Reuters 18 Jan 08;
GENEVA (Reuters) - Space agencies including NASA have agreed to use their next generation of satellites to help monitor climate change, the United Nations weather agency said.
The consensus came at a high-level meeting this week in New Orleans, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.
"High-tech efforts to better understand global warming have been strengthened after the world's space and meteorological agencies gave their support to a WMO strategy for the enhanced use of satellites to monitor climate change and weather," the WMO said in a statement issued late on Thursday.
The aim is to ensure that satellites launched over the next 20 years constantly record parameters such as sea levels and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Senior officials from NASA, the European Space Agency and space agencies in Japan, China, Brazil and India attended the two-day meeting where WMO presented its strategy.
"Every agency which attended supported it," WMO spokesman Paul Garwood said.
Climate change monitoring requires very long-term continuous measurement, according to Jerome Lafeuille, who heads the space-based observing system division of WMO's space program. Satellites are essential to this, because they give a global picture of changes in the oceans, on land and in the atmosphere.
Scientists blame climate change mainly on human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and warn it will bring extreme weather including more heatwaves, droughts, floods and rising seas.
At least 16 geo-stationary and low-earth orbit satellites currently provide operational data on the planet's climate and weather as part of WMO's global observation system.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay)
