The most recent issue of Nature contains a story by Declan Butler titled, “Earth Monitoring: The planetary panopticon.”
The feature contains the following forecast from Rick Anthes, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, “A user will be able to get, on demand, climate, or any other information for any place on the planet, on the land, in the oceans, or in the atmosphere, at any time, past, present and future.â€
However, it also states that, “US Earth-monitoring programs are adrift without leadership, and the number of observational satellites and instruments has already peaked, and is set to decline over the next two decades.”
According to Butler, the answer for the U.S. is to look to Europe and the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme run by the European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA).
You can read the full feature online here.
