From the “weather is not climate department” a tool that will measure both.
GREENBELT, Md. – The last of five instruments slated to fly on the upcoming NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) climate and weather satellite have been successfully integrated, according to NASA officials. The polar-orbiting satellite is scheduled to launch in late 2011.
The CrIS mechanical, electrical and performance testing was successfully completed and the NPP Satellite team is now working to finish the satellite Pre-Environmental Test baseline performance phase. The Environmental Test flow, which includes Dynamics, Electromagnetic Compatibility, and Thermal testing, is scheduled to begin this October.
The five-instrument suite will collect and distribute remotely sensed land, ocean, and atmospheric data to the meteorological and global climate change communities. It will provide atmospheric and sea surface temperatures, humidity sounding, land and ocean biological productivity, cloud and aerosol properties and total/profile ozone measurements.
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NPP’s five-instrument suite will monitor Earth’s weather, atmosphere, oceans, land and near-space environment. The instruments are the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS); Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS); Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS); Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS); Clouds and the Earth Radiant Energy System (CERES). Credit: Ball Aerospace Data produced by the CrIS instrument combined with data from the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder, another NPP instrument, will provide global atmospheric temperature, moisture and pressure profiles from space.
The other three instruments include: the Visible/Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite, which will collect information about atmospheric clouds, the earth radiation budget, clear-air land/water surfaces, sea surface temperature, ocean color, and produces low light visible imagery; the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite, which will monitor ozone and continue the daily global data produced by the current ozone monitoring systems, but with higher fidelity and the Cloud and Earth Radiant Energy System that will measure the Earth’s radiant energy balance and help researchers to develop improved weather forecasts and climate model predictions.
The NPP mission is a NASA-managed project to provide continuity with NASA’s Earth Observing System measurements and to provide risk reduction for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) managed by the NPOESS Integrated Program Office, a tri-agency program made up of NASA, NOAA and the U.S. Department of Defense. However in 2010, due to cost overruns and delays, a task force led by the President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy recommended against continuing NPOESS.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages the NPP mission on behalf of the Earth Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, Washington.
Goddard Release No. 10-063
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Sorry for the OT, but can someone at WUWT take a look at the following paper. Does this not show a direct correlation between global temps and the sun’s angular momentum, disputing the notion ‘it’s not the sun, it’s CO2’ ?:
‘I do not expect that the effects of man-made greenhouse gases will eliminate the sun’s predominance. If these effects were as strong as the IPCC pretends, my diverse climate forecasts, exclusively based on solar activity, would not have had any chance to turn out correct. This all the more so as they cover recent years and decades the warming of which, according to IPCC statements, cannot be explained by natural forcing.’
http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/new-e.htm
His latest paper supports earlier findings:
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/2010/06/07/scafettas-new-paper/
Again sorry for the OT
Rob
I expect its launch to be delayed by cooling clima… , er, spell of cold weather.
I think this would be more fun to work on than evangelizing Muslims. This guy wearing a kufi?
I hope NASA can be salvaged. I oppose the anti science mission and spending cuts.
So sad from NASA, none of their weather satellites contribute to knowledge that counts.
Sweet instruments on that beauty!
That still gives Hansen some time to figure out how to “adjust” the temperature data to make it correspond to the temperatures measured at airports. He was getting scared for a while.
But we just sent $500 million to Pakistan.
If we have no money, why shut down drilling? Offshore oil production garners an 18.5% royalty.
A few years ago the regulars at RealClimate were talking about a satellite which could have “proven” global warming which had apparently been shelved by Bush-Cheney. Does anyone else remember this conversation, and if so has the mothballed satellite ever been launched?
Henry chance says:
July 27, 2010 at 11:38 am
If we have no money, why shut down drilling? Offshore oil production garners an 18.5% royalty.
I could say because Obama is simply a flaming idiot. But that would not be completely accurate. In reality, every move and decision Obama makes is dictated by one over-riding concern. His ego.
Since NOAA and NASA are behind this satellite, can we trust the information gleamed from it? I am asking a serious question.
a reader says:
July 27, 2010 at 11:55 am
“A few years ago the regulars at RealClimate were talking about a satellite which could have “proven” global warming which had apparently been shelved by Bush-Cheney.”
Maybe you mean these results;
http://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/satellite-and-climate-model-evidence/
Anyone else note that the worker is kneeling in a clean room in order to access the equipment. This seems like the wrong activity to be doing in a clean room. Shouldn’t the holder the device is mounted on rotate / elevate to allow access to the components?
a reader says:
July 27, 2010 at 11:55 am
A few years ago the regulars at RealClimate were talking about a satellite which could have “proven” global warming which had apparently been shelved by Bush-Cheney. Does anyone else remember this conversation, and if so has the mothballed satellite ever been launched?
I don’t know if this is it, but check this out. This mission is scheduled to launch later this decade. If I understand it correctly, it’s designed to measure the earth’s energy budget extremely accurately.
http://clarreo.larc.nasa.gov/index.php
(new(ish) here, so would appreciate some help if the link doesn’t work).
Exerpt:
“CLARREO is a climate-focused mission set to launch in the latter part of this decade. The goal of the mission is to measure tiny, incremental changes in the amount of energy entering and leaving Earth’s atmosphere — with such accuracy that even minor global warming trends over the course of a decade will be detected with confidence. These climate change measurements will carry the “fingerprints” of what caused them, including those caused by human activity.”
The first sentence of this article seems to imply that the author does not believe that there is a difference between climate and weather. I find it hard to believe that that is true. Is this simply a matter of rhetorical flourish or do you really not see a difference?
Anyone else note that the worker is kneeling in a clean room in order to access the equipment. This seems like the wrong activity to be doing in a clean room.
The technician is not kneeling on the floor. He looks to be kneeling on the platform to which the satellite is attached.
In either case, a clean room implies that even the floor should be clean and dust free.
interesting response by Diana Liverman to michael “IPCC” oppenheimer’s mexican immigration “study”:
Arizona Daily Star: Climate change predicted to cause Mexican influx
“Our intention was to show that this problem is a substantial one,” said one of the study’s authors, Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton professor of geosciences and international affairs. “Our goal was not to project specific outcomes 80 years from now but to show the magnitude of problems that policymakers ought to pay more attention to. I don’t want to say that this will be the single biggest factor driving immigration, but it could become among the largest factors.”…
Diana Liverman, a University of Arizona climate researcher, criticized the new study for basing its forecasts in part on research that she worked on in the early 1990s that looked at crop yields in only two central Mexico sites.
In reply, Oppenheimer said the Princeton study found similar results in a second crop-yield study, and the crop reductions predicted for Mexico are typical of what has been predicted for other countries in that latitude.
Liverman said that while she believes climate change could cause widespread migration, she has seen no study documenting it. Having studied the problems of Mexican farmers for two decades, she said she has found that a bad economy, the government’s withdrawal of agricultural subsidies and the North American Free Trade Agreement have caused problems far greater than climate change.
While disagreeing with the study’s specific forecasts, several outside researchers said climate migration should be considered over the coming years.
“The study should be seen for what it is, which is an original and rigorous modeling of the relationship between climate change, agricultural yields and migration,” said Ian Goldin, director of the James Martin 21st Century School at the University of Oxford, in Britain…
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/article_7a77f457-a50d-5c40-b26a-a8072befedfe.html
bbc editorialises twice with unnamed “experts” and manages to politicise with “hottest june” and arizona’s immigration law. at least they mention oppenheimer’s IPCC connection:
BBC: Climate change ‘will increase Mexico-US migration’
Many climate experts say human activity is contributing to an increasingly warm planet.
And now a team of researchers led by Michael Oppenheimer says rising temperatures affecting crops through floods, droughts, and stronger storms will induce some workers to relocate…
Mr Oppenheimer, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the findings drew attention to “the need to grapple with greenhouse gases”.
Experts say these findings are also relevant to other regions around the world, from Africa to Australia – where Mr Oppenheimer’s team predicts migration will become a “significant issue”.
The study on Mexican migration comes after last month was declared by scientists to be the hottest June on record…
Meanwhile, a new immigration law is set to take effect on 29 July in the US state of Arizona, which will make it a crime to be in the state without immigration papers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10770674
The press release is rather shoddy. NPOESS is not going away per-se. NOAA/NASA are going to be responsible for the afternoon polar-orbiter (NPP and first NPOESS) while DoD will be responsible for mid-morning orbit (second NPOESS)….rather than all three agencies maintaining such a “close” relationship with all three platforms. Actually, NPOESS is now being called the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). These satellites combine the science/research needs of NASA with the operational meteorology needs of NOAA on one platform, and the instruments are mainly just next-generation sensors: ATMS to replace AMSU and MHS, VIIRS to replace MODIS, and CrIS to replace AIRS, with a bit higher spatial resolution and complete global coverage (no orbital gaps). There have been so many issues with CrIS and VIIRS, who knows what the data quality will really be once NPP is in orbit. NPP was originally supposed to be non-operational, as the bridge between the POES and NPOESS eras, to test out instruments and calibration and also the ground systems which will need to handle many Terabytes of data every day. But of course with the delays, it could be pushed into operations. In terms of climate, the ATMS data will be used to extend the MSU/AMSU climate record (microwave radiances) into the future (done at UAH), new and legacy level 2 and level 3 algorithms will be able to retrieve cloud, water vapor, SST info much like what is done with MODIS and AIRS currently, etc.
Is that … John Kerry in a bunny suite again doing the inspection … oh – never mind, he’s busy taking questions about why he bought his yacht in RI instead of his home state (MA) and saving $500K in taxes …
.
Robert Field says:
July 27, 2010 at 11:23 am (Edit)
Sorry for the OT, but can someone at WUWT take a look at the following paper. Does this not show a direct correlation between global temps and the sun’s angular momentum, disputing the notion ‘it’s not the sun, it’s CO2′ ?:
There are a couple of websites researching the question about angular momentum. I run one of them, Geoff Sharp runs another. Click my name and have a look around the archives. You’ll find a link to Geoff’s site there as well.
There are some old threads here where the subject got a good airing, but we generally keep off the topic here now.
Never mind that – he’s under what may be a ton (or more) of gear and I don’t see a safety jack, instead he’s depending *only* on whatever brake the positioner employs …
.
Peter says:
July 27, 2010 at 1:32 pm (Edit)
The first sentence of this article seems to imply that the author does not believe that there is a difference between climate and weather. I find it hard to believe that that is true. Is this simply a matter of rhetorical flourish or do you really not see a difference?
Climate is, perforce, the integral of weather. What else would it be made of?
It will provide atmospheric and sea surface temperatures, humidity sounding, land and ocean biological productivity, cloud and aerosol properties and total/profile ozone measurements.
Anybody else notice something conspicuously absent from this list. 🙂
‘Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder’
Who comes up with these names? I really can’t wait for the next generation of microwave sounder which presumably will be called something like Even More Advanced Technology Than The Last One Microwave Sounder or EMATTTLOMS for short.
tallbloke: Sooo…that sounds like they are different to me, much as I would say that acceleration and velocity are different, although one is the integral of the other. I’m not sure whether you are agreeing with me or not.
is “integrated” techno-speak for “installed” and/or “plugged in?”
I just want to know for the next time I “integrate” my waffle iron before “ingressing” breakfast to my stomach.