NOAA: A new satellite set to launch next month will monitor the rate of sea-level rise and help measure the strength of hurricanes, according to a leading NOAA scientist. At a press briefing today, Laury Miller, chief of NOAA’s Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry, said NOAA will use data from the Jason-2/Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM) to extend a 15-year record from two earlier altimeter missions that currently show sea level is rising at a rate of 3.2 mm/year — nearly twice as fast as the previous 100 years. “This rate, if it continues unchanged over the coming decades, will have a large impact on coastal regions, in terms of erosion and flooding,” said Miller. The Jason-2/OSTM is scheduled for lift off June 15 at 1:47 a.m. from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The spacecraft is a joint, international effort between NOAA, NASA, France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat).
Like its predecessor missions TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1, Jason-2/OSTM is designed to extend the climate data record by providing a long-term survey of Earth’s oceans, tracking ocean circulation patterns and measuring sea-surface heights and the rate of sea-level rise. These are all key factors in understanding climate change....
This image of the Jason-2/Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM) is from NOAA
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