National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA; German National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration ), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric the United States. It was established on 3 October 1970 as a facility of the Department of Commerce to coordinate national ocean and atmospheric services. Its seat is the federal capital, Washington, DC U.S. President Barack Obama named Jane Lubchenco to the end of 2008, NOAA director.
Structure
The NOAA is composed of five major organizations:
- National Weather Service (NWS )
- National Ocean Service (NOS ), with its National Geodetic Survey ( NGS)
This part is to support organizations engaged by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Corps, a uniformed unit, the ships and aircraft and support scientific missions. The NOAA Corps is one of the seven Uniformed Services of the United States.
The NOAA is a member of the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters.
Programs
Current major programs are the OGP & Arctic Research Program (Climate Program Office ), the National Sea Grant College Program and the Ocean Exploration Program and NOAA 's Undersea Research Program (Office of Ocean Exploration and Research). In the latter, also the hydrothermal field Lost City was investigated in the Atlantic closer.
Severe weather alert radio
With appropriately equipped radio receivers and / or amateur radio weather radio can be listened to by NOAA. Many receivers have an automatic alarm evaluation, similar to the German radio traffic. Such a weather radio system does not exist in Western Europe.
Free digital charts
The NOAA is obliged to provide free complete, current digital charts and corrections ( to improve safety in the national coastal waters and in all waters for which the NOAA created their own charts ). The to be purchased over the Internet standardized records are part -day or week -to-date. The passing of this digital data collections is also not limited, as long as this takes place free of charge and exclusively in digital form.
Remember The general equipment and use requirements with appropriate paper charts exist, so that it be formally is only an additional offer. The digital maps of NOAA be used on virtually all U.S. ships in which the permanent operation of a computer and a GPS receiver is technically feasible (power supply, protected space for electronics ); this reduced the number of incidents by navigation errors and outdated charts.
The sales of paper charts took - contrary to expectations - in parallel with the spread of digital nautical charts to, especially for sea areas where the digital corrections lead to significant changes compared with the paper map. In particular, water sports and coastal ship if they make no regular manual adjustments of their charts are animated by the obvious changes in their sailing area for the early initial purchase their mandatory equipment.
NOAA satellites
As NOAA POES also the project of NOAA authority associated satellite NOAA -1 are referred to NOAA -19. The NOAA satellites are LEO weather satellites TIROS satellite series, some of which have identical instruments with the European equivalent MetOp. However, the NOAA satellites are productive for many years and the images are released for private use and for teaching and research purposes. A release for official and commercial weather services in Europe is only with the commissioning of MetOp (about January 2007) on the EU EUMETSAT possible since then in return the NOAA authority is allowed to access data from the satellite MetOp. Amateur, weather and radio stations with a decoder automatically on the NOAA satellite access and may subsequently post-processed images for non-commercial purposes post to the web.
The peculiarity of the NOAA POES satellites of the project is that they operate in a polar orbit. Due to the low height of only about 820 kilometers, the resolution is much better than in geostationary weather satellites such as GOES or Meteosat, the European counterpart. In contrast, reduced by the low altitude the field of view of the instruments, so that no large areas can be acquired simultaneously. However, in the course of a day, he sees almost the entire surface of the earth. Furthermore, the weakness of the geostationary over the polar orbit that it extends parallel to the equator. Observations in the polar region and in the North Atlantic, the " weather kitchen " in Europe, are possible only at a large angle, what the quality of the images is further reduced. These difficulties are not present in a weather satellite on a polar orbit.
Higher resolution of the images, better observation of the Polar and the North Atlantic region and by recording the measured variables soil temperature and moisture distribution of NOAA authority was possible by means of NOAA satellites to extend the reliable prediction interval of three to five days. Due to the improved monitoring intensity and accuracy ( " improvements in observational tools and analysis techniques " ), the authority in a study that, contrary to many fears and allegations - such as pages of Al Gore in the film " An Inconvenient Truth" - the number tropical cyclones has not increased in the North Atlantic during the 20th century.
From 2013, a new generation of satellites to be used.