PASADENA, Calif., July 9 (UPI) -- All systems were go Friday for the weekend launch of a Delta II rocket set to carry into a new satellite into orbit that scientists expect will provide a wealth of new information on the increasingly controversial subject of global warming.
The Aura satellite is scheduled to blast off during the wee hours of Sunday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It is equipped with cutting-edge scanning instruments that will monitor the various layers of the atmosphere and how they interact with pollutants that include the greenhouse gases that may or may not be causing Earth's climate to heat up.
Climate scientists can always use new and improved data, but the Aura mission's greatest value may be in the political arena where policy makers remain in the middle of a battle between environmentalists who insist global warming is a genuine threat and skeptics led by some in the business community who dismiss the entire concept as junk science.
"Nothing really is in the works that addresses global air quality," Project Scientist Phil DeCola told reporters from Vandenberg in a televised news conference Friday. "One can imagine the value of this information in developing future policies."
Described as being about the size of a small school bus, Aura holds four different types of scanning instruments that will take in-depth measurements of the atmosphere, in particular the ozone layer in the upper stratosphere that protects humans from the sun's harmful radiation.
Industrial chemicals and toxins have been blamed for a deterioration of the ozone layer, which has led to international treaties curbing the use of chlorofluorocarbons, also known as CFCs, in refrigeration units and other devices.
The recovery of the ozone layer appears to be hindered by the same greenhouse gases being blamed for global warming. Aura scientists noted, however, there still were gaps in the knowledge of the ozone layer the satellite could help fill in.
"We expect there are complicating factors (in ozone recovery)," said Mark Schoelboro of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "We still don't have a complete understanding of the ozone layer and the stratosphere."
Aura will be able to give scientists an accurate inventory of the levels of CFCs in the atmosphere on a global scale as well as the by-products bromine and chlorine that are said to cause ozone deterioration.
Ozone is a gas with a double meaning: In the stratosphere, far above Earth, ozone protects living things from the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. At the lowest level of the atmosphere, the troposphere, ozone is considered a pollutant that is present when high levels of the precursors carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons are also in the air.
One of Aura's four instruments, the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer, or TES, will provide detailed inventories of pollutants in the troposphere, and can accomplish the task on a regional basis so that scientists and politicians will be able to pinpoint just where the harmful emissions are coming from and take steps to remedy the situation.
The argument over how much pollution comes from what sources has been a major bone of contention in the entire global warming controversy.
"We live in one atmosphere and that atmosphere contains pollutants that are pushed into the air from many sources," Schoelboro explained. "We're all breathing someone else's exhaust gases."
The issue of where the pollutants actually come from played a major role in the United States' continuing refusal to formally adopt the 1992 Kyoto treaty on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Industry and its supporters in Washington said the United States was unfairly being singled out for massive cutbacks in such emissions, to the point where it would cripple the U.S. economy while allowing emerging industrial powers, such as China and India, to continue running their less-efficient factories with little or no interference from the treaty.
Global warming also stoked the war of words between environmentalists and various industry organizations and think tanks that vilified predictions of major warming of the climate as being a baseless scam perpetuated by the greens.
The argument might seem to be nothing more than ideological sniping, but it plays a significant role in the complex effort to keep both the nation's air and its economy healthy.
As soon as data from Aura begins streaming back to Earth, in about 90 days, it should help present a truer picture of the globe's air quality and set the stage for meaningful regulation that is more tightly focused on the scope and source of the problem.
"This kind of information will be a national and international treasure for those who are making important decisions about policy as it pertains to natural resources," DeCola said.
"NASA really isn't in the business of making regulations," he added. "We are in the business of providing the solid scientific information needed by those who do. It will be very interesting to see how new international treaties might be formed."
The difficult work will be up to U.S. political leaders and those in the rest of the world as they attempt to forge a new consensus on curbing global warming and air pollution in general. Thanks to Aura, they will at least possess a clearer picture of what needs to be done.
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Hil Anderson is UPI's West Coast correspondent. E-mail [email protected]
