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NASA Launches Satellite To Monitor Oceans
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Jun 22, 2008 12:25 PM
from the space-post-coast-to-coast dept.
from the space-post-coast-to-coast dept.
On Friday, NASA launched the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason 2 satellite into orbit to begin a detailed study of ocean currents, sea-surface height, and surface topology. Scientists hope to use the data gathered by Jason 2 in order to better understand weather patterns and global warming. Further details about the mission objectives (PDF) are also available. Quoting NASA's press release:
"Combining ocean current and heat storage data is key to understanding global climate variations. OSTM/Jason 2's expected lifetime of at least three years will extend into the next decade the continuous record of these data started in 1992 by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, or CNES, with the TOPEX/Poseidon mission. The data collection was continued by the two agencies on Jason 1 in 2001. Compared with Jason 1 measurements, OSTM/Jason 2 will have substantially increased accuracy and provide data to within 25 kilometers (15 miles) of coastlines, nearly 50 percent closer to shore than in the past."
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Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok I'm really not trolling here and I'm sure I'm exposing my vast ignorance on this topic, but does this seem incredibly underwhelming to anyone else?
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not underwhelming in the slightest. It just shows you how very little we understand about the Earth, how little we understand about weather, and also ocean currents.
Agreed, but there's a greater irony. While travel and research above and beyond earth has done wonders to increase our understanding of our own world, what's left undiscovered and unstudied is what lies beneath our oceans. Studying ocean currents and topology is literally superficial in that regard.
Parent
Re: (Score:1)
Which is funny, because we know, for instance, that among the many conditions that cause hurricane formation, one of the biggest and least understood is ocean currents.
Imagine if we could predict category 5 hurricanes weeks or months in advance. How many lives would have been spared in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita?
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Imagine if we could predict category 5 hurricanes weeks or months in advance. How many lives would have been spared in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita?
Not many. Katrina was the result of a long-term failure to take the hurricane threat to New Orleans seriously. I doubt a few weeks' warning would have significantly changed the result.
Rita only caused 7 direct deaths. More lead time would have kept elderly Houstonians from dying while stuck in evacuation traffic. Although that doesn't help if your bus catches fire in Dallas (23 of the 113 indirect deaths).
And both were only Category 3 hurricanes at landfall.
Given NASA's Budget... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:1)
What kind of data are you able to gather without the satellite?
You are reacting like someone who gets handed a check for 6 gajillion dollars and says "How come the check isn't for 100 gajillion dollars?" without even having any idea of what a gajillion is.
Re: (Score:2)
The data gap next to the shoreline is due to the fact that the radar beam spreads
Quiet post (Score:1)
I was surprised by the lack of comments on this thread, but then I thought 'Its a satellite that watches the ocean all day and stuff.' Kinda hard to get excited over.
This is getting out of hand (Score:5, Funny)
First the government wants to monitor citizens, and now it wants to monitor the oceans? Come on people, I know most of you don't care because you're not an ocean, but what happens when they start going after the other bodies of water? What about other liquids? Other states of matter? This is just the tip of the iceberg, people.
Oh sure, maybe you think it's fine because the oceans aren't U.S. citizens, but I say constitutional rights should apply to all of Earth's features, and the government should keep its nose out of aquatic affairs. Just because some oceans border terrorist states (through no fault of their own), that doesn't mean all oceans can just be spied on whenever we feel like it.
Maybe you think this is okay because some oceans have committed terrorist acts like hurricanes and tsunamis, but it would be bigoted of us to condemn all oceans for the actions of a few.
This has gotten out of hand and needs to stop. Get involved, people!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You forgot the obligatory Ron Paul mention...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
> and tsunamis, but it would be bigoted of us to condemn all oceans for the actions of a few.
Would it be alright if they only do surveillance on the oceans that *are* known to have been responsible for hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, and icebergs that sink ships?
Re: (Score:1)
The oceans are their home and it's not like water is opaque or anything. Sure the octopus, squid and their relatives can squirt ink to gain a little privacy, but what about the whales? Where can they really go to be free of this kind of intrusion?
Big Brother. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Wrong quote (Score:2, Funny)
When the scientists came for the tuna,
I remained silent;
I was not a tuna.
When they locked up the dolphins in SeaWorld,
I remained silent;
I was not a dolphin.
When they came for the trade currents,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade current.
When they came for me,
the oceans were silent,
there was no one left to speak out.
As a long-distance sailor, and surfer (Score:5, Interesting)
The topic of "rogue waves" has gotten much [slashdot.org] more [technologyreview.com] interest in the past few years. They have been determined to be both larger and more prevalent than thought before. Perhaps Jason will complement the data from the EU mission to help with statistics, and maybe even predictions...
One can hope.
Oh no... (Score:1)
Joint Programe (Score:2)
Of course it has. (Score:2)
So what? The earth has been trending steadily warmer for the last 6,000 years!!!
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
I live in Belgium and there used to be a vineyard close to where I live in the Middle-Ages. Nowadays that completely impossible. Man is trying to reverse that trend.
Also, every climate change that happened the last 10,000 years has been very, very slow and minuscule in comparison to the 0.7 degrees we did in only one century.
But the question is not who is right, the question is: what are we goin
Re: (Score:2)
First, you claim that "our society can't take any climate changes". I am curious why you make this claim. Regardless of whether the overall trend has been hotter or cooler, within recorded history it has been both warmer and cooler than it is now, for extended periods. And those periods were
Re: (Score:1)
Really? Do tell...
Re: (Score:1)
That doesn't make sense. (Score:2)
The trend over 5 or 6 THOUSAND years has been warmer. But there have been temporary periods (meaning up to 100 years or so -- your little ice age is an example) that were cooler than it is now, and others that were warmer than it is now. Those were nothing but minor spikes in the chart, but t
Re:"Global warming" must exist first... (Score:5, Interesting)
One statistical outlier doesn't make a trend. One cold winter doesn't undo decades of warmer than average years.
And taking you at face value on the Antarctic gaining mass, if you think through the implications it is completely consistent with a warming planet. The Antarctic is still very very cold, and warming means an increase in humidity and precipitation, i.e. a larger ice sheet building over the central regions of the continent. That region still hasn't warmed sufficiently to cause large-scale melting.
Ice sheets are complicated things. Warming in general causes increased melting at the edges (near the lower lattitudes) and increased precipitation over the center. It's just a question of how fast it's adding mass at the center vs. losing it at the sides, but ultimately as it gets warmer the whole thing will melt at some temperature.
Parent
There is warming, and there is "warming". (Score:2, Informative)
But when most people say "global warming", what they really mean is MAN-CAUSED global warming. Even more specifically, it usually means that they have bought into the whole CO2-based warming model.
The problem here being that if the man-caused global warming theories were to be believed, we would NOT have had a record cold northern hemisphere this year. Even with all the o
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
But when most people say "global warming", what they really mean is MAN-CAUSED global warming. Even more specifically, it usually means that they have bought into the whole CO2-based warming model.
Dude, even the Bush white house now admits that human activities specifically including CO2 emissions are a factor in global warming; the "debate" is now over the extent to which human involvement has changed the climate, and what to do about it if anything.
The problem here being that if the man-caused global warming theories were to be believed, we would NOT have had a record cold northern hemisphere this year. Even with all the other complications, it would have continued to get warmer on that scale.
And you base this belief on what, exactly? The whole reason the question of the extent of mankind's involvement in global weather patterns (let's face it, deforestation is very much an activity of man, and forests are a major figure in global weathe
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
You have not been keeping up with the news. See my comments to others in this thread. Even the UN has retracted their famous, hysterical report about greenhouse warming. Some of the very scientists who were quoted in that IPCC report tried to get th
Re:There is warming, and there is "warming". (Score:4, Informative)
Now please realise that the IPCC does not come up with new science, it is a UN body that gathers scientists from every national science body on the planet and reviews published scientific papers. They do not have ONE report they have ~20yrs worth of reports.
Assuming you are not just a rabid anti-science troll can you please post some evidence for your claims such as...
ALL greenhouse gas "global warming" theories require the upper atmosphere to warm proportionally to the surface temperature....the greenhouse warming models allow for local, temporary variations, but NOT for a record cold hemisphere...the UN has retracted their famous, hysterical report about greenhouse warming...Some of the very scientists who were quoted in that IPCC report tried to get their names removed
Note: I work on the same basis as the IPCC, ie: I only accept evidence that is backed by peer-reviewed publications.
Parent
Gimme a frigging break. (Score:1, Troll)
Why should I cater to your ignorance and do your homework for you? The subject and the data are all over the internet... it is hardly a difficult thing to find. I find it amusing when other people demand that I put links up to support every assertion I make. Do you know how to do a search? If so, you can find this information yourself within a few sec
Re: (Score:2)
Why? Because you are the one making "extrodinary claims", or are we throwing out that part of science aswell?
As for the rest of your post, you need to update your form letter, google no longer works in your favour.
Pretty funny. (Score:2)
You claim that I have been "throwing out science", but in fact I have been reporting what SCIENCE (not the politicians) has been saying for years now, and you have not mentioned ONCE any actual science stating that my claims are wrong or why they are wrong. You can't, can you?
Google works fine, if you actually bother to look. I don't think you WANT to actually find out that you are wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
As I implied in my previous post "extrodinary claims require extrodinary evidence", your insults don't change that nor do your assertions provide any evidence.
As for debunking your mass of dis-information I will pick on one thing at randon since I have better things to do than argue with a troll. The cooling of the troposphere is predicted by climate models and has been observed in the field, either provide a link to a scientific
You have COMPLETELY failed to realize... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Now please realise that the IPCC does not come up with new science, it is a UN body that gathers scientists from every national science body on the planet and reviews published scientific papers.
They have a deplorable track record. If I were a global warming proponent, I wouldn't even refer to the IPCC. Let's have a look at their short history, shall we? They were founded in 1988. In 1990, they were making wild ass predictions based on computer models. In 1995, those predictions failed to materialize so they blamed sulfate aerosols. In their 2001 report, they were the ones pushing the hockey stick fraud, [newscientist.com] claiming exponential, runaway global warming. It turns out that random data entered in
Re: (Score:2)
PS: Who was publishing when Copernicus was alive? Do you still beat your wife?
Funny (Score:2)
Remember that the UN is a political organization, not a scientific organization. Its motives are political, and not driven by science.