Washington

Predicting solar flares is useful because they can effect equipment such as satellites and planes. Credit: SOHO

The main US centre for predicting and monitoring solar storms could be shut down unless government agencies and other users of 'space weather' forecasts rally to its defence, according to scientists and congressional staff.

The Space Environment Center (SEC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado, has had its $8.3-million funding request for 2004 rejected by the Senate subcommittee that determines appropriations to the US Department of Commerce, of which NOAA is a part. The subcommittee proposes cutting off the SEC's funding completely.

The House of Representatives' bill cuts the request by 40%, which would save the centre but cause “serious downsizing”, according to the SEC's deputy director, Ron Zwickl.

The House and Senate bills will be reconciled within the next few weeks. The final appropriation is typically somewhere between the two figures, but in rare cases the full funding request can be restored.

The SEC is the primary US source of solar-activity forecasts, which are generated from satellite data and readings from ground-based solar telescopes and geomagnetic sensors. Because intense solar flares can harm equipment ranging from satellites in space to electrical power grids on the ground, the SEC's alerts go to a wide variety of customers, including NASA, the Pentagon, utility companies and airlines.

The congressional committees think that the public agencies should be paying for the data that they use. “If somebody really wants it badly enough in a tight budget environment, they need to step up to the plate,” says Kevin Linskey of the Senate appropriations committee staff.

But the SEC's supporters, including Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the nearby University of Colorado, counter that NASA has traditionally been opposed to paying for monitoring networks. And the US Air Force, which uses the SEC's data to create its own space-weather forecasts, has not volunteered to fund the centre.

The American Astronomical Society has written letters of support and alerted its members to the SEC's plight. Advanced-technology company Lockheed Martin, United Airlines and several US utility firms have weighed in to defend the centre. Some NOAA officials hope that the centre could be saved by incorporating it into the agency's National Weather Service, or that the final bill will restore the funding.