NOAA Announces New Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites

May 28, 2009 -- NOAA scientists have teamed up with experts from the University of Maryland and North Carolina State University to form the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites. The new institute will use satellite observations to detect, monitor and forecast climate change, and its impact on the environment, including ecosystems.

“To help us understand climate change, we have to find ways to best leverage all of our available resources, including the information we get from satellites,” said Mary Kicza, assistant administrator for NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service. “Bringing together some of the best minds to study satellite imagery and data will shed more light on how our climate is changing.”

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In addition to studying data from satellites currently in operation, scientists will also extract climate data from two next generation satellite systems – the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R series, or GOES-R, and the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, or NPOESS.

The institute will have two centers – one in College Park, Md., adjacent to the site of the planned NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction, and the other at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

Other partners of the institute include: Howard University, Princeton University, Duke University, the University of California at Irvine, Columbia University, the University of Miami, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Oregon State University, Colorado State University, Remote Sensing Systems, in Santa Rosa, Calif., and the City University of New York.

NOAA supports 23 cooperative institutes across the United States to promote research, education, training and outreach aligned with NOAA’s mission. Cooperative institutes collaborate with NOAA scientists, coordinate resources among all non-government partners and promote the involvement of students and post-doctoral scientists in NOAA-funded research.

Source: NOAA