The United States government could see a big bill due to too few satellites and climate change, according to a Scientific American article. The Government Accountability Office released its biennial report on risks to government programs, listing climate change and weather satellite gaps as two of several high-cost items.<\/p>\n
Climate change is considered high-cost because it causes multiple problems such as frequent severe weather events and rising sea levels, which threaten government property and flood insurance programs.<\/p>\n
The report also indicated that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could be without polar orbiting satellites for at least a year, three months longer than NOAA\u2019s original estimate. Polar orbiting satellites supply most of the data used in weather models. Any gaps in coverage could have costly national and global consequences. <\/p>\n
Top image:\u00a0Animation of polar ice concentrations, which could be affected by shifting climate zones (Credit: NASA)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The United States government could see a big bill due to too few satellites and climate change, according to a Scientific American article. The Government Accountability Office released its biennial report on risks to government programs, listing climate change and weather satellite gaps as two of several high-cost items. Climate change is considered high-cost because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":10593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,7],"tags":[157,345,103,283],"class_list":["post-21196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earth-atmosphere","category-news","tag-climate-change","tag-earth-atmosphere","tag-news-2","tag-satellites"],"remote_post_permalink":false,"remote_post_featured_image":false,"yoast_head":"\n