreements are essential to the future health of the world's people and economies.
For more than a decade these Earth-observing satellites have provided some of the first environmental measurements on a global scale, including large-scale changes in the mass of polar ice. Scientists have learned how fast oceans are rising and why. They've also found out how hurricanes develop, strengthen and weaken.
Planned replacements for Earth-observing satellites are inadequate, too. The various airplanes that carry the instruments for ICE Bridge, a stopgap measure until ICESat's successor is launched five years from now, have limited coverage. So, consecutive measurements for tracking global ice patterns will not resume until 2015, after ICESat 2 enters orbit.
"If we don't have continuous measurements, we basically close our eyes for awhile," says senior scientist Thorsten Markus, head of the Cyropheric Sciences Branch at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "It is critical that we continue those time-series observations. For climate change, the satellite provides the only means to truly monitor the Earth on a global basis. There is simply no other way."
Satellite imagery is used for all sorts of climate study, from identifying conditions that allow infectious diseases like West Nile virus and cholera to emerge, to creating models for predicting hurricanes, to distinguishing natural resources such as wind, water and sunlight.
"We are impaired in our ability to understand what is happening and how the Earth works," explains Waleed Abdalati, a former NASA scientist and director of the Earth Science and Observation Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. "In the last five years the ice has been changing in ways no one predicted. When you combine continuous measurement, you get the complete story. With a piecemeal approach, such as the one we have now, you get far less."
In addition to ICESat's breakdown and the failed launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory in February 2009, other vital EOS satellites are in trouble. An antenna on QuikScat stopped working in November. Landsat 7 has a problem with its Scan Line Corrector, causing gaps in data.
"As soon as Landsat 7 fails completely, we will not have Landsat observations until 2013 when LandSat's successor is scheduled for launch," says senior scientist Compton Tucker of NASA's Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Lab at Goddard. Tucker uses remote sensing to study vegetation and land use. "If you want to understand emissions, you need to understand land use and land cover change, especially when you have forests cut down and replaced by herbaceous vegetation."
NASA is developing or studying just seven Earth-observing scientific satellites for launch in the next seven years:
- GLORY
- Aquarius
- NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP)
- Soil Moisture Active-Passive (SMAP)
- LandSat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM)
- Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM)
- Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat 2)
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18 Comments
Add CommentOr maybe the Satellite was giving the wrong information and Al Gore had them turn it off. It isn't that we don't believe there is a problem , we just don't trust the sources anymore. The 7 day forecast is never 100% and you Think you know 100 years down the road, Give us a break.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat may be so, but I'm still going to watch my wallet until this little problem is addressed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a big planet and we're not the only country here with a stake at maintaining the ecological status quo. I'd also like to point out that we are no longer in the US vs. USSR race to take over the world, orbital space, the Universe, and everything.
Take for example, George W.'s largest mistake in destroying Iraq in 2003 -- lack of a coalition. W used stealth and blitzkrieg to create a pig's breakfast out of what was once a beautiful city, and replaced 1 maniacal dictator with who knows how many factions of anti-western terrorist franchises?
And he did it all under the guise of WMD that never appeared. This was a unilateral decision brought off with smoke an mirrors. Look what peace and prosperity it's brought to the region.
You want NASA to help "fix" the planet, then first lets build a coalition, make some plans, assign roles and responsibilities, and act like an advanced technical society of vast resources, together, with the other inhabitants of the planet.
I'd rather we not turn "Global Warming" into the battle cry for the next Blackwater profit center funded by the American middle-class, please.
We don't need any Earth monitoring satellites anyway... The computer models we use to predict future climate are so reliable and accurate and consistent that it would be a waste of money to replace them. After all we are confident enough in using the models to make economic decisions costing billions of dollars. Actual data will only continue to match the computer models anyhow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe don't need any Earth monitoring satellites anyway... The computer models we use to predict future climate are so reliable and accurate and consistent that it would be a waste of money to replace them. After all we are confident enough in using the models to make economic decisions costing billions of dollars. Actual data will only continue to match the computer models anyhow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe don't need any Earth monitoring satellites anyway... The computer models we use to predict future climate are so reliable and accurate and consistent that it would be a waste of money to replace them. After all we are confident enough in using the models to make economic decisions costing billions of dollars. Actual data will only continue to match the computer models anyhow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI sometimes wonder if our global climate change deniers are planning on fixing any problems by prayer. We'll just get lots of prayer warriors on their knees and have them pray the problem away.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPersonally, I would prefer that we keep making detailed and long-term observations of this planet. Our simulations are still less than perfect, but to draw the conclusion that since they are imperfect, there is no reason to speculate that there IS a problem is, in my humble opinion, foolish.
Science has done more to bring us into enlightenment in just 200 years than religion did in 2000. The naturalistic method of scientific inquiry has given us computers, cell phones and modern transportation. These are all wonderful developments that can't be accredited to religious inquiry. Are we to therefore turn our backs on scientific inquiry because we don't like the warnings it provides?
Of course real science is underfunded at NASA. They spend the bulk of their revenue on manned space flight using the Shuttle while short changing real science such as monitoring the earth and other unmanned programs. The biggest manned flight accomplishment recently is collecting garbage and trash from the equally useless International Space Station. What have they done besides grow turnip seeds? No wonder there is little money to measure the earth. NASA succumbs to the No Buck Rogers, no bucks syndrome that pervades their thinking. It's sad but that's the state we're in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> The 7 day forecast is never 100% and you Think you know 100 years down the road, Give us a break.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmazing. There are still people who can't grasp the difference between weather and climate.
Here's a couple of links that will alleviate your ignorance if you read and understand them:
* http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=weather-is-not-climate-2009-04-28
* http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/noaa-n/climate/climate_weather.html
So as reported , any questions are to be ridiculed. I do grasp a slight difference .It is you that are ignorant with your lack of understanding the history of the Earth which has always changed and will continue to change . NASA has been giving out bad BS on Climate Change and or global warming and or another ice age circa the 1970's. And as for scientific American I respect A lot of the information i read .But I also realize funding comes from the government so i treat most of what i read as propaganda .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswarpsix: firstly, you didn't ask a question, you made a statement. secondly, you are being ridiculed because that statement demonstrated you don't even have a basic understanding of the issue at hand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisit's impossible to predict the next roll of a roulette wheel, but still casinos somehow stay in business. forecasting the weather more than a few days in advance is very hard, yet we can be pretty sure that (away from the equator, natch) midsummer will be wamer than midwinter. but according to your logic, neither of those should be the case, since we apparently cannot identify the long-term trends underlying short-term unpredictability.
by the way, since when has SA been getting govenment funding? that's news to me, as i imagine it is to the publishers.
myrmidon: you do realise that the models are heavily based on input from, and are verified against, satellite data, don't you? that's one of the reasons why the NASA scientists are getting upset.
"I sometimes wonder if our global climate change deniers are planning on fixing any problems by prayer."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have spoken to members of some American Evangelical Christian groups who want to do as much harm to the environment as possible so that they will hasten the day of revelations.
"We don't need to protect the environment. The second coming is at hand." - James Watt, Secretary of the Interior, Reagan Administration.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear Bob Ed,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDon't worry any more, the Space Shuttle is retired or will be very shortly.
Then all trips to the Space Station will be done by our allies , the Russians.
I'd be wary of relying on computer models instead of satellites as one poster suggested. Look how well they worked on Wall Street...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe average temperature in December 2009 was 30.2 F. This was -3.2 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 14th coolest December in 115 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will say it again for the ignorant , Stop believing the propaganda . 30 years ago they were talking ice-age and some still do it is the weather stupid it changes there are deserts where lush green forest used to be ,change happens quit blaming what you do Not understand, professor.
Your mom said otherwise last night
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Is there anything Republicans touch that they don't destroy?" The GOP is the cure for your Marxist ways , If you had 2 brain cells in that head of yours you would notice that your savior obama is corrupt. By the way your court appointed doctor said take 2 pills and wait in your rubber room for the next treatment you troll.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe not going to the moon is a good decision for NASA at this point in time if it frees more resources for earth observation sats.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this