so much for the US being the center of climate modelling

A Boston Globe article reports that NASA has delayed or cancelled a series of climate satellites. To give you a complete picture of how much world wide climate change modelling will be impacted, consider that

The space agency has shelved a $200 million satellite mission headed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor that was designed to measure soil moisture — a key factor in helping scientists understand the impact of global warming and predict droughts and floods. The Deep Space Climate Observatory, intended to observe climate factors such as solar radiation, ozone, clouds, and water vapor more comprehensively than existing satellites, also has been canceled.

And in its 2007 budget, NASA proposes significant delays in a global precipitation measuring mission to help with weather predictions, as well as the launch of a satellite designed to increase the timeliness and accuracy of severe weather forecasts and improve climate models.

What this means is that less empirical data will be available for showing the human-induced effects of climate change. This also impacts weather monitoring over the US. Data from these satellites would also used by the US Department of Agriculture, so the loss of satellites will impact knowledge about US crops. Quite a bit of payback for complaining climate scientists like Hansen, isn’t it?

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