National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials defended their agency's decision to fund expensive satellite programs while cutting other observational programs at a Science subcommittee hearing yesterday.

Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chairman Andy Harris (R-Md.) criticized the agency for allocating 40 percent of its $5.1 billion fiscal 2013 budget request toward satellites at the expense of cheaper observing systems based closer to the Earth's surface.

"NOAA's 'tough choices' have resulted in placing nearly all of its eggs in a single basket: satellite systems fraught with a long history of major problems," Harris said in his opening remarks.

Funding the $12.9 billion Joint Polar Satellite System program, which plans to launch two satellites in 2017, is a high priority because the satellites provide the bulk of the data that go into weather forecasts, said Mary Kicza, assistant administrator of NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service.

Specifically, polar satellites orbiting around the Earth every 90 minutes, 520 miles from the Earth's surface, provide 84 percent of the data, allowing forecasters to issue severe weather warnings two to five days in advance.

Another 10 percent of the data comes from geostationary satellites, which move with the Earth about 22,300 miles up and remain fixed on the United States, providing the images of hurricanes often seen on television, among other things. The remaining 6 percent comes from surface observations, which help fine-tune weather forecasts and issue real-time warnings, Kicza said.

"It's not one or the other; it's both," Kicza said. "They complement one another."

Ranking member Brad Miller (D-N.C.) asked how NOAA decided to cut or eliminate funding for several surface-based systems, including the National Mesonet Network and National Profiler Network.

John Murphy, programs chief for the National Weather Service, said NOAA prioritized the systems based on what provided the most essential information for making weather forecasts and severe weather warnings.

While localized data and wind profiling add value to forecasts, they are not absolutely critical because Doppler Radar is the primary surface-based tool used to issue warnings for things like tornados, he said.

Commercial data

Lawmakers also questioned the high costs of government weather data programs and hosted several representatives from the private sector to discuss how they could provide the same information for less.

"Technological advancements in the last two decades make it possible for more information to come from the private sector while still maintaining the level of quality assurance necessary for accurate weather forecasting," Harris said.

Eric Webster, vice president of ITT Exelis, which builds most of the instruments for NOAA's satellites, agreed. Given that the high cost of the current satellite programs is unsustainable, "NOAA will have to rely more on commercial capacity into the future to improve weather observations," he said.

Two such companies were on hand to describe what they could do for NOAA.

AirDat LLC has deployed sensors on hundreds of commercial airplanes to collect data from the low atmosphere to augment the National Weather Service's weather balloon program. While balloons go up twice a day from 69 sites, airplanes crisscross the country all day sending back data like temperature, relative humidity and wind in real time, said Bruce Lev, the vice chairman of AirDat.

"The volume of [Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Data Reporting] data is 40 times greater than the weather balloons at less than one-tenth the cost per sounding," Lev said.

GeoMetWatch is a relatively new company working to pick up the slack on geospatial sounding by launching its own advanced hyperspectral sounder, an instrument that was supposed to be on Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite - R Series (GOES-R) but was jettisoned because of cost overruns.

The sounder measures climate data such as water vapor, temperature and pressure, in addition to other information like ozone and greenhouse gases. It can help forecasters determine what the weather will be like in six hours, said David Crain, the CEO of GeoMetWatch.

The Commerce Department in 2010 granted the company the license to build the instrument, which NASA and NOAA already invested more than $300 million to design. The company plans to launch one sounder over Asia by 2016 and has the capacity to launch another one over the United States in the same time frame, Crain said.