Another instance of one of the promises of technology, providing important information to make good policy decisions; and why it is important to fully fund, and then some, the NASA program.
An excerpt.
NASA Satellites Find Balance in South America's Water Cycle
NASA via BBSNews - 2006-07-06 --
For the first time, NASA scientists using space-based measurements have directly monitored and measured the complete cycle of water movement for an entire continent.
Using satellite data from three Earth-orbiting NASA missions -- Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat), Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace), and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) -- a science team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., directly observed the seasonal cycling of water into and out of South America. Their research confirmed that the amount of water as rain or snow flowing into the continent from the marine atmosphere is in balance with the estimated amount of water returned to the ocean by the continent's rivers.
The findings are significant because until now there had been no direct way to monitor continental water balance. Scientists had been estimating the balance through regional ground-based measurements and computer models. The findings are published in Geophysical Research Letters.
"Having a better understanding of the processes in which water is transported from Earth's oceans to continental land masses is important to a variety of climate and ecology studies," said Dr. Timothy Liu, science team leader at JPL. "We'll have greater understanding of floods and drought, surface and ground water quality, and the availability of freshwater resources for agriculture and ecosystems."
