Release No. 00-105

MARYLAND FIRMS WIN CONTRACT TO SUPPORT EARTH SCIENCE RESEARCH AT NASA GODDARD

General Sciences Corporation in Beltsville, Md., has been selected by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., for a contract to provide support to the Center's Ocean Color research programs and flight projects and the NASA Seasonal-to-Interannual Prediction Project. The 5-year contract has a potential value of $25.8 million dollars.

Two other Maryland firms are major subcontractors on the effort. They are Futuretech Corporation in Greenbelt and Science Systems and Applications, Inc., in Lanham.

These programs are central to the NASA Earth Science Enterprise and are key components of the GSFC Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes.

The ocean, seen from space, is many different shades of blue. Using instruments that are more sensitive than the human eye, scientists can measure carefully the fantastic array of colors of the ocean. Different colors may reveal the presence and concentration of phytoplankton, sediments, and dissolved organic chemicals. Looking at the color of an area of the ocean allows us to estimate the amount and general type of phytoplankton in that area, and tells us about the health and chemistry of the ocean. ln addition, the plants show where pollutants poison the ocean and prevent plant growth, and where subtle changes in the climate-warmer or colder more saline or less saline-affect phytoplankton growth. Since phytoplankton depend upon specific conditions for growth, they frequently become the first indicator of a change in their environment.

Understanding and predicting seasonal-to-interannual climate variations is an essential goal within the overall NASA strategy for climate research. The NASA Seasonal to Interannual Prediction Project has been established at Goddard to develop the use of existing and planned remote observing systems, together with in situ observations, for experimental predictions of seasonal-to-interannual climate variations. The project specifically targets the assimilation of satellite data into a coupled atmosphere-ocean-land-ice modeling system developed at Goddard to predict not only the short-term climate variations associated with sea surface temperature variations in the tropical Pacific, but also those processes and teleconnections that have socio-economic impacts on the United States. Better models are key to long range forecasts of major climate events, such as El Niño and La Niña, which can have profound ecological and economic impact around the world.

Work under the Cost-Plus-Award-Fee, Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite-Quantity type contract will be done at Goddard, NASA's Center of Excellence for scientific research, and leader of NASA's mission of Earth system science which seeks a better understanding of the global environment by exploring how the Earth's systems of air, land, water and life interact with each other.