In this satellite handout from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Hurricane Rina churns October 26, 2011 in the Caribbean Sea.
A new study has concluded serious weather events cost the U.S. of $485 billion annually. Keep reading →
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will save thousands of dollars by trading its fleet of BlackBerries for iPhones and iPads in the next few months.
CIO Joseph Klimavicz told Breaking Gov the change, expected to take place by June 1, would save substantial costs associated with managing BlackBerry devices. He declined to specify savings other than to say it would be “thousands of dollars” now spent on managing close to 3,000 devices. Keep reading →
The proposed realignment of federal agencies announced by the Obama administration would be more extensive than first announced last Friday, affecting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology among other agencies, according to a report today by Federal Computer Week.
Office of Management and Budget’s Jeffrey Zients, who earlier today was named OMB acting director, told reporters during a briefing Jan. 13, that there would be a second phase of the proposed reorganization. In the initial announcement, the White House proposed a realignment that called for merging six trade agencies into a new, cabinet-level agency to promote export and business development. Keep reading →
Joseph Klimavicz, CIO at NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration), spends his time trying to deliver as much technology as he can securely both to the agency and the public.
To deliver, he is focusing on how NOAA can take advantage of cloud solutions and cloud services. “We’ve got a whole host of things we are pushing to the cloud,” he said during a recent Federal Executive Forum on Emerging Technologies. Keep reading →
The National Ocean Service mobile website allows users to have access to the National Ocean Service website’s information, including audio and video, on their mobile device.
The National Ocean Service mobile website allows users to easily open up the website on their mobile device and find information regarding facts on the ocean, news and to explore ocean related topics. Here are some listed features: Keep reading →
As I sit here writing this, it’s raining. It’s been raining for days, as a result of the remnants of Hurricane Lee. Before that, we got rain from Hurricane Irene, although thankfully not what Vermont and Upstate New York received. Before that, innumerable August thunderstorms had dumped inches of precipitation on us. The forecast for the next few days? More rain.
Earlier this summer I read that our area was in a “moderate drought” state. Ha! I was just bemoaning our saturated state with a co-worker, in the course of which I said “I’ve been blogging about earthquakes and hurricanes, so I guess I’ll have to dig out a Government publication on floods.” Aha! Keep reading →
While most of NASA is looking up to the stars, scientist
Goodman, 55, NASA’s go-to guy for natural disasters and hazards, is defying the stereotypes about the space agency. He’s always focused on the ground, coordinating the space agency’s response to earthbound catastrophes. NASA has been involved in earth research since the 1960s.
“We’re constantly imaging the earth. If a significant event occurs, that data can be processed and made available,” Goodman, an atmospheric scientist in NASA’s Earth Science Division, told AOL Government. “Our role is to provide spaceborne and airborne observations and data analyses that can assist in damage assessment and aid in the recovery.”
NASA is not chasing hurricanes, but is using its arsenal of 14 orbiting satellites to develop new technologies or to use current ones to better measure the characteristics of hurricanes and the conditions that produce them. The information is made available to front-line agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to help them develop better forecasts.
Our role is to provide spaceborne and airborne observations and data analyses that can assist in damage assessment and aid in the recovery.
Hurricane warnings are already posted from Florida to Boston. The Category 3 hurricane is expected to touch down in North Carolina late Friday. The path of the storm is expected to be catastrophic. And a NASA satellite is on the job taking regular images of Irene as it barrels north from the Bahamas.
NASA’s satellites are often able to get better and different images than NOAA’s satellites, complementing, not duplicating, Goodman said. The space agency is constantly improving computing power efficiencies aboard satellites and improved optic technologies.
The satellites use a variety of different remote sensing techniques including visible, infrared, passive and active microwave, synthetic aperture radar and lidar (optical remote sensing technology) to take the images. They are never called pictures.
The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite that is watching Irene uses an instrument known as the Precipitation Radar that can “see” through the clouds to measure the core of strongest hot towers of convection and updrafts.
As Hurricane Irene picked up steam this week in the Caribbean, the satellite began taking images of the storm on its regular north-south run of the Western Hemisphere. They pass over the same location only twice a day on its daily run, Goodman said.
The raw images are downloaded to tracking stations on the ground, analyzed, distributed to the proper agency and are available online, he said.
NASA works closely with several federal agencies, including the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NOAA, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to provide imagery and data analyses for use by first responders in any kind of a disaster.
“If we know there’s a particular area we want to focus on, we can command the satellite to take the images. In some cases, we may want to compare the post-disaster with a pre-disaster image,” he said.
NASA’s fiscal 2011 Earth Science budget is $1.8 billion for the operations of existing satellites, Earth science research and analyses, and the development, launch, and operations of new satellite and instruments.
It recently took images for a host of other disasters, including:
NASA is the eyes for international disasters, too. Recent images included the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake and the eruption of the Icelandic volcano that spewed ash across Europe, both in 2010.
NASA imaging is used regularly by scientists to predict future disasters. But that comes with a dose of caution.
“In predicting the future, we’re only slightly better than the economists,” Goodman said.
Judi Hasson is an award-winning journalist who writes about technology and all things government.