WASHINGTON, May 30 (UPI) -- The latest environmental monitoring satellite to be launched from the United States will provide a steadier data stream for weather specialists to model the "el Niño" phenomenon in the Eastern Pacific, officials from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday.
NOAA's third Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite, or POES, compensates for a scattered set of ocean buoys that monitor changes in ocean surface temperature, said John Jones Jr., deputy director of the National Weather Service. This widespread, regular coverage leads to fine-tuned weather models, he told a news conference at the Commerce Department.
"With the help of this satellite, forecasters will be able to increase their skill in developing accurate el Niño, la Niña and drought outlooks, and will pass that information on to decision-makers months in advance," Jones said.
In an el Niño situation, warmer-than-normal surface water in the Eastern Pacific draws rainfall away from Indonesia and Australia, and produces correspondingly heavy rains in Central and South America. This shift in heat patterns also forces large changes in the global atmosphere, affecting weather worldwide. The conditions are basically reversed when la Niña occurs.
Lengthening the baseline of information on the phenomena will help researchers correlate past measurements and resulting weather more accurately, further improving forecast models, said Mary Glackin, deputy director of NOAA's Satellite Service.
The latest satellite, NOAA-M, is scheduled for launch late next month, said Karen Halterman, POES program manager at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The agencies expect the system to remain fully operational for about four years, she said.
The polar satellites circle the globe 14 times each day to cover the whole planet, unlike their geostationary brethren, which rotate in time with the Earth to observe the same area constantly.
The M satellite's flight path will cross the equator at 10 a.m. every day, a particularly useful time for the sensors on board, said Michael Mignogno, the Satellite Service's polar program manager. Many of the satellite's systems rely on reflected solar radiation, which is stronger at that point than the 7:30 a.m. timeframe of current systems, he told reporters.
"It's a very good time of the morning to start developing data sets for understanding climate prediction," Mignogno said. "You have very little cloudiness at that point, so you can ... capture information that helps understand vegetation index and the carbon cycle."
The 10 a.m. timeframe also yields better views of the ozone layer, which reflects ultraviolet radiation the POES then monitors, Mignogno said. The satellite's systems will track polar ice packs, ocean currents and wildfire smoke plumes as well, he said.
If something goes wrong during the NOAA-M launch, rendering the satellite unusable, NOAA will be able to compensate, Mignogno said. The agency would combine sensors still operational on older satellites to replace the M satellite's sensor suite at least partially, he said.
