A plot from the SEC's Radio User's Page showing the extent and position of the auroral oval at the North Pole. The graphics are extrapolated from measurements taken during the most recent polar pass of the NOAA POES satellite.
NEWINGTON, CT, Oct 3, 2003--With final action pending by the US House and Senate on a Fiscal Year 2004 federal budget bill, the fate of the Space Environment Center (SEC) in Boulder, Colorado, hangs in the balance. The FY 2004 Senate appropriations bill eliminates funds for the SEC and for all space weather-related activities in the center's parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The House version of the appropriations bill holds the center's funding at $5.2 million--a 40-percent reduction from FY 2002 levels. President George W. Bush requested $8.3 million for the SEC. Seattle-based ARRL propagation bulletin editor Tad Cook, K7RA, says the possible loss of Space Environment Center funding has him very concerned.
A plot from the SEC's Radio User's Page showing the extent and position of the auroral oval at the North Pole. The graphics are extrapolated from measurements taken during the most recent polar pass of the NOAA POES satellite. |
"The NOAA SEC provides all of the data for our weekly propagation bulletin," Cook said. "It is SEC staff that prepares the forecasts that I rely on when I tell readers what the geomagnetic and solar indices will be during a given forecast period." Cook says he suspects the proposed cuts are due to some misunderstanding about the SEC's mission, and his contacts with congressional offices have borne out that belief. Cook is encouraging ARRL members to contact their senators and representatives in Congress, urging them to vote to fund the SEC.
The Space Environment Center provides real-time monitoring and forecasting of solar and geophysical events (see the Space Weather Now Web site). Those include solar flares and geomagnetic disturbances that can affect radio wave propagation. The SEC Radio User's Page includes data and information specific to the current state of the ionosphere. The center also conducts research in solar-terrestrial physics and develops techniques to forecast solar and geophysical disturbances.
"It is the government's official source for alerts and warnings of disturbances," Center Director Ernest Hildner explained in a recent posting to SEC clients. With the US Air Force, the SEC also operates the Space Weather Operations Center, which serves as the national and world warning center for disturbances that can affect people and equipment--such as astronauts and communications satellites--working in the space environment.
Hildner predicted that unless the House and Senate agree to restore the SEC's appropriation level to the level requested by the White House, "the nation's civilian space weather service is in trouble." He said that President Bush's requested funding level would let the Space Environment Center "almost return" to its FY 2002 level of services, data and research and development.
The SEC's FY 2003 appropriations bill included a 40 percent funding cut "with no explanation for the reduction," Hildner said, adding that one-time funding additions kept the center afloat in FY 2003. He worries that without some compromise, the SEC could disappear by month's end leaving its 50 employees on the street.
A Senate Appropriations Committee report includes a terse explanation on the subject of funding for solar observation. "The 'Atmospheric' in NOAA does not extend to the astral," the report said. "Absolutely no funds are provided for solar observation. Such activities are rightly the bailiwick of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Air Force."
 A GOES satellite solar x-ray image of the solar disk. The GOES solar x-ray imager experienced an outage on September 2, and ground controllers have been unsuccessful in returning the unit to operation. For more information, see the GOES Solar X-Ray Imager Web site. |
Hildner says there's "no evidence to suggest that NASA and the Air Force agree that one or the other, or both, should operate the nation's civilian space weather service." In fact, the Department of Defense, NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration are among the SEC's customers, which also include the airlines, electric power grid operators, communications facilities, satellite operators, the National Space Weather Program and commercial providers of value-added space weather services.
Cook says the Senate report misses the point that the effects of solar flares and sunspots concern everyone on Earth. "Claiming that NOAA should ignore the sun because it is in space seems silly, since the same standard doesn't apply to NOAA's conventional weather forecasting," he said.
The Senate has yet to pass the Commerce, Justice and State (CJS) appropriations bill that zeroes out the SEC's funding. The legislation is not likely to go to a House-Senate conference committee at least for another two weeks at the earliest, and it could be folded into a larger "omnibus" bill with three or four other spending measures.
Hildner said that unless the SEC's appropriation level is increased in conference, the most optimistic outlook is that the SEC will shrink to less than half its capability--the House funding level--or go away altogether under the Senate bill.
"In this case," he concluded, "the nation's space weather service will have to be reconstituted in some other agency, at greater cost and lesser capability, to meet the nation's needs."
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