POLAR-ORBITING ENVIRONMENTAL SATELLITES: Status, Plans, and Future Data Management Challenges

摘要

In summary, today's polar-orbiting weather satellite program is essential to a variety of civilian and military operations, ranging from weather warnings and forecasts to specialized weather products. NPOESS is expected to merge today's two separate satellite systems into a single state-of-the-art weather and environmental monitoring satellite system to support all users. This new satellite system is expected to provide vast streams of data, far more than are currently handled by the four central processing centers. To prepare for these increased data volumes, the four data processing centers must address key data management challenges including building up their respective infrastructures and working to be able to efficiently incorporate new data in their derived weather products and models. Because the NPOESS launch date is still several years in the future, the four processing centers and the integrated program office have time to continue to develop, define, and implement their plans to address key data management challenges. Each of the processing centers is planning activities to build its capacity to handle increased volumes of data, but more can be done to coordinate and define these plans including sharing information on what is needed in order for the centers to use particular weather products and developing a plan to address these scientific issues. Unless more is done to coordinate and define these plans, the centers could risk delays in using NPOESS data in operational weather products and forecasts.