The United States has few short-term options to bridge a looming gap in key weather and climate observations, administration officials said yesterday.

It's a now-familiar message for lawmakers from both parties who are unhappy about the high cost of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Joint Polar Satellite System as well as the schedule delays that have dogged the program.

But it's not a welcome one.

"Each year, the budget request for satellite programs grows as a percentage of NOAA's total budget request," said Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), chairman of the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee, at a hearing yesterday. "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."

His Democratic counterpart, ranking member Brad Miller (N.C.), reminisced about an earlier version of the program now known as JPSS, calling it "late and unlamented ... the most snake-bit program in the federal government."

"Despite relentless pressure from both parties to get those programs under control, they have experienced cost overruns, and they almost never launch on schedule," Miller complained.

This year, the White House is seeking $5.1 billion for NOAA, looking for a slight increase to the agency's bottom line and a steep hike in satellite spending, balancing those upticks with cuts to weather, oceans, fisheries and research programs.

The administration has asked Congress to award $916 million to JPSS, a drop in the program's projected lifetime budget of $12.9 billion but a much larger share of NOAA's purse.

A precursor to the two planned JPSS satellites, the Suomi NPP probe, launched last fall. But its replacement, the first JPSS satellite, isn't expected to launch until mid-2017, months after Suomi NPP reaches the end of its projected five-year life in fall 2016.

Few options to fill a reporting void

The agency now believes that a future gap in crucial weather and climate data is a near certainty, and could last up to 24 months depending on Suomi's actual lifetime and JPSS-1's actual launch date (ClimateWire, March 21).

That situation prompted Harris to call yesterday's hearing to examine NOAA's other options to fill that data gap -- and to determine whether the agency should rely so heavily on satellites.

NOAA is "fundamentally dependent" on environmental observations to carry out its missions, said Mary Kicza, assistant administrator of the agency's satellite division.

"Observing the environment requires integration of all available sources to include both in situ and remotely sensed data from satellites," she said. "No single observation source can stand on its own."

But satellites do provide roughly 94 percent of the data NOAA uses in its weather forecasts, Kicza said. The vast majority of that satellite data comes from JPSS's predecessors, the polar-orbiting satellites now in orbit.

Her testimony prompted Harris to question whether NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco "spoke objectively" when she testified recently that there were no viable options to fill the expected data gap between Suomi NPP and JPSS-1.

"It is an objective statement on the part of the administrator," Kicza said, adding that NOAA performs modeling studies to determine how to best supply the data it needs for weather forecasts and warnings, fisheries management, climate research and other programs.

Other witnesses at yesterday's hearing included representatives of private-sector companies -- and one university -- that collect weather data.

But several of those experts said that satellites were a key part of NOAA's weather forecasting efforts and could not easily be replaced.

"As important as the Oklahoma MesoNet is, it tells us little about the Pacific Ocean," said Berrien Moore, director of the National Weather Center at Oklahoma State University. "It tells us little about weather over Europe. Weather is global."