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Charting iceberg thaw or the frequency of Al Gore in the news is one way of measuring how much danger the planet is, but a new European project could monitor our continent's climate from space and provide a boost in the fight against climate change.
The Global Monitoring for Environment and Security project (GMES) will eventually consist of five satellites -- or "sentinels" -- that will monitor different climate elements. The project has been jointly developed by the European Commission and European Space Agency and is aimed at generating data that will inform government policy on combating climate change and help plan for the effects of the changes already taking place. Each satellite would provide different data sets, such as ocean-monitoring information (temperature, color, level) and atmospheric data.
There are firm plans for the first three sentinels -- with launches expected in 2011 or 2012 -- but plans for the final two satellites are less certain due to funding issues. O'Neill said the UK has to do more than it has done so far to ensure results of the data-gathering can be quickly made into policy. "If the UK gets its act together, it can get involved in the building of (GMES)," he said.
Michael Jack, chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, said the UK decision makers need to be better informed about the project and more effort needs to be made to engage with the public around the project. "At the moment there's a yawning disconnect," he said.
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