SPACE WIRE
Nations seek to integrate climate change tracking mechanisms
WASHINGTON (AFP) Aug 01, 2003
Government officials and scientists from more that 30 countries have called for the speedy development of an integrated method to observe climate change and other environmental trends on Earth.

Participants at the so-called "Earth Observation Summit," held Thursday at the US State Department, pledged to move ahead with an "international, comprehensive, coordinated and sustained" monitoring mechanism within 10 years time.

"We, the participants, call for and intend to participate in a comprehensive, coordinated Earth observation system that is used for the benefit of humankind and thereby contributes to sustaining the Earth for future generations," they said in a declaration after the meeting.

The aim is to link the thousands of individual land-, sea- and space-based climate observation assets to better predict environmental changes and natural disasters and limit their impact, they said.

A conceptual framework for linking those assets is expected to be developed by the spring of 2004 when a ministerial level meeting on the project will be held in Tokyo which will then lead to the actual creation of the new system.

Such a system would greatly improve weather forecasting, particularly with major trends such as El Nino, crop yield estimates, the monitoring of water and air quality, boost airline safety and promote climate-related health research, they said.

"Our cooperation will enable us to develop the capability to predict droughts, prepare for weather emergencies, plan and protect crops, manage coastal areas and fisheries, and monitor air quality," US President George W. Bush said in a statement.

The leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations called for the initiative at their last summit in Evian, France last month with an eye toward helping mainly developing countries in the southern hemisphere.

But, as US officials noted, an integrated global climate monitoring system would help the entire population of earth, noting the worldwide benefit of El Nino forecasting are estimated at between 450 to 550 million dollars per year.

For every dollar invested in improving weather forecasting, farmers reap 15 dollars in benefits, they said.

The annual cost of electricity could decrease by at least one billion dollars if those forecasts could be improved by just one degree, they said.

And, the airline industry, which now loses about four billion dollars a year because of weather-related delays and cancellations, could cut those losses by as much as 1.7 billion dollars through better forecasting and observation.

"The benefits of an Earth Observation system ... are vitally important to the United States and to the people of the world," said US Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham as he opened the conference.

"A more systematic, open, and timely sharing of existing earth observations information would greatly improve responses to natural hazards or disasters," Secretary of State Colin Powell told the conference.

France's junior minister for research and new technologies, Claudie Haignere, at the summit called for urgent international efforts to cut greenhouse gases -- CO2 basically -- for which, she said, "planetary monitoring devices are indispensable."

The United States dropped out of the 1997 Kyoto treaty on global warming -- ratified by more than 100 mostly developing nations -- shortly after Bush came to power in 2001. The US leader wants to work with his allies to cut greenhouse gases without harming US industries and workers.

The one-day summit will be followed by a two-day working session at which delegates are to lay the groundwork for the "conceptual framework" for an integrated earth observation system.

Part of that framework is expected to focus on integrating data from weather satellites and other space-based tracking systems but organizers said they were equally concerned about sea-based assets.

Currently, a number of countries are cooperating in the so-called ARGO system which has deployed nearly 825 ocean monitoring buoys which drop below the sea surface to collect and record data and then transmit them to satellites.

However, organizers said ARGO needed to be vastly expanded to include at least 3,000 buoys.

The framework is also expected to call for massive international investment in super-computing simulation to accurately predict environmental and weather changes.

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