Northrop Grumman's Tom Romesser Speaks at UK Conference on Climate Change

LONDON, November 5/PRNewswire/ --

    - Transforming climate data into knowledge is key to addressing global

climate change

    A senior Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) executive is among the

distinguished speakers from leading defence and aerospace companies

participating in the climate change conference, Energy, Environmental Defence

and Security (E2DS) 2009 being held this week in London.

    Tom Romesser, chief technology officer and vice-president Advanced

Programmes and Technology division for Northrop Grumman's Aerospace Systems

sector addressed the E2DS conference organized by Dynamixx. The conference,

held at RSA House from 5-6 Nov 2009, brings together more than 150 leading

international technologists and environmentalists-spanning government,

industry and academia-to discuss the aerospace and defence industry's

emerging role in combating climate change.

    Speaking at the conference, Romesser said, "Critical to addressing the

challenges of climate change is the need to develop robust decision support

information systems that bridge the gap between the mass of scientific data

on one hand, and the ability to translate that data into practical,

decision-quality knowledge on the other."

    He commented that in order to deal with the manifestations of climate

change, policy and decision-makers need a broad mechanism with which they can

arrive at the most appropriate mitigation measures. Observing systems,

modeling systems and decision support systems form the key links that

comprise the "information infrastructure" needed by the policy and

decision-makers.

    "Practical solutions to climate change must be accessible to all levels

of understanding. This requires an immense amount of data and the goal is to

synthesize and integrate climate data and modeling products into practical,

decision-quality knowledge. The challenge is to find a way in which existing

sensor and modeling information can be integrated and consolidated into

something that is capable of supporting the decisions of local and regional

policy-makers.

    The technical capabilities and expertise that have been developed by the

aerospace and national security industries are ideally suited to help

integrate some of the many tools already in place and to supply those that

are not."

    Northrop Grumman has a wide range of experience in developing space

systems for monitoring global change, from orbiting space platforms to

precision sensors; the company's remote sensing systems measure short- and

long-term variations on the planet, enhancing knowledge of global weather and

environmental trends.

    Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for the National Polar Orbiting

Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) and leads an industrial team under

contract to the tri-agency NPOESS Integrated Programme Office. NPOESS, the

next-generation, low-Earth orbiting operational weather and climate

monitoring system is designed and being built to provide significant

improvements in the timeliness, accuracy and fidelity of critical information

for both defence and civil needs. The NPOESS capability is planned to be

launched initially in 2011 with multiple sensors on the NPOESS Preparatory

Project and 4 satellites in two polar orbits to monitor more 19 of 26

essential climate variables from space. The NPOESS will enable scientific

data to be used faster and more frequently for improved forecasts and

warnings. The joint constellation of NPOESS and European MetOp satellites

will provide the international community global coverage from advanced

atmospheric imaging and sounding instruments with a data refresh rate of

approximately four to six hours.

    Northrop Grumman is also helping pioneer the application of its Global

Hawk fully autonomous high-altitude unmanned aircraft system (UAS) for

environmental science research. The company is providing engineering and

technical services to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center to support NASA's

use of Global Hawk for Earth science research. In October 2009, NASA and

Northrop Grumman announced the initial flight of a Global Hawk UAS to be used

in this research application.

    Northrop Grumman has a well-established presence in the UK with a

heritage of nearly 100-years. It operates from primary UK locations at

Fareham, Chester, Coventry, New Malden, Peterborough, RAF Waddington and

Solihull, providing avionics, communications, electronic warfare systems,

marine navigation systems, unmanned ground vehicles, C4I solutions and

mission planning, aircraft whole life support, IT systems and software

development.

    Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security company whose

120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in

aerospace, electronics, information systems, shipbuilding and technical

services to government and commercial customers worldwide.

    1109-527

Source: Northrop Grumman Corporation

Ken Beedle of Northrop Grumman Corporation, +44-207-747-1910, +44-7787-174092, Ken.beedle@euro.ngc.com