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South American meteorologists to get a satellite boost

South American meteorologists are getting a boost from space: A US weather satellite long used for tracking hurricanes and other wild weather will soon be moved over a continent plagued by its own costly natural disasters.

In October, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) plans to reposition an aging but reliable nine-year-old satellite high over the Brazilian Amazon to provide full-time coverage for forecasters who now weather long periods without regular images during US hurricane season.

The satellite -- a sport utility vehicle-sized piece of equipment now hovering about 35,881km above the Pacific Ocean -- is part of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) series, which has brought Americans views of Hurricane Katrina, El Nino-fueled storms and other meteorological phenomena.

The satellite aid to South America and another that was repositioned in 2003 to get a better view of Japan are NOAA's contributions to improving the Global Earth Observation System of Systems, a coalition of more than 60 countries working to unify Earth observation by 2015 and improve environmental policies around the planet.

"We hope it sets an example for South America and others to share their observations to make our total global forecasting work a little better," said Gregory Withee, assistant administrator of NOAA Satellites and Information Services. "We're all in this together ... because weather is global."

The satellites deliver both visual and infrared images, and are used to monitor storms, detect sea surface temperatures and wildland fires. They also can take cloud temperatures, show ozone distribution and track the conditions that can produce aircraft icing.

South America has received images from existing GOES-series satellites for decades, but those have focused primarily on the US and its immediate surroundings. So whenever a storm kicks up in the Northern Hemisphere, the satellite that usually delivers images to South America at least every 30 minutes instead rapidly scans the northern trouble spot, reducing South American images to as little as once every three hours.

During US hurricane season, this happens as much as 40 percent of the time, NOAA officials said.

In weather terms, such gaps can be an "eternity," said 1st Lieutenant Ricardo Valenti, who oversees a roomful of Air Force and civilian contractors tracking weather at the Argentine National Meteorological Service.

"We can't monitor what we can't see," Valenti said. "There's no anger. We accept that it's like this. But that's why we made the request."

Last year, South American meteorologists formally requested that the satellite be repositioned, rather than the more likely scenario of keeping it as an in-orbit spare after the launch later this spring of the 13th GOES-series satellite, which will continue monitoring US storms.
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