No NOAA Sensory Deprivation

A sensor considered critical in monitoring global climate will be restored to the first satellite scheduled to fly in the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). Top officials from NOAA, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force made this commitment at a meeting of the tri-agency NPOESS Executive Committee (EXCOM). They agreed to restore the Total Solar Irradiance Sensor (TSIS), which measures the total amount of solar energy coming into the Earth’s atmosphere, a fundamental element in understanding climate change. The sensor had been removed during the 2006 restructuring of the NPOESS program. This decision follows a January 2008 agreement to place another climate sensor—the Clouds and Earth Radiant Energy System (CERES)—on the NPOESS Preparatory Project, the precursor mission for NPOESS. The CERES will complement the TSIS measurements by shedding light on how clouds influence the Earth’s energy balance and the role they play in regulating climate. The EXCOM decision builds on the Administration’s commitment to restore climate sensors that had been removed from NPOESS. In April 2007, NOAA and NASA jointly announced they would restore the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) Limb, a critical instrument for measuring the vertical distribution of ozone, to NPP. NOAA and NASA, in partnership with the Office of Science and Technology Policy, are continuing to analyze a range of future satellite missions to provide continuity in the climate measurements made by TSIS.