PROGRAM TITLE:  	Earth Probes/NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT)
ACTIVITY STREAMS:	Observations & Data Management
SCIENCE ELEMENT:	Climate and Hydrologic Systems
				Biogeochemical Dynamics

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

SCIENTIFIC MERIT:  The NSCAT instrument measures ocean surface 
wind velocity and provides data on air-sea interactions crucial to 
understanding oceanic uptake of carbon dioxide and other gases.  
NSCAT addresses fundamental processes in which the oceans and the 
atmosphere play a role in moderating the Earth's climate.  Surface 
marine winds modulate the fluxes of momentum, heat, and moisture 
between the atmosphere and ocean.  These fluxes drive both the 
atmospheric and oceanic circulations, and are critical to 
understanding and developing accurate coupled atmosphere/ocean 
circulation models needed for short- and long-range climate 
forecasting.  

NSCAT  is designed to acquire, high-resolution, continuous, all-
weather measurement of near-surface vector winds over the ice-free 
global oceans.  As the only instrument capable of acquiring 
measurement of wind velocity - both speed and direction - under 
all-weather conditions, NSCAT data are crucial for studies of 
tropospheric dynamics and air-sea momentum fluxes.  NSCAT will 
measure vector winds over 79 % of the global oceans each day, with 
virtually complete coverage in every 2-day period.  The wind 
velocity data from NSCAT will be used for calculating all air-sea 
fluxes, for modeling upper ocean circulation and tropospheric 
dynamics, and for improving global weather predictions.

STAKEHOLDERS:  NSCAT will fly on the Japanese ADEOS mission in 
1996, and the data will be a key contribution to major international 
ocean/atmosphere research programs, including the World Ocean 
Circulation Experiment (WOCE) and the Tropical Ocean Global 
Atmosphere (TOGA) program, both of which are components of the 
World Climate Research Program (WCRP).  Also, NOAA plans near-
real time acquisition of global NSCAT data for pre-operational use in 
weather forecasting activities.

POLICY RELEVANCE: 	
Primary	- Climate Change and Global Warming

Secondary	- Seasonal and Interannual Prediction 

                                                                                                                                    
PROGRAM CONTACT:	
Lenwood G. Clark			
Dr. Mike VanWoert
Office of Mission to Planet Earth, Code YS
NASA Headquarters, Code YF	
202-488-5150
tel: 202-358-0786
fax: 202-358-2769
E-Mail: L.CLARK.NASA/omnet