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Climate Change and Particular Weather Events: Revisiting Recent Research
David Sandalow, Acting Undersecretary of Energy and Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Energy, recently spoke at the Columbia University Energy Symposium about Hurricane Sandy, its impacts on our energy infrastructure, and what we can expect in a climate-changing world. Addressing climate change, he states: (more…)
NOAA Seeking Public Input: How to Address the Satellite Gap?
As we highlighted previously, the United States is approaching an unenviable challenge: the possibility of 17 months worth of dramatically diminished weather satellite coverage (to be precise, the loss of two polar-orbiting satellites that are critical for accurate weather forecasting). This seems astonishing in the wake of such a devastating and unpredictable storm as Sandy, but the reasons for it lie in past mistakes that are not so easily, or quickly, corrected.
For this reason, as reported by Climate Central, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is seeking public input on “how to maintain the accuracy of the agency’s weather forecasts despite the loss of satellite-derived data.”
Click here for additional details, and/or to submit a comment. The deadline is 5:00 p.m. (presumably Eastern) on December 19, 2012.
A Satellite Gap May Be Coming
FCW just ran a worrying piece on the very high possibility of a “gap” in the United States’ weather observation systems that may last as long as 17 months. This is due to a number of reasons, including aging satellites and a replacement program that came up short on funds, and disbanded. According to David Powner, director of IT management issues for the Government Accountability Office, “potential contingency plans could include a combination of utilizing European satellite data, a deal with the DOD to harness its satellite data, or increased ground-based observational data…”
In the wake of the recent disaster, and given climate projections that foresee an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, this is a problem that should be of the highest priority for U.S. national security planners.
Click here for more.
New CNAS report: “Using Space Technologies for Disaster Response”
Will Rogers at the Center for a New American Security has recently published an interesting policy brief titled “Sentries in the Sky: Using Space Technologies for Disaster Response.” The piece makes a strong case for continuing to support these technologies for disaster response, which will incidentally have national security, environmental and climate co-benefits. On page four, Will discusses the utility of “altimetry sensors” in assessing sea level rise, which can be a factor in both sudden-onset disasters (such as tsunamis) and slow-onset disasters (such as coral bleaching and salination of water and soils). As Rogers states, data from these sensors “help scientists detect changes in sea level, which can be input into advanced models for everything from forecasting weather to projecting rises in sea level resulting from climate change.” Here’s an excerpt from this section of the brief: (more…)