Budget cuts (possibly) delaying satellite replacement

[Todd Renshaw]

A story on NPR: All Things Considered this afternoon. Click here.

I assume they're talking about JPSS. A little bad publicity never hurts the cause. Too bad I'm probably the only one listening to NPR these days.

 

[Karen St John]

I love NPR. I didn't catch this originally, but after listening, I think it would be utterly foolish to cut the budget here.

 

[Jason Foster]

I don't put a ton of value into NPR's reporting. Their own funding being pulled and such.

Satellites that orbit over the North and South poles helped predict the amount of snowfall that hit the Eastern U.S. in the February 2010 blizzard known as "Snowmageddon." Without that data, the director of the National Weather Service says, forecasters would have underestimated the snowfall by 50 percent. Budget cuts are threatening the satellite program.

Not sure who was saying that. I think the models would have been more of the predictor there...and I don't remember them being terrible 'accurate' with that forecast until about 36 hours out. But I'm not expert either.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I I think the models would have been more of the predictor there..

Although it may not seem obvious, a myriad of satellite data is being used by many of the popular numerical models. Satellite-derived winds, radiances, and other data provided by geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites provide a tremendous amount of information in areas that cannot be directly sampled. This is part of the reason why you can't just say "Yeah, but the trough is still over the eastern Pacific, outside of the RAOB/sounding network, so I don't believe the model forecast". In areas that are not sampled by in situ observations (e.g. much of the middle and upper troposphere, and most of the troposphere over ocean regions), there are typically millions of data points provided by satellites that are used in analysis schemes for operational computer models; most of the data used in many numerical weather models are provided by satellites (certainly there are many more satellite observations than soundings, surface observations, etc.). This ESRL presentation notes that, from one run of the ECMWF in 2007, "95% of assimilated data is from satellites".

 

[Dave Gallaher]

A story on NPR: All Things Considered this afternoon. Click here.

I assume they're talking about JPSS. A little bad publicity never hurts the cause. Too bad I'm probably the only one listening to NPR these days.

We actually have two 100,000 watt full service NPR stations in Huntsville--I've produced blues programs on both of them for over twenty years. So--thanks for listening.

 

[Jason Foster]

Although it may not seem obvious, a myriad of satellite data is being used by many of the popular numerical models. Satellite-derived winds, radiances, and other data provided by geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites provide a tremendous amount of information in areas that cannot be directly sampled. This is part of the reason why you can't just say "Yeah, but the trough is still over the eastern Pacific, outside of the RAOB/sounding network, so I don't believe the model forecast". In areas that are not sampled by in situ observations (e.g. much of the middle and upper troposphere, and most of the troposphere over ocean regions), there are typically millions of data points provided by satellites that are used in analysis schemes for operational computer models; most of the data used in many numerical weather models are provided by satellites (certainly there are many more satellite observations than soundings, surface observations, etc.). This ESRL presentation notes that, from one run of the ECMWF in 2007, "95% of assimilated data is from satellites".

...and I should have remembered that too. Thanks for reminding me of it.

 

[Todd Renshaw]

I love NPR. I didn't catch this originally, but after listening, I think it would be utterly foolish to cut the budget here.

I'm guessing that, ultimately, they will find a way to get it done. (But who knows where they'll be pulling the money from. It might come from another important, but less visible program.) I like NPR too, but I guess I feel like their listener base is dwindling due to satellite radio.