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Benefits of GEOSS in South Carolina

In South Carolina, Earth Observations will:

Help expand the ability to track and model natural disasters (such as hurricanes and storms). Through Earth observations, South Carolina can have near real-time monitoring that will improve storm and hurricane forecasts and help to dramatically reduce the cost of damage to property and human life.

Average annual damage from tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods is $11.4 billion nationally, of which:

Yield information on flooding, road loss, and extent of property damage in addition to facilitating clean-up. Ground monitors, models, and satellite images give emergency responders and relief crews ways to respond faster (with more geographic precision) and avoid hazards themselves.

Pinpoint South Carolina's beach areas impacted by coastal erosion, weather, and environmental pollutants such as aquatic blooms and oil spills.

Travel and tourism is the Nation's largest employer and second largest contributor to the GDP, generating over $700 billion annually. Beaches are the leading tourist destination, with coastal states earning 85 percent of all U.S. tourism revenues. Approximately 180 million people vacation and recreate along U.S. coasts every year.3

Track the change from vegetation to paved surfaces (houses, roofs, and roads), thereby providing critical information relating to the impacts of growth and development and how they affect ecosystem health and wildlife habitats.

Enable state and local air quality forecasters to issue to the public more timely, accurate, and site-specific warnings regarding bad air quality so that people (especially the sensitive population) may take prudent actions to protect their health. By 2005, ozone forecasts will be made available along the entire East Coast and by 2009, particulate matter forecasts will be made available.

It is estimated that 31 million Americans including 9 million children have asthma. Ground level ozone in the summer time is the chief cause for poor air quality warnings and human exposure to ozone is known to aggravate asthma. Another component of air, airborne particulate matter, is associated with increased hospital admissions and emergency room visits for people with heart and lung disease and increased work and school absences.4

Children with asthma miss more than 14 million school days annually and asthma accounts for an estimated 14.5 million lost work days per year.5

Provide more accurate weather forecasting and save South Carolina homeowners and businesses millions of dollars in heating and cooling costs.

The value of understanding the interrelationships between weather variables and electric load can save a small utility at least $0.5 M annually through improved temperature forecasts.6

Help track West Nile virus and Lyme disease through spatial analyses of environmental conditions, organisms, and people and places affected.

Aid in stormwater management for growing cities in South Carolina. Earth observations' large collection of rainfall data and forecasting tools can benefit Florida in its efforts to track storms, plan for drought, and manage wet weather runoff.

Drought is estimated to result in average annual losses to all sectors of the economy of between $6-8 billion.7

Track effects of global change. Integration of international Earth Observation data sets that will allow us to determine what changes, including sea level rise and coastal degradation, may be occurring.

Weather and climate sensitive industries, both directly and indirectly, account for about one-third of the Nations' GDP, or $3 trillion, ranging from finance, insurance, and real estate to services, retail and wholesale trade and manufacturing.8

Promote reduction of erosion and other non-point sources of pollution in many watersheds, and help to reduce sediment, urban contributions, and fecal coliform bacteria contributions to rivers, lakes, streams and other waters, and potentially reduce phosphorus and nitrogen contributions to waters.

Pollution has rendered 44 percent of tested US estuaries and 12 percent of ocean shoreline waters unfit for uses such as swimming, fishing, or supporting aquatic life.9



1 National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Environmental and Societal Impacts Group, and the Atmospheric Policy Program of the American Meteorological Society, 2001, Extreme Weather Sourcebook 2001: Economic and Other Societal Impacts Related to Hurricanes, Floods, Tornadoes, Lightning, and Other U.S. Weather Phenomena, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo. Available only online at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/sourcebook/data.html

3 Leeworthy, Vernon R., Preliminary Estimates from Versions 1-6: Coastal Recreation Participation, National Survey on Recreation and the Environment (NSRE) 2000, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin-istration, NOAA Oceans and Coasts, Special Projects Office. Website: http://marineeconomics.noaa.gov.

4 U.S. Centers for Disease Control

5 CDC. Surveillance for asthma: United States, 1980-1999. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 2002;51(SS01):1-13

6 Tribble, A.N., 2003: The relationship between weather variables and electricity demand to improve short-term load forecasting. Ph. D. dissertation, School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma, 221 pp., from Building The National Cooperative Mesonet: Program Development Plan For COOP Modernization dated October 2003.

7 Economic Impacts of Drought and the Benefits of NOAA's Drought Forecasting Services, NOAA Magazine, September 17, 2002. Website: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/magazine/stories/mag51.htm.

8 Dutton, John A., Opportunities and priorities in a new era for weather and climate services, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, September 2002, volume 83, no. 9, pp 1303-1311.

9 Health of the Oceans Report 2002, The Ocean Conservancy, http://www.oceanconservancy.org/

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