BOULDER, COLORADO - Try and tackle scientific uncertainty as to where Earth's climate is headed today and in years to come. It's no small task and rife with debate.

Thanks to a retinue of satellites, the puzzle pieces that comprise this planet's complex operating system are being eyed, analyzed, and slowly fit together.

But what's urgently needed is a plan, indeed, a multi-nation effort to monitor and forecast the environmental heartbeat of our thriving but abused planet.

That "big picture" project -- nothing short of giving Earth a perpetual physical exam -- is being advocated by the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., U.S. Navy (Retired).

Lautenbacher is nearing one year on the job as Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator. In case you don't have your Government manual near at hand, NOAA is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The agency is charted to observe and predict changes in the Earths environment and then apply this scientific knowledge to help protect and manage this countrys coastal and marine resources.

Given a modest budget of some $3.2 billion, NOAA's duties include forecasting all U.S. weather and climate, monitoring and archiving ocean and atmospheric data, managing marine fisheries and mammals, and conducting cutting-edge oceanic, atmospheric and solar research.

The agency runs the U.S. operational weather and environmental satellites, a fleet of research ships and aircraft, 12 environmental research laboratories and is home to one of the nation's seven uniformed services, the NOAA Corps.

"I really believe it's time to change NOAA. We need to transform the organization to one that can meet the challenges of this century," Lautenbacher said, focusing on such issues as climate change, ecosystem management and habitat restoration. "We need to move aheadto the kinds of social, economic problems that ocean and atmospheric science underpins," he added.

High on Lautenbacher's action item list is helping to put in place the architecture for a global observing system.

"We have to build this global architecture for observing the Earth. Part of that is to build the data protocols and formatsa way to move data around that will allow maximum use by the scientific community. That's one of my pet rocks, so to speak," Lautenbacher said.

Once up and operating, such a system would dramatically increase the accuracy for weather forecasting. The same goes for climate.

Even now, predictions about El Niño -- that snippy disruption of the ocean-atmosphere system in the Tropical Pacific that has stirs up weather and climate conditions around the globe -- are made three to six months in advance. Those early warnings are based on ocean buoys and polar orbiting spacecraft measurements.

"There's a chance to really improve our ability to foretell the future. We're just beginning to scratch the surface," Lautenbacher said. "We are right on the doorstep of doing this," he added.

Lautenbacher said that the resulting impact of long-range weather and climate prognostications would be a bonus for numerous sectors. Agriculture, farming, and tourism would benefit, for instance. Ultra-precise predictions would also mean taking better care of forests and the lessening of fire threats due to pre-warning about droughts, the NOAA chief said.

Despite the promise of creating a unified, worldwide network of ocean-based, aircraft carried, and satellite situated sensors - data already gleaned via existing technology has proven to be politically charged.

"I think history backs me up. NOAA's support has been bi-partisan. Republican or Democratit doesnt matter who is there. We've been able to maintain honesty and integrity in giving the best scientific information we can deliver, and let the policy makers base policies on that," Lautenbacher said.

Putting politics aside, however, there are squabbles between experts in the huge intellectual playpen called the Earth sciences.

"We have so many disciplines in Earth sciences. People are sometimes very focused on their piece. They have a hard time looking at this big picture. I'm trying to get them out of the boxes to look at the big picture and support where we need to go. I'm working on it," Lautenbacher said.

A step towards putting in place an integrated global observing system takes place December 3-5.

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program Planning Workshop for Scientists and Stakeholders is being held in Washington, D.C. In essence, the hope is to get America's act together by hammering out a solid global change research agenda.

A key question: How best to accelerate research and reduce significant uncertainties in climate science? One way is improve global climate observing systems, from top to bottom.

"Scientists always love more data," Lautenbacher noted. "But at the same time they realize there are gaps and uncertainties. Part of building a global climate observing system architecture is getting agreement on where those gaps are," he said.

On the space end of the climate monitoring business, new Earth-observing satellites -- like the European Space Agency's Envisat and NASA's EOS-Tera, EOS-Aqua, and Landsat 7 -- already pump out unprecedented amounts of high-quality research data. India, Japan, and China, as are other nations, also pull down data and actively study environmental change here on Earth.

Also busy at work are NOAA's entourage of geostationary operational environmental satellites (GOES) for short-range warning and "nowcasting," and polar-orbiting environmental satellites (POES) for longer term forecasting. Both types of satellites are necessary in providing a complete global weather monitoring system.

Then there is the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System - known in shorthand as NPOESS. This multi-billion dollar NOAA, Department of Defense, and NASA program melds the nation's military and civilian environmental satellite programs into a single national system. The first spacecraft launch for this program is planned for 2009, with five NPOESS satellites planned through 2018, built to significantly improve weather forecasting and climate prediction.

Satellite remote sensing is a critical part of understanding Earth's climate, present and future, Lautenbacher said. But there is also need for a marriage between coverage from overhead spacecraft and networks of sensors strung out across the planet.

"We're at the point where we really have to get that together. People understand that you can't cover everything from the ground. But you can't calibrate the space assets the way you need, unless you have the ground stations," Lautenbacher said.

One system now evolving is Argo - a global array of 3,000 free-drifting profiling floats. Each float measures the temperature and salinity of a large upper slice of ocean waters. This will allow continuous monitoring of the climate state of the ocean.

Data collected by the Argo network is being made publicly available within hours after collection. Argo deployments began in the year 2000 with hundreds of the floats now operating.

Lautenbacher said a model to foster and help build a global observing system is the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Within the United Nations, the Geneva, Switzerland-based WMO is a 185-member organization that provides a scientific voice on the state and behavior of the Earth's atmosphere and climate.

"The WMO has a great history and precedent for setting up working relationships across countries. It worked through the Cold Warwith weather as a unifying theme. It's a good model in terms of sharing information and getting people together to talk," Lautenbacher said.

"I think the time is ripe. An end-to-end global observing system with the computing and modeling capability, to interface with the data that's coming down," the NOAA chief concluded.

"I think there's great hope for getting international consensus on what the scientific system would look like. If you can get enough people talking about this, great gains for society can be made."