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Projects: Observing Earth

As Riders on the Earth Together: Monitoring Our Changing Planet

by Berrien Moore III
From the July/August 2008 issue of The Planetary Report.

Mount Saint Helens, from Space
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Mount Saint Helens, from Space
Viewing our planet from space is essential to understanding Earth as a system of connected parts. Such observation reveals humans' impact on our world, as well as the impact of natural processes, such as earthquakes and volcanoes.

On May 18, 1980, a series of earthquakes preceded the explosive eruption of Washington's Mount Saint Helens — the worst volcanic eruption in U.S. history. Twenty-two years later, on October 25, 2002, an astronaut on board the International Space Station took this photo. The volcano remains the most active in the continental United States. Credit: NASA

Everywhere the sun, moon and stars, the climates and weathers, have meanings for people. Though meanings vary, we are alike in all countries and tribes in trying to read what the sky, land and sea say to us."

These remarkable words, written by poet Carl Sandburg in 1955, speak clearly to us more than half a century later. Even now, they quietly strike raw nerves and sensitive areas: Are we humans changing the Earth? What are the sky, land, and sea saying to us now? Are we listening?

Paradoxically, the most profound way we can listen to Earth is to watch it from space, a vantage point from which we can see it as a planet—not as separate jigsaw-puzzle pieces of land, oceans, atmosphere, and biosphere set on a rocky sphere, but as a whole functioning system. Only from space can we truly see how the pieces fit together, how they are changing, and how we are affecting our home world, for good or ill. "Earth observations" is the inelegant term for what satellites equipped with sensitive and powerful instruments do in orbit. These observations are essential for safeguarding our life on the planet.

I was privileged to serve as the cochair of the committee charged with producing the first-ever decadal survey in the Earth sciences, which called for a renewal of the U.S. commitment to Earth observations. In our report, securing practical benefits for humankind plays an equal role with the quest for new knowledge about the Earth system. Satellite observations are critical to understanding our planet as a system of connected parts, and they serve society by saving lives, protecting property, strengthening the security of nations, and helping the growth of the economy through timely acquisition of environmental information. The decadal survey set forth a number of key Earth-observing missions to fulfill humanity's need for information.

Unfortunately, the United States had become "lost in space" when it came to future Earth observations. The number of missions began to decrease dramatically in 2006, and the slide was expected to continue to the end of the decade. The number of operating sensors and instruments on NASA spacecraft, most well past their nominal lifetimes, will decrease by some 40 percent. Furthermore, some of the replacement sensors to be flown on the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) are less capable than their counterparts now flying in the Earth Observing System (EOS). Several of the climate sensors on NPOESS were eliminated because of significant cost increases, and the system is no longer robust, so if the launch fails or the system dies in orbit, there is no backup.

A System at Risk of Collapse
As a consequence, our committee announced in the interim report that the U.S. "system of environmental satellites is at risk of collapse." During the 20 months between the announcement in our interim report in April 2005 and the release of the Decadal Survey in January 2007, events at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) painted an even bleaker picture of the U.S. Earth-observing capability. Earth satellite programs, once the envy of the world, are in disarray, even as the needs have never been greater.

Our world faces significant environmental challenges: shortages of clean and accessible fresh water, degradation of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, increases in soil erosion, changes in atmospheric chemistry, declines in fisheries, and the likelihood of substantial climate changes. These changes interact with one another and with natural variability in complex ways on local, regional, and global scales.

To address societal challenges, we must confront key scientific questions about the sources and sinks of greenhouse gases, ice sheets and sea level change, large-scale and persistent shifts in precipitation and water availability, transcontinental air pollution, modified ecosystems, impacts on human health, and natural disasters such as severe storms, heat waves, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions.

Southern California Wildfires
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Southern California Wildfires
Will reduced snowfall and increased drought affect agriculture in already dry regions such as Australia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the western United States? Will wildfires become more frequent? Multiple massive wildfires burned in Southern California during the last week of October 2003.

Two views of the fires were imaged by the Multiangle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) on NASA's Terra satellite. The nadir camera (left) took this true-color view, and the height of the plumes was measured by an automated stereo height retriever (right). Credit: NASA / GSFC / LaRC / JPL, MISR Team

To act wisely, we require information and understanding. We know that societies are capable of making smart decisions when they have information. We also know that without information, we often make poor decisions. Information about the past, the present, and the future is invaluable—and critical to survival.

Beyond recommending key Earth-observing missions, in the Decadal Survey, we sought to initiate a dialogue and strategy in the Earth sciences that balance economic competitiveness, protection of life and property, and stewardship of the planet for this and future generations. The need for this strategy is illustrated by hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides. Whether these natural hazards have consequences that are serious or truly catastrophic depends on whether or not people have prepared to mitigate the effects of those hazards. Mitigation is expensive, however, and resources are limited, so expenditures must be prioritized.

A Need for Decisions
Right now, the solid-Earth science that we need for decision making is hampered by a lack of data—a situation analogous to forecasting weather before global observations were available. We know the total rates of deformation across earthquake-prone fault systems, but we lack the information to determine which faults are most likely to rupture, let alone when these ruptures will occur. For example, it is tremendously important whether the earthquake deficit in Southern California is more likely to be balanced by ruptures beneath heavily populated Los Angeles or the nearly empty Mojave Desert. The answer to that question has tremendous bearing on where to allocate resources to reinforce buildings and retrofit bridges and freeways.

Dangerous volcanic eruptions and landslides often have precursors, but our ability to detect and interpret these events is limited severely by lack of observations. This lack does more than just hamper our preparations for catastrophes; the economic sphere is affected as well. Such data could aid in searching for and producing hydrocarbon and mineral resources, as well as in managing our precious groundwater. Human endeavors to improve our situation under all these circumstances will benefit from observations from space.

The challenges, however, extend well beyond the so-called natural hazards. Consider the following questions:
• What is the distribution of natural sources and sinks of greenhouse gases, and how will this distribution change as the climate changes?
• Will the major ice sheets, including those of Greenland and the West Antarctic, collapse catastrophically and, if so, how rapidly will this occur? What will happen to the sea level as a result?
• Will droughts become more widespread in the western United States, Australia, and sub-Saharan Africa? How will this affect wildfires and agriculture? How will reduced snowfall change the needs for water storage?
• How will economic development affect the production of air pollutants, and how will these pollutants be transported across oceans and continents? How do these pollutants transform during transport?
• How will coastal and ocean ecosystems respond to changes in physical forcing, particularly those harvested intensely by humans? How will the boreal forest shift as temperature and precipitation change at high latitudes? How will animal migration patterns and invasive species change?
• Will previously rare diseases become common? How will mosquito-borne viruses spread with changes
in rainfall and drought? Can we better predict the outbreak of avian flu? What are the health impacts of an
expanded ozone hole that could result from the cooling stratosphere?
• Will tropical cyclones and heat waves become more frequent and/or more intense?

These questions demand vigorous efforts to gather data about Earth and to apply the improved understanding to growing societal needs. The challenges are immediate and call for a shared responsibility and partnership among the government, the private sector, and academia.

Unfortunately, the institutional structure of the U.S. government is not aligned well to meet these challenges. Consequently, the committee also recommended in the Decadal Survey that the government take a fresh look at how to implement and sustain programs to address issues that require long-term and highly accurate data with global coverage.

Watching Iceberg B10A
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Watching Iceberg B10A
Earth science satellites, our "stethoscopes in space," provide the most effective means of listening to our planet and diagnosing its overall condition. The information they return also can help keep us safe and economically viable. The SeaWinds radar instrument on board NASA's QuikScat satellite took this image in 1999. Iceberg B10A (shown with arrow), which broke off Antarctica in 1992, had drifted into a shipping lane. This was the first time that space technology was used to track a potential threat to international shipping. Credit: NASA / JPL

In particular, the committee recommended that the Office of Science and Technology Policy, in collaboration with relevant agencies and departments and the scientific community, implement a strategy for sustaining global Earth observations. This strategy should recognize the complexity of differing agency roles, responsibilities, and capabilities. This is an important recommendation and one on which the new administration might act. One thing is certain: the United States does not have the appropriate federal structure to confront long-term global environmental challenges such as climate change.

A Reasonable Request?
Returning to the Earth observing program, the scientists undertaking the Decadal Survey asked themselves a very simple question: what does it take to provide society with the information required for people to be proper stewards of our planet? They then asked this question: is it a reasonable request in view of the fiscal constraints on the federal budget? With regard to NASA, they were comforted to know that if Earth science in NASA was simply restored to the funding level it had in fiscal year 2000, it would be possible to fund an observation, research, and applications program that could provide the required information.

The committee's recommended observational strategy consists of
• 14 missions for NASA,
• 2 missions for NOAA, and
• 1 mission that has separate components for both NASA and NOAA.

With this observing strategy, we can make progress across the range of societal issues.

The number of recommended missions and observations is only a fraction of the number of those currently operating. Although the number may seem large, the committee chose to distribute the sensors among several satellites rather than gathering the systems into grouped payloads on a few large platforms. This distributed architecture creates a robust and integrated program—one that does not crumble if one or several missions are delayed, or if the list evolves to meet changing needs. Robustness is measured by the strength of the overall program, not by the particular missions. We must protect the range of observations rather than the individual missions themselves.

A Glass Half Full
Where are we today? The glass is half full: the 2008 and 2009 U.S. federal budgets make a solid down payment. The glass also is half empty, however: the out-year funding is at best "subprime," if not in default. I hope the next administration will have the foresight and courage to fill the glass, to create the needed Earth observation and information system. The challenges are real and growing.

Change is afoot, and change is rapid, more rapid than at any time in human history and perhaps at any time in Earth's history. We are seeing change across all the Earth's systems, including the human system. The accumulation and interaction of these changes, many caused by human activity, may well threaten both our species' and the planet's well-being. They are stresses from the natural variability of our dynamic planet, and they intersect with patterns of conflict, poverty, disease, and malnutrition.

We have profoundly changed the human-nature relationship, and these changes cascade through Earth's environment in ways that are difficult to understand and often impossible to predict. Surprises abound. At the least, these human-driven changes in the global environment will require that societies develop a multitude of creative responses and adaptive strategies. Some societies are adapting already; most are not. At worst, these changes may drive Earth itself into a different state that may be much less hospitable to humans and other forms of life.

The linked challenges of confronting and coping with global environmental changes and securing a sustainable future are daunting and immediate, but they are not insurmountable. The challenges can be met, but only with a new and even more vigorous approach to observing and understanding our changing planet.

In my view, there must be a concomitant commitment by all to alter our actions. Those who consume the most must take the greatest actions. We simply must take some of the pressure off Earth.

In 1969, Archibald MacLeish, on seeing the image of our planet rise above its moon, said, "To see the Earth as we now see it, small and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the unending night."

This image must inspire us even more now.

Berrien Moore III is executive director of Climate Central, an organization dedicated to providing the public and policymakers with clear, objective, and state-of-the-art information about climate change and its potential solutions.

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Understanding the complex, changing planet on which we live, how it supports life, and how human activities affect its ability to do so in the future is one of the greatest intellectual challenges facing humanity. It is also one of the most important challenges for society as it seeks to achieve prosperity, health, and sustainability.

Last year, the Committee on Earth Science and Applications from Space of the Space Studies Board of the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) released a Decadal Survey that laid out recommendations for the next 10 years of observing Earth from space. That report strongly affirmed this vision as an essential long-term guidepost to support the health, prosperity, safety, and sustainability of our planet.

The NRC Decadal Surveys set priorities for U.S. federal funding for specific research fields, such as astronomy and planetary science. As statements from the scientific communities actually doing the research, these decadal studies effectively influence the course of research and discovery. Author Berrien Moore cochaired the survey committee; his cochair was Rick Anthes, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. The committee worked from the summer of 2004 to January 2007.