An early EOS progress report

Abstract

Mission To Planet Earth (MTPE) is an ambitious NASA program with the goal to advance human knowledge of the planet Earth as a system. MTPE uses space and ground-based systems to acquire and analyze measurements to establish a strong scientific basis for policy making decisions related to the Earth environment. The Earth Observing System (EOS) program, the principal component of NASA's MTPE, provides the long-term observations and data system infrastructure needed to support interdisciplinary science. Its objective is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the global-scale processes that shape and influence the Earth. The twenty nine EOS Interdisciplinary Science (IDS) Investigation Teams, along with EOS Instrument Principal Investigators, and Facility Instrument Team Leaders, established seven science themes for EOS. These seven science themes are based on recommendations by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Committee on Earth and Environmental Sciences (CEES). The EOS-IDS teams have been collaborating to address these seven science priorities. Although these scientific investigations are in their early stages, they have already produced numerous advances in knowledge of Earth processes, state variables, and interactions. The authors summarize some of the scientific advances that have been made since the inception of EOS-IDS program in 1990. The achievements are grouped by the seven science objectives. >