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Blinded: the Decline of US Earth Monitoring Capabilities and Its Blinded: The Decline of U.S. Earth Monitoring Capabilities JULY 2011 and Its Consequences for National Security POLICY BRIEF By Christine Parthemore and Will Rogers etworks of satellites, ground-based operating environment, roles, and missions” of sensors and unmanned aerial vehicles DOD and “may act as an accelerant of instability N or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian – the assets America uses to monitor and institutions and militaries around the world.”2 understand environmental change and its Examples abound of how climate change is shap- consequences – are going dark. By 2016, only ing the strategic environment and of why the U.S. government needs continued access to earth moni- seven of NASA’s current 13 earth monitoring toring data: satellites are expected to be operational, leaving • The opening of the Arctic is requiring the U.S. a crucial information gap that will hinder national Navy and Coast Guard to execute new missions security planning.1 Meanwhile, efforts to prevent in the High North, including more frequent search and rescue missions. this capability gap have been plagued by budget • The receding Himalayan glaciers and related cuts, launch failures, technical deficiencies, reduced river flows to South Asia may shape the chronic delays and poor interagency coordination. future relationship between India and Pakistan. Defense planners and diplomats will need to Without the information that these assets provide, monitor changes in the glaciers that supply rivers core U.S. foreign policy and national security in Pakistan in order to determine whether access interests will be at risk. to water will exacerbate existing military and diplomatic tensions between India and Pakistan – states that have longstanding grievances over how The United States depends on satellite systems for they share water. managing the unconventional challenges of the 21st century in ways that are rarely acknowledged. This • In the South China Sea, changing ocean conditions is particularly true for satellites that monitor climate are altering fish migration, leading neighboring change and other environmental trends, which, in countries to compete over access to billions of dol- the words of the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) lars in fish resources; this situation could escalate 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, “will shape the into serious conflict in contested territorial waters. JULY 2011 POLICY BRIEF CNAS.ORG 2 • DOD and development agencies rely on earth is at risk of collapse.”3 Key U.S. government monitoring systems to monitor urbanization, agencies, including the Office of Science and migration patterns and internal population Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Government displacement. Several government agencies also Accountability Office (GAO), have recently reiter- rely on earth monitoring capabilities to analyze ated those warnings. According to an April 2010 compliance with deforestation and emissions report by the GAO, “gaps in coverage ranging measures in international climate change from 1 to 11 years are expected beginning as soon treaties, just as the government relies on as 2015” and “are expected to affect the continuity space-based capabilities to monitor and verify of important climate and space weather measure- compliance with non-proliferation treaties. ments, such as our understanding of how weather cycles impact global food production.”4 These Responding to environmental and gaps will include key environmental and climate monitoring functions, from radar altimeters that climate change trends requires a steady measure changes in land and ocean surfaces (such stream of reliable information from as sea level rise and desertification) to aerosol polarimetry sensors that can measure and distin- earth monitoring satellites that is quickly guish between sulfates, organic and black carbon becoming unavailable. and other atmospheric particles. “Meteorologists, oceanographers, and climatologists reported that these gaps will seriously impact ongoing and Responding to environmental and climate change planned earth monitoring activities,” according to 5 trends requires a steady stream of reliable infor- the GAO. mation from earth monitoring satellites that is One recent interagency effort to close such gaps quickly becoming unavailable. Ideally, the U.S. has fallen short. The National Polar-orbiting government would replace its aging earth moni- Operational Environmental Satellite System toring satellites. Yet the current political and fiscal (NPOESS) was designed to translate climate and environments constrain available resources, environmental data (including data from exten- making it less likely that Congress will appropri- sive existing databases) into products and analysis ate funds to wholly replace old systems. Given for DOD, NASA and the National Oceanic and this reality, U.S. policymakers should use exist- Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). However, ing systems more efficiently, improve information after long delays, cost overruns and inadequate sharing among interagency partners and leverage coordination among the partners in the interagency international partners’ investments in their own working group, the project was split into two systems in order to bolster U.S. climate and envi- components (as an alternative to being cancelled ronmental data collection capabilities. completely); DOD and the civilian agencies are The Capability Gap moving forward separately with their own projects Policymakers have known about the challenges in order to sustain the capabilities that NPOESS stemming from America’s declining earth moni- was intended to provide. toring capabilities for years. In 2005, a report Despite the program’s continuance as two separate by the National Research Council warned that projects, however, the replacements for some of its America’s “system of environmental satellites JULY 2011 POLICY BRIEF CNAS.ORG 3 intended capabilities of interpreting data from earth quantifying carbon uptake from the atmosphere monitoring systems still lack funding and important … in addition to understanding the impacts of technical functions. NASA’s NPOESS Preparatory global warming on ocean ecological systems.”10 Project (NPP),6 for example – part of the agency’s The primary satellite for collecting these data, the next generation of weather and climate monitoring Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor, is already systems and the successor to the disbanded NPOESS past its expected lifespan. project – may not be equipped with key instruments • Ocean surface vector winds (OSVWs) “play a key that provide sustained earth monitoring and climate role in regulating the earth’s water and energy” data that policymakers can use in their decision- and regulate “the interaction between the atmo- making. Although NASA is on track to launch the sphere and the ocean, which establishes and NPP in October 2011, a recent report from NASA’s maintains both global and regional climates,” Office of the Inspector General found that key according to OSTP. Understanding these winds instruments aboard the NPP are projected to have will be critical to forecasting the effects of climate 7 a much shorter lifespan than the planned mission. change and improving marine weather predic- Those instruments include crucial infrared capabili- tion, but a key satellite for monitoring them ties that will provide data on wildfires, ice cover in failed in late 2009. The U.S. government has not the Arctic, ocean temperatures and atmospheric yet developed a “sustained source for OSVW conditions – valuable information that will allow information.”11 security practitioners and other policymakers to make informed decisions about issues ranging from Recent technical failures have made the challenges the Arctic to treaty verification.8 stemming from the gaps in U.S. satellite capabilities even more acute. In 2009, NASA’s Orbiting Carbon In a September 2010 report, OSTP identified sev- Observatory, a satellite designed to map global car- eral additional capability gaps that many federal bon dioxide levels, crashed into the Pacific Ocean officials confirmed could hinder the availability of after a protective shroud failed to separate from the climate and environmental information and affect rocket, adding extra weight that prevented the sat- key national security and foreign policy interests: ellite from reaching orbit.12 In March 2011, a similar failure of a protective nose cone caused NASA’s • The health of the Landsat program, which pro- Glory satellite – intended to study the effects of vides information on topics from land use change black carbon soot and other atmospheric aerosols – to urbanization, is a top concern. One of the two to crash into the Pacific Ocean as well.13 remaining Landsat satellites is past its expected lifespan, and the other has declining capabili- Additional Challenges ties. One replacement satellite, the Landsat Data Four issues compound the challenges posed by the Continuity Mission, has a planned launch date in looming gaps in U.S. satellite capabilities. Budget 2012. The achievement of this mission and its suc- constraints, ineffective communications, inad- cessors is necessary to ensure that one of the most equate interpretation of data and over-reliance on accomplished U.S. satellite programs, spanning the Global Earth Observation System of Systems nearly four decades, is not lost.9 (GEOSS) program all make it harder to gener- • Space-based monitoring provides critical infor- ate and analyze the information on which U.S.
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