[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXPANDING CLIMATE SERVICES AT THE
NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC
ADMINISTRATION (NOAA): DEVELOPING
THE NATIONAL CLIMATE SERVICE
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 5, 2009
__________
Serial No. 111-24
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science and Technology
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.science.house.gov
______
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. BART GORDON, Tennessee, Chair
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois RALPH M. HALL, Texas
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER JR.,
LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California Wisconsin
DAVID WU, Oregon LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington DANA ROHRABACHER, California
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma
DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois
MARCIA L. FUDGE, Ohio W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
BEN R. LUJAN, New Mexico RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas
PAUL D. TONKO, New York BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
PARKER GRIFFITH, Alabama MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas
STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
JIM MATHESON, Utah BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California
LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska
BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri PETE OLSON, Texas
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona
CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio
KATHLEEN DAHLKEMPER, Pennsylvania
ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
SUZANNE M. KOSMAS, Florida
GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
VACANCY
------
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment
HON. BRIAN BAIRD, Washington, Chair
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas
BEN R. LUJAN, New Mexico MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
PAUL D. TONKO, New York
JIM MATHESON, Utah
LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
BART GORDON, Tennessee RALPH M. HALL, Texas
JEAN FRUCI Democratic Staff Director
CHRIS KING Democratic Professional Staff Member
MICHELLE DALLAFIOR Democratic Professional Staff Member
SHIMERE WILLIAMS Democratic Professional Staff Member
ELAINE PAULIONIS PHELEN Democratic Professional Staff Member
ADAM ROSENBERG Democratic Professional Staff Member
ELIZABETH STACK Republican Professional Staff Member
TARA ROTHSCHILD Republican Professional Staff Member
STACEY STEEP Research Assistant
C O N T E N T S
May 5, 2009
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Brian Baird, Chair, Subcommittee on
Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology,
U.S. House of Representatives.................................. 8
Written Statement............................................ 9
Statement by Representative Bob Inglis, Ranking Minority Member,
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science
and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 9
Written Statement............................................ 10
Prepared Statement by Representative Jerry F. Costello, Member,
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science
and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 10
Panel I:
Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and
Atmosphere; Administrator, National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA)
Oral Statement............................................... 12
Written Statement............................................ 14
Biography.................................................... 23
Discussion
The Structure of a National Climate Service.................... 23
Applications of a National Climate Service..................... 24
The Size of Federal Government................................. 25
Monitoring Greenhouse Gases.................................... 27
Potential New Programs......................................... 27
Observing Climate Change....................................... 28
Ocean Acidification............................................ 30
Panel II:
Dr. Arthur DeGaetano, Director, Northeast Regional Climate
Center, Cornell University
Oral Statement............................................... 31
Written Statement............................................ 33
Biography.................................................... 40
Dr. Eric J. Barron, Director, National Center for Atmospheric
Research; Chairman, Climate Services Coordinating Committee,
Climate Working Group, NOAA Science Advisory Board
Oral Statement............................................... 40
Written Statement............................................ 41
Biography.................................................... 44
Dr. Philip W. Mote, Director, Oregon Climate Change Research
Institute and Oregon Climate Services, Oregon State University;
Professor, College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences
Oral Statement............................................... 45
Written Statement............................................ 46
Biography.................................................... 63
Mr. Richard J. Hirn, General Counsel and Legislative Director,
National Weather Service Employees Organization
Oral Statement............................................... 63
Written Statement............................................ 65
Biography.................................................... 69
Discussion
Successes of Climate Forecasting............................... 70
More on Structuring the Climate Service........................ 71
How Existing Climate Offices Coordinate........................ 73
International Cooperation and Disseminating Real Time Climate
Information.................................................. 74
Responding to Climate Information.............................. 76
The Model Coordinating Agency.................................. 77
Suggestions for Changes at NOAA................................ 78
Panel III:
Dr. Michael L. Strobel, Director, National Water and Climate
Center, Natural Resources Conservation Service, United States
Department of Agriculture
Oral Statement............................................... 82
Written Statement............................................ 84
Biography.................................................... 94
Mr. David Behar, Deputy to the Assistant General Manager, San
Francisco Public Utilities Commission
Oral Statement............................................... 94
Written Statement............................................ 96
Biography.................................................... 100
Mr. Paul Fleming, Manager, Climate and Sustainability Group,
Seattle Public Utilities
Oral Statement............................................... 101
Written Statement............................................ 102
Biography.................................................... 106
Dr. Nolan J. Doesken, President, American Association of State
Climatologists; Colorado State Climatologist, Department of
Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University
Oral Statement............................................... 106
Written Statement............................................ 108
Biography.................................................... 111
Discussion
More on Structuring a National Climate Service................. 112
Interagency Coordination....................................... 113
State Climate Offices.......................................... 114
Mitigating a Duplication of Services........................... 116
EXPANDING CLIMATE SERVICES AT THE NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC
ADMINISTRATION (NOAA): DEVELOPING THE NATIONAL CLIMATE SERVICE
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TUESDAY, MAY 5, 2009
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment,
Committee on Science and Technology,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in
Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brian
Baird [Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding.
hearing charter
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Expanding Climate Services at the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA): Developing
the National Climate Service
tuesday, may 5, 2009
10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
2318 rayburn house office building
Purpose
On Tuesday, May 5, 2009 the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment
of the Committee on Science and Technology will hold a hearing on
Expanding Climate Services at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA): Developing the National Climate Service.
The purpose of the hearing is to hear expert testimony on options
for expanding the delivery of climate services by the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The hearing will also explore
the role of other federal agencies in building a national
infrastructure to deliver climate information to support the
development of national, regional and local strategies to adapt to
climate variability and change.
Witnesses
Panel I
Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Under Secretary, National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. Dr. Lubchenco will discuss
the current climate services available through NOAA's various programs
and offices; the agencies' plan for internally organizing a National
Climate Service; and how and to whom services are delivered.
Panel II
Dr. Arthur DeGaetano, Director, Northeast Regional Climate Center
(NRCC). Dr. DeGaetano will discuss the products and services of the
regional climate centers, specifically the Northeast Regional Climate
Center. Dr. DeGaetano will also discuss regional data users and give
examples of how the NRCC services influence regional management and
climate decisions.
Dr. Eric J. Barron, Director, National Center for Atmospheric Research.
As Chairman of the Climate Service Tiger Teams Coordinating Committee,
Dr. Barron will discuss how current climate services are organized and
the potential impact of a coordinated, national climate service. In
addition, Dr. Barron will discuss different organizational scenarios
for a national climate service, as outlined in the Tiger Team
Coordinating Committee and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
Report.
Dr. Philip Mote, Director, Oregon Climate Change Research Institute and
Oregon Climate Services and Professor, College of Oceanic and
Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University. Dr. Mote will discuss
the role of the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISAs) in
delivering climate services. Dr. Mote will also discuss how the RISAs
interface with NOAA, other agencies, Regional Climate Centers, State
climatologists, NGOs, and the private sector.
Mr. Richard J. Hirn, General Counsel and Legislative Director, National
Weather Service Employees Organization. Mr. Hirn will discuss the
National Weather Services' role in delivering climate service to the
Nation and how these services are coordinated with other agencies, the
private sector, Regional Integrated Science and Assessments (RISAs),
Regional Climate Centers, State climatologists, and NGOs.
Panel III
Dr. Michael L. Strobel, Director, National Water and Climate Center,
Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), United States Department
of Agriculture (USDA). Dr. Strobel will discuss NRCSs role in
delivering climate services and products to the Nation and how this
interfaces with the services of NOAA and other agencies. Dr. Strobel
will also discuss the users of the services USDA provides and how a
national climate service would impact USDAs climate service.
Mr. David Behar, Deputy to the Assistant General Manager, San Francisco
Public Utilities Commission and Staff Chairman, Water Utility Climate
Alliance. Mr. Behar will discuss what climate services and products the
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission utilizes; how these services
are delivered; and how these climate services and products influence
the city's operations and management decisions.
Mr. Paul Fleming, Manager, Climate and Sustainability Group, Seattle
Public Utilities. Mr. Fleming will discuss how the Regional Integrated
Sciences and Assessments (RISAs) deliver climate services and products
to the Seattle Public Utilities, and how these climate services and
products then influence their operations and management decisions.
Dr. Nolan Doesken, State Climatologist for Colorado, and Senior
Research Associate, Colorado State University. Dr. Doesken will discuss
the climate services and products produced at State climate offices and
explain who uses this information. He will also discuss the State
climate offices' relationship with the Regional Climate Centers, the
Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessment (RISA) program, and the
NOAA Climate Program office.
Background
Multiple actors in society, from individuals to businesses to the
government, rely on weather and climate information to make decisions.
The United States recognized that a well-functioning society needed
this kind information and in 1890, the first law was passed to
authorize the creation of a weather bureau to track the weather and
provide warnings and forecasts. Since that time, our ability to monitor
and forecast the weather and, therefore to understand the climate has
expanded dramatically, and the need for information about weather and
climate has also expanded. Satellite-based information, improvements
and expansion of ground-based and ocean-based observation networks,
availability of faster, more advanced computers, and improved models of
climate and weather phenomenon allow the National Weather Service (NWS)
to provide more accurate weather forecasts, longer lead times for
severe storms, and more reliable information about fluctuations and
patterns of weather over intra-annual and inter-annual, decadal and
longer time scales--or climate.
Weather is the short-term variation in the state of the atmosphere
that occurs in periods from minutes to weeks at specific locations. It
results from the combination of temperature, humidity, precipitation,
cloud cover, visibility and wind speed. Climate is the average weather
conditions for a location over a period of decades (30 years, commonly)
plus statistics of weather extremes.
Over these decadal periods, scientists look for patterns of
variability and cycles in climate. One of the best known cycles is
associated with shifts in the winds and ocean temperatures in the
equatorial Pacific Ocean that result in the El Nino and La Nina cycles.
Climate change is discussed in the context of years, decades or
centuries. Cycles of variability are monitored and studied to determine
possible shifts in long-term climate that are more permanent.
Increasing impacts of a changing climate demonstrate the need for
information to support adaptation decisions. Climate variability and
change are important for a wide range of human activities and natural
ecosystems. Federal resource managers, State, local, and tribal
governments, and the private sectors all recognize that a changing
climate greatly impacts their ability to plan for tomorrow.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the
leading provider of weather and climate information to the Nation and
the world. Climate sciences have made major advances during the last
two decades. NOAA has begun to extend climate science to address
decision-relevant questions and build capacity to anticipate, plan, and
adapt to climate variability and change. NOAA is providing climate
forecasts and support for planning and management decisions by other
federal agencies and by State, local and tribal governments, the
private sector and the public. Through programs such as the National
Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), NOAA is expanding its
delivery of climate information. Forecasts of El Nino and La Nina
cycles, production of seasonal hurricane outlooks, production of
monthly wildfire outlooks, and projections of snowpack and snow-melt
are all examples of climate products that different user-groups are
requesting and relying upon to respond to conditions that impact a wide
array of economic and social activities including agriculture, the need
for emergency management resources, resource management, and
projections of energy demand.
The Bush Administration announced its intention to create a
National Climate Service in 2008, and requested the NOAA Science
Advisory Board (SAB) examine four options for organizing a National
Service. Two options focused on creating the Service at NOAA and the
other two options examined other organizational structures with a NOAA
role, but not a NOAA lead.
Some of the key issues going forward are: the consideration of how
services will be provided at the regional, State, and local levels to
all potential users of climate information; what role will NOAA play in
a National Climate Service; what type of interagency structure should
coordinate the development and delivery of climate services by federal
agencies; what is the role of other climate service providers including
State and local governments; the private sector; universities; and
other non-governmental organizations.
Production and Delivery of Climate Services by NOAA
The current structure at NOAA providing climate services is
essentially the same structure that provides weather forecasting
services. As discussed earlier, information about climate is built upon
repeated, comparable observations of the weather in a given location
over time. Information about climate has also grown as the number,
distribution, type and quality of observations have grown. The primary
line offices at NOAA that support climate services are the National
Weather Service, the National Environmental Satellite, Data and
Information Service and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.
Observations and information provided by other NOAA line offices and by
other federal agencies and the academic community also contributes to
these efforts. The roles of each of these are described briefly below.
National Weather Service (NWS)
The National Weather Service (NWS) provides and wide array of
weather and climate services every day for the U.S. and other nations
in accordance with its fundamental missions to support: ``the
forecasting of weather, the issue of storm warnings, . . ., the
distribution of meteorological information in the interests of
agriculture and commerce, and the taking of such meteorological
observations as may be necessary to establish and record the climatic
conditions of the United States.'' \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ 15 U.S. Code Section 313 from the 1890 Organic Act establishing
the National Weather Service.
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NWS operates and maintains a network of observing stations and
provides operational weather and climate services through its regional
centers and the 122 Weather Forecast Offices (WFO) and the River
Forecast Offices (RFO) distributed throughout the Nation. The National
Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) develops weather and climate
forecast models and tools and is responsible for transitioning new
models and tools to operations. The Climate Prediction Center (CPC)
provides weather and climate products that span time scales from days
(e.g., six- to ten-day Outlook) to months (90-day Outlook). CPC also
provides the U.S. Hazards Assessment and Drought Assessments and the El
Nino and La Nina predictions.
NWS provides information to other federal agencies to support their
weather and climate-related work and to private sector weather
providers who develop specialized forecast products for distribution to
businesses and the public. NWS also interacts with the international
community through cooperative programs of the World Meteorological
Organization.
National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS)
The National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service
(NESDIS) operate the geostationary and polar weather satellites from
which we obtain a wide array of observations. NESDIS receives data from
the satellites, analyzes these data, provides the accompanying metadata
(i.e., supporting information that describes key characteristics of
data and how they were collected), and distributes data products to NWS
and other NOAA line offices and non-federal users for use in weather
and climate models. NESDIS provides data services and support for all
of NOAA and for other federal agencies. The National Climatic Data
Center provides for the long-term archiving of weather and climate
data. NESDIS supports data product development to improve final weather
and climate forecast products.
Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR)
The Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) conducts the
majority of NOAA's in-house research through its seven laboratories.
The research is organized under three major categories: weather and air
quality, climate, and ocean and coastal resources. In addition to their
in-house research, many of the laboratories work collaboratively with
universities and other non-governmental research organizations through
formal agreements. OAR's research supports the operational missions of
the other line offices at NOAA, and they work cooperatively with other
federal research agencies. The advanced computational work, model
development, observations, atmospheric and oceanic research done by OAR
has enabled NOAA to expand the types and improve the quality of climate
services they deliver.
Climate Program Office
The 1978 National Climate Program Act directed the Secretary of
Commerce to establish a National Climate Program Office. The operation
and scope of duties of this office have varied since that time.
Currently, the Climate Program Office (CPO) is located in the Ocean and
Atmospheric Research line office and it provides strategic guidance and
oversight of the Agency's climate programs.
NOAA Partnership Programs
NOAA supports programs in partnership with other governmental and
non-governmental organizations here in the U.S. and internationally
that develop and deliver climate services. In addition to NOAA's in-
house research done through OAR and through the other line offices,
NOAA supports research through grants and cooperative agreements with
universities. NOAA currently supports 21 Cooperative Institutes in 17
states. A number of these are engaged in weather and climate research
(e.g., Cooperative Institute for Climate Studies--Univ. of MD;
Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies--Univ. of
WI). Some of the other organizations that are working with NOAA to
develop and deliver climate services are described briefly below.
Regional Climate Centers
There are six Regional Climate Centers (RCCs) overseen by the
National Climate Data Center of NESDIS. The Centers are a federal-State
partnership to provide climate data and information at the State and
local level. The RCCs work with NESDIS to maintain the national climate
data record archive and support regional climate monitoring and applied
climate research. They maintain and provide access to the Applied
Climate Information System, a climate data management system that
facilitates collection and dissemination of climate data. The Centers
often work with the network of State climatologists to facilitate
exchange of data and to develop and deliver local and regional climate
services.
Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) Program
The Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) Program was
established by NOAA through OAR about 10 years ago. There are nine RISA
offices located throughout the country. The offices are based at
universities and are designed to deliver applied research on climate to
decision-makers in formats that are readily applicable to regional and
local situations. They provide assessments of impacts on the
transportation sector, agriculture, coastal communities and human
health. Feedback on current products and requests for new products come
from the stakeholder community to the RISA offices and help to shape
the research agenda to deliver what is needed.
Other Federal Agency Partnerships
NOAA is the primary provider of weather and climate information for
the Nation; however, there are many other federal agencies that provide
climate services through their own network of field offices. The
specific climate services provided are developed by these other
agencies with support from NOAA. The distributed inter-agency system
that has developed provides a wide array of services delivered at the
local and regional level. However, the coordination for this system is
not formalized in a holistic way. Several examples of programs for
delivering climate services by federal agencies other than NOAA are
provided below.
NOAA provides information to many other federal agencies and in
some cases, receives data and information from the observing equipment
and stations maintained by other federal agencies. USDA's Natural
Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) operates the National Water and
Climate Center to provide support for natural resource management at
the level of river basins, watersheds and farm fields. NRCS is both a
recipient of information from NOAA and a provider. They collect data on
snowpack and soil characteristics through the Snowpack Telemetry and
Soil Climate Analysis Network that is shared with other federal
agencies including NOAA. NRCS utilizes data from these sources to
develop climate services tailored to the needs of their traditional
constituencies.
The Joint Agricultural Weather Facility is located in the Chief
Economists Office at USDA. The World Board on Agriculture and NOAA
established this Facility in 1977 to monitor the weather and climate
and to assess the potential impacts on the yield of major crops around
the world. They provide a number of climate products including a
monthly review of weather highlights, an annual crop production review,
and weekly soil temperature maps.
NOAA also provides support for the National Interagency Fire Center
(NIFC) in Boise, ID in cooperation with eight other agencies of USDA
and the Department of Interior (DOI). The NIFC provides support to
federal agencies, State and local governments and the public in the
preparation and mobilization of resources to prevent and fight
wildfires. The Center produces monthly and three-month seasonal trend
forecasts of fire potential for the U.S. The Center holds workshops
each year to develop their assessments.
Private Sector Climate Services
Private Sector weather providers play a vital role in weather and
climate forecasting. Their extensive radio and television outlets are
the primary source of weather and climate information for the public.
Private weather providers also deliver specifically tailored forecast
products to individual customers using a combination of publicly
available weather and climate data from NOAA augmented with
observations and information from their own networks. As in the case of
current weather and climate forecasting, private sector weather
providers will continue to play an important role in refining and
expanding the array of climate services available to specific customers
and to the public.
Chair Baird. Good morning and welcome. Our hearing will now
come to order.
I want to thank our witnesses and my colleagues and the
panel, as well as staff, and the folks, other people in the
audience.
Our hearing today is on developing a National Climate
Service. We will discuss the need for climate services, the
type of services being delivered, and options for meeting the
increased demand for climate information. As we all know,
climate affects all of us every day in communities across the
country. As our ability to understand and recognize climate
cycles and patterns has grown, so has the demand for more
climate information.
This committee passed legislation in the 107th Congress,
authored by Representative Hall, to expand climate services by
authorizing the National Integrated Drought Information
Service, or NIDIS. Droughts have taken an increasing toll on
individuals, natural resources, and businesses in recent years,
and these impacts have not been confined to the Western U.S.
The Southeastern U.S. has experienced persistent drought
conditions that still have not been completely alleviated in
all areas. The severe shortage of water drove power plants to
temporary shutdown, created financial hardships for
recreational businesses, and loss in crop yields for farmers.
Without some ability to predict the intensity and duration
of these climatic events, State and local governments cannot
develop plans to respond to them. That is why we need climate
services. There are many examples where climate predictions
have been useful in making important decisions. In our part of
the country, the Pacific Northwest, data on snowpack provides
critical information to decision-makers and water managers
about the likely availability of water through the spring and
summer months.
The long-term data records that we have acquired through
years of monitoring the weather indicate that climate is
changing. Whether you believe this is due to greenhouse gases
or to natural, long-term shifts in climates, we still need to
understand the phenomenon and adapt to it. Therefore, it is in
our best interests to structure a service that will utilize
expertise to develop information that will not only support us
nationally, but at the regional and local scale, where
adaptation and response plans can best be implemented.
Today, we will hear from witnesses who deliver climate
services, and from those who use them. I look forward to
hearing their recommendations for refining and expanding
climate service to better address the needs of communities,
businesses, and individuals for climate information that will
reduce their vulnerability to weather and climatic events. I
also look forward to hearing from the Administrator of NOAA,
Dr. Lubchenco, about the Administration's plans for improving
the delivery of climate services to the country. We may not be
able to control the weather and climate, but we can prepare for
it and adapt to it, if we know what we are facing.
With that, I look forward to the testimony we will receive
today. I want to thank our witnesses, and now recognize the
distinguished Ranking Member, Mr. Inglis, for his opening
remarks.
[The prepared statement of Chair Baird follows:]
Prepared Statement of Chair Brian Baird
Good morning and welcome to today's hearing on Developing a
National Climate Service. Today we will discuss the need for climate
services, the type of services being delivered, and options for meeting
the increased demand for climate information.
Climate affects all of us everyday in communities across the
country. As our ability to understand and recognize climate cycles and
patterns has grown, so has the demand for more climate information.
This committee passed legislation in the 107th Congress authored by
Representative Hall to expand climate services by authorizing the
National Integrated Drought Information Service or NIDIS.
Droughts have taken an increasing toll on individuals, natural
resources, and businesses in recent years and, these impacts have not
been confined to the western U.S. The Southeastern U.S. has experienced
persistent drought conditions that still have not been completely
alleviated in all areas. The severe shortage of water drove power
plants to temporarily shut down, created financial hardships for
recreational businesses, and loss in crop yields for farmers.
Without some ability to predict the intensity and duration of these
climatic events, State and local governments cannot develop plans to
respond to them. That is why we need climate services.
There are many examples where climate predictions have been useful
in making important decisions.
In my part of the country, data on snowpack provides critical
information to decision-makers and water managers about the likely
availability of water through the spring and summer months.
The long-term data records that we have acquired through years of
monitoring the weather indicate the climate is changing. Whether you
believe this is due to greenhouse gases or due to natural long-term
shifts in climate, we need to understand this phenomenon and adapt to
it. Therefore, it is in our best interest to structure a service that
will utilize our expertise to deliver information that will not only
support us nationally, but at the regional and local scale where
adaptation and response plans can best be implemented.
Today we will hear from witnesses who deliver climate services and
from those who use them. I look forward to hearing their
recommendations for refining and expanding climate services to better
address the needs of communities, businesses and individuals for
climate information that will reduce their vulnerability to weather and
climate events.
I also look forward to hearing from the Administrator of NOAA, Dr.
Lubchenco, about the Administration's plans for improving the delivery
of climate services to the country.
We cannot control the weather and climate, but we can prepare for
it and adapt to it if we know what we are facing.
With that, I look forward to the testimony we are going to receive
today. I want to thank all of our witnesses for participating in this
important hearing. I now recognize our distinguished Ranking Member Mr.
Inglis for his opening remarks.
Mr. Inglis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding
this hearing.
While Congress continues to debate the right way to reduce
our greenhouse gas emissions and limit future anthropogenic
changes to our climate, farmers, water managers, land use
planners, and other decision-makers are trying to plan for the
impacts of climate change that we can expect over the next few
decades.
We have a lot of work to do to provide them with the
information they need. NOAA has done a good job of identifying
existing capabilities and launching the process of constructing
a National Climate Service at the federal level. In addition,
the Science Advisory Board's Report, ``Options for Developing a
National Climate Service,'' highlight the challenge of
coordinating the unique roles of several federal agencies.
I am interested in learning more about how we can marry
federal services with research universities and State
climatology offices, to keep the focus on local users. Existing
climate information services aim to provide tools for seasonal
and yearly planning. In South Carolina, we use this information
to decide what crops to plant, how to manage our water supply,
and whether we can expect forest fires, like the ones that
raged on our coast last month.
The testimony we are going to hear today highlights the
critical importance of this information. The challenge is also
expanding services and provide accurate information to a wide
variety of users, for both short- and long-term decision-
making. We also need to have a serious discussion about
resources at NOAA. Existing observation and monitoring networks
need to be updated. Computing capabilities are insufficient for
local modeling, and information delivery needs to be improved
to get the right information to the right people.
These efforts won't be inexpensive, and we need to identify
those needs now.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing,
and thank you to the witnesses for appearing here. I look
forward to learning about our progress toward a National
Climate Service, and what obstacles remain.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Inglis follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Bob Inglis
Good morning and thank you for holding this hearing, Mr. Chairman.
While Congress continues to debate the right way to reduce our
greenhouse gas emissions and limit future anthropogenic changes to our
climate, farmers, water managers, land use planners, and other
decision-makers are trying to plan for the impacts of climate change
that we can expect over the next few decades. We have a lot of work to
do to provide them with the information they need.
NOAA has done a good job of identifying existing capabilities and
launching the process of constructing a National Climate Service at the
federal level. In addition, the Science Advisory Board's report,
Options for Developing a National Climate Service, highlights the
challenge of coordinating the unique roles of several federal agencies.
I'm interested in learning more about how we can marry federal services
with research universities and State climatology offices to keep the
focus on local users.
Existing climate information services aim to provide tools for
seasonal and yearly planning. In South Carolina, we use this
information to decide what crops to plant, how to manage our water
supply, and whether we can expect forest fires like the one that raged
on the coast last month. Mr. Fleming, your testimony highlights the
critical importance of this information. The challenge is to expand
these services and provide accurate information to a wide variety of
users for both short- and long-term decision-making.
We also need to have a serious discussion about resources at NOAA.
Existing observation and monitoring networks need to be updated,
computing capabilities are insufficient for local modeling, and
information delivery needs to be improved to get the right information
to the right people. These efforts won't be inexpensive and we need to
identify those needs now.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the witnesses. I
look forward to learning about our progress to a National Climate
Service and what obstacles remain.
Chair Baird. I thank you, Mr. Inglis.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Costello follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Jerry F. Costello
Good Morning. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding today's hearing
on the development of a National Climate Service.
Among the many challenges posed by climate change, one of the most
important to address will be how these changes will impact our
resources. Without workable information about the impacts of climate
change, I am concerned our farms and industries will be unable to plan
for the future.
Currently, a variety of NOAA offices and programs make and
distribute predictions about climate changes for a range of customers.
Should Congress choose to develop a National Climate Service, the new
program would need to be coordinated and efficient. Congress should
work with NOAA and other stakeholders to ensure that this national
service is quickly developed and works with the programs already in
place. I am interested to hear from Dr. Lubchenco what she believes
will be the most efficient means of consolidating and streamlining our
current programs into a National Climate Service.
It also will be important for a National Climate Service to provide
useful, workable information to a variety of customers in different
regions and different industries across the country. I am interested in
hearing from the current providers of climate predictions on how a
coordinated National Climate Service will enhance the programs
currently in place. I would also be interested to hear their
recommendations for streamlining the current system without diminishing
or cutting back current programs. Finally, I am interested to hear from
the utility companies how Congress and this subcommittee can best
develop a program that suits your needs and continues to provide
necessary information.
I welcome our panel of witnesses, and I look forward to their
testimony.
Panel I
Chair Baird. It is really a pleasure now to be able to
introduce Dr. Jane Lubchenco at her first visit to this
committee. I am sure it will be the first of many to come, and
I thank you very much for your time.
New Administrators are--Administrators are always busy, but
especially at the start of a new Administration, and we would
very much respect your time. But I do want to take the time for
my colleagues and for members of the audience and others to be
aware of just how impressive the resume of our new Director of
NOAA is.
Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a marine ecologist and environmental
scientist, is the ninth Administrator of NOAA. Her scientific
expertise includes oceans, climate change, and interactions
between the environment and human wellbeing. Raised in Denver,
she received a B.A. in biology from Colorado College, an M.S.
in zoology from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in
ecology from Harvard University. While teaching at Harvard from
1975 to '77 and Oregon State from '77 to 2009, she was actively
engaged in discovery, synthesis, communication, and application
of scientific knowledge. Dr. Lubchenco has studied marine
ecosystems around the world, and championed the importance of
science and its relevance to policy-making and human well-
being.
A former President of the American Association for
Advancement of Science, the International Council for Science,
and the Ecological Society of America, she served ten years on
the National Science Board, which this committee knows is
basically the Board of Directors for NSF. From 1999 to 2009,
she led a large four university interdisciplinary team of
scientists, investigating the large marine ecosystems along the
coast of Washington, Oregon, and California. She has a special
interest in arctic ecosystems.
Her scientific contributions include eight publications
which are considered science citation classics. She is one of
the most highly cited ecologists in the world. She is an
elected member of the National Academies of Sciences, the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American
Philosophical Society, and the Royal Society. She has received
numerous awards, including a MacArthur Genius Fellowship. Why
don't we ever get--no, don't answer that question. Nine
honorary degrees, the 2002 Heinz Award in Environment, the 2005
AAAS Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology,
the 2008 Zayed International Prize for the Environment. She has
also served on the Pew Oceans Commission and the Joint Oceans
Commission Initiative, and the Aspen Institute Arctic
Commission. Clearly someone who is totally unqualified for the
position. Remarkable resume, the latter was a joke.
This is an extraordinarily well qualified, impressive
individual. We are grateful for your time and your expertise,
and in respect for that time, and the various demands, I have
asked that you be solo up today, so we can move quickly through
what you have to say and our questions, and then, we will
recognize other panels as follows.
So, with that, as witnesses should know, we will have five
minutes for your spoken testimony. We have received your
written testimony, and then, following your testimony, Dr.
Lubchenco, we will alternate between the two sides.
Thank you, and please begin.
STATEMENT OF DR. JANE LUBCHENCO, UNDER SECRETARY OF COMMERCE
FOR OCEANS AND ATMOSPHERE; ADMINISTRATOR, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND
ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION (NOAA)
Dr. Lubchenco. There we go. Is that on? Thank you, Chairman
Baird, Ranking Member Inglis. It is indeed a great pleasure for
me to be here, and I too look forward to strong, productive,
ongoing interactions with the Subcommittee and the Full
Committee. So, thank you for your warm welcome.
I am here today to discuss some of the benefits of the
National Climate Service, and what it could provide to the
Nation, as we work to adapt to a changing climate. I will also
share with you our vision for how NOAA will work with other
government agencies, the Executive Office of the President, and
a diversity of public and private sector partners to help shape
the National Climate Service, one that builds on existing
capabilities, but also leverages the capacities of a range of
federal agencies and other partners to develop new and vitally
useful information services and delivery mechanisms.
The Nation has already benefited from a sustained federal
and extramural partnership and collaborations aimed at
documenting and understanding climate change. Federal
interagency collaborations, such as the climate change research
efforts of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the U.S.
Global Change Research Program, have produced state-of-the-art
guidance through 21 synthesis and assessment products in the
forthcoming ``State of Knowledge Report on Global Climate
Change Impacts in the U.S.''
We are indeed very proud of these achievements. Reports
like these do an outstanding job of synthesizing existing
scientific information. They do not, however, even begin to
deliver all of the guidance now being sought by decision-makers
from private and public sectors from local to international
levels. To fill this void, a number of efforts have arisen to
provide some climate services, and you will hear about many of
those today.
Each of these is important, but collectively, they are
insufficient to meet the growing demand. More work and better
integrated mechanisms are needed to provide usable, credible,
salient information on an ongoing basis. In particular, more
work is needed to understand users' needs, and to deliver
climate relevant information at the appropriate scale in a
fashion that is both true to the scientific knowledge, but
also, sensitive to users' diverse styles and needs.
Just as the Nation's climate research efforts have required
sustained federal agency partnerships and strong engagement of
academic and other partners, a new effort to provide climate
services will also require sustained federal agency
partnerships and collaboration with climate service providers
and end users. It is time to learn from and build on existing
efforts, but to take them to a new level of usability and
usefulness.
There is unequivocal evidence that the Earth is warming.
This warming can be seen in increases in global average surface
air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice,
rising sea levels, and changes in many other climate-related
variables and impacts. The impacts of our changing climate are
regionally diverse, and relevant across numerous sectors,
including water, transportation, forestry, coasts, fisheries,
and human health.
These impacts are expected to grow in response to projected
future climate change. Weather and climate have profound
impacts on our nation's economic and social well-being. Drought
alone is estimated to result in average annual losses of
between $6 and $8 billion to all sectors of the economy,
including transportation, agriculture, and energy.
The Nation's systems and infrastructure for water, energy,
transportation, agriculture, and other sectors, have been
designed and built based on what we know about current local
environmental conditions or our understanding of the recent
past. The assumption has been that the past will be a good
indicator of the future. In similar fashion, our approaches to
the management and conservation of ecosystems and species have
been based on current and recent climate conditions.
But now, the background patterns of temperature, rainfall,
snowfall, and more are changing. For example, in the Northeast
U.S., the number of heaviest precipitation days, defined as the
heaviest one percent of all precipitation events, has increased
by a startling 58 percent since 1958. Throughout the country,
rapid climate change is presenting new challenges for managing
water, building in coastal zones, growing food, providing clean
energy, and helping to keep Americans healthy.
As a consequence, decision-makers at all levels of
government are seeking information to help them prepare their
communities for the impacts. In similar fashion, the private
sector is hungry for similar information to guide their
planning. It is increasingly clear that the Nation needs an
objective, authoritative, and consistent source of
consolidated, reliable, and timely climate information at the
appropriate scale to guide decision-making. This concept of the
National Climate Service as a single point of accountability
has been studied by the National Academy of Sciences, external
advisory groups, and others. Each of these reports has raised
serious issues, and has caused our thinking about a climate
service to evolve.
The overarching goal of a National Climate Service would be
to provide the essential information about climate change that
is needed for effective decision-making. A National Climate
Service would enable public and private sector decision-makers,
resource managers, and the public to better anticipate, plan,
and respond to impacts of changing climate conditions. A
National Climate Service would build on many agencies and other
organizations' strengths and expertise, and rely upon strong
partnerships across all levels of government, academia, and the
private sector.
Because NOAA already provides many climate services and
data, because it has recognized scientific leaders with climate
expertise, and because it has considerable experience in
providing a range of other services, NOAA is well positioned
and ready to work with a range of partners to help lead the
development of a National Climate Service.
The scientific basis for evaluation of climate change and
its impacts must continue to come from existing collaborative
efforts, with the relevant leading agencies, including NOAA,
DOE, NASA, EPA, DOI, and NSF. These agencies will provide much
of the data, information, and knowledge that will support a
National Climate Service. The pace and nature of changes in
Earth's climate reinforce the need for delivering targeted
climate services. Much work lies ahead of us. We will need to
draw from the experience of all of our partners to support the
development of science-based and user-driven climate services.
NOAA will contribute to this effort by building on its
existing capacities and partnerships and networks to deliver
and evolving suite of climate information and services, in
collaboration with our partners.
We are prepared to provide the leadership in partnership
with other federal agencies to the design and development of a
National Climate Service. Through an interactive dialog that
engages the breadth of climate service providers and interests,
including providers, researchers, and users.
I look forward to working with the Committee, the White
House Office of Science and Technology Policy, other federal
agencies, and our partners to further evaluate and design the
merits of the this effort.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify, and I
am happy to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Lubchenco follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jane Lubchenco
Introduction
Chairman Baird, Ranking Member Inglis, and other Members of the
Subcommittee, I am pleased to speak with you today regarding the need
for a National Climate Service and I am honored to be here as the Under
Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and the Administrator
of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), one of
the Nation's premiere science and stewardship agencies, to discuss
NOAA's capabilities in supporting this evolving national need.
The climate challenge before us is real. Through sustained federal
and extramural partnerships and collaboration, the Nation has made
significant progress in our understanding of climate change. One
example of federal agency accomplishments realized through such
collaborations is the climate change research efforts of the U.S.
Global Change Research Program and the U.S. Climate Change Science
Program. The sustained partnerships and collaborations established
through this intergovernmental body resulted in the publication of 21
synthesis and assessment products, and the forthcoming report on Global
Climate Change Impacts in the United States. This report will provide a
comprehensive survey of the state of knowledge about climate change
impacts in the United States, and will highlight for the American
public just how far we have come in our understanding of climate
change. We are proud of this achievement.
More work is needed, however, to understand users' needs and
deliver climate-relevant information to inform decision-making. In
2007, The National Academy of Sciences released Evaluating Progress of
the U.S. Climate Change Science Program: Methods and Preliminary
Results, which highlighted existing gaps in federal programs to provide
climate change information. This report recognized that good progress
has been made to determine many aspects of climate change however,
``progress in synthesizing research results or supporting decision-
making and risk management has been inadequate.''
Just as the Nation's climate research efforts require and benefit
from interagency and academic partnerships, so too will the
communication of climate information to users. No single agency is
capable of providing all of the information and services needed to
inform decision-making. To be successful, this effort too will require
sustained federal agency partnerships and collaboration with climate
service providers and end-users.
Today, I am here to discuss with you some of the benefits that a
National Climate Service could provide as the Nation works to adapt to
our changing climate. I will also share with you our vision for how
NOAA will work with the several other relevant government agencies, the
Executive Office of the President, and a diversity of public and
private sector partners, to help shape a national effort that builds on
existing capabilities and leverage the capabilities of other federal
agencies to develop new information, services and delivery mechanisms
to realize the potential of such a Service.
THE EARTH'S CLIMATE IS CHANGING
There is unequivocal evidence that the Earth is warming. This
warming can be seen in increases in global-average surface air and
ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, rising sea
level, and changes in many other climate-related variables and
impacts.\1\ Most of the observed increases in global temperatures since
the mid-20th century are very likely due to human-induced emissions of
greenhouse gases.1
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\1\ IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report.
Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing
Team, Pachauri, R.K. and Reisinger, A. (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva,
Switzerland, 104 pp.
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Under a broad range of non-mitigation scenarios considered by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warming over this century is
projected to be substantially larger than over the past century.
Changes in many other components of the climate system (warming
patterns being only one example) are also very likely to be larger than
those observed in the present century. The prospects of such climate
changes have profound implications for a global society, underscoring
the need for scientific information to aid decision-makers in
developing and evaluating options for mitigating future anthropogenic
climate change as well as alternatives for adapting to a changing
climate.
Within the United States, extensive climate-related changes have
been documented over the last century. These include increases in
continental-average temperatures, rising sea levels in many coastal
locations, an increased frequency of extreme heavy rainfall events,
lengthening of the growing season, earlier snow-melt, and altered river
flow volumes. Water is an issue in every region, but the nature of the
potential impact varies. Drought is a serious problem in many regions,
especially in the West and Southeast; and floods and water quality
problems are likely to be amplified by climate change in most regions.
For example, the amount of rain falling in the heaviest downpours
has increased approximately 20 percent on average in the past century,
and this trend is very likely to continue, with the largest increases
in the wettest places. Many types of extreme weather events, such as
heat waves and regional droughts, have become more frequent and intense
during the past 40 to 50 years.
As a nation, our economic and social well-being is intricately tied
to weather and climate; this relationship produces significant social
and economic benefits and costs. Some examples include:
Coral reefs world wide are among the ecosystems of
highest risk of extreme degradation due to climate change. In
2002, Hawaii's coral reefs, when combining recreational,
amenity, fishery, and bio-diversity values, were estimated to
have direct economic benefits of $360 million/year.\2\
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\2\ Cesar, H., P. van Beukering, S. Pintz, and J. Dierking, 2002:
Economic valuation of Hawaiian reefs. Cesar Environment Economics
Consulting, Arnham, The Netherlands, 123 pp.
Drought is estimated to result in average annual
losses to all sectors of the economy of between $6-8
billion.\3\,\4\
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\3\ Economic Impacts of Drought and the Benefits of NOAA's Drought
Forecasting Services, NOAA Magazine, September 17, 2002.
\4\ Interagency Working Group on Earth Observations, National
Science and Technology Council Committee on Environment and Natural
Resources. (2005) Strategic Plan for the U.S. Integrated Earth
Observation System.
Average annual damage from tornadoes, hurricanes, and
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floods is $11.4 billion, of which:
hurricanes average $5.1 billion and 20 deaths per
year;
floods account for $5.2 billion, and average over 80
deaths per year, and
tornadoes cause $1.1 billion in damages.\5\
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\5\ National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Environmental
and Societal Impacts Group, and the Atmospheric Policy Program of the
American Meteorological Society. (2001) Extreme Weather Sourcebook
2001: Economic and Other Societal Impacts Related to Hurricanes,
Floods, Tornadoes, Lightning, and Other U.S. Weather Phenomena,
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo. Available only
online at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/sourcebook/data.html
These examples of current weather and climate impacts are why the
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future effects of climate change matter.
HOW COULD THE NATION BENEFIT FROM A NATIONAL CLIMATE SERVICE (NCS)?
The impacts of our changing climate are regionally diverse and
relevant across numerous sectors, including water, energy,
transportation, forestry, coasts, fisheries, agriculture, ecosystems,
and human health. These impacts are anticipated to grow in response to
projected future climate change.
Until now, the systems and infrastructure that we as a nation have
developed as the foundation of our water, energy, transportation,
agriculture, and other sectors have been designed and built based on
what we know about local environmental conditions, and our
understanding of the past. In the same way, our approaches to the
management and conservation of ecosystems and species have largely
relied upon our scientific, historical understanding of those systems.
For example, water planning and management have been based on
historical fluctuations in records of streamflows, lake levels,
precipitation, temperature, and water demands. All aspects of water
management including reservoir sizing, reservoir flood operations,
maximum urban storm water runoff amounts, and projected water demands
have been based on these records. Because climate change will
significantly modify aspects of the water cycle, the assumption of an
unchanging climate is no longer appropriate for many aspects of water
planning. To appropriately prepare their communities, decision-makers
will need to be supported with access to the best climate information
science can provide, and tools to apply that data to guide their
decisions.
Meeting the climate challenge will require an unprecedented level
of coordination among federal agencies, along with our nongovernmental
partners, to pull together our collective expertise to accomplish the
goal of providing high quality climate information and services that
are user-friendly, responsive, and relevant. A broad range of
capabilities for providing climate information currently exists in
federal agencies, and various other organizations. As we move forward
we must find ways to maximize use of these capabilities, by integrating
efforts to provide climate information and services that most
effectively and efficiently respond to user needs.
The Nation's need for user-driven climate services is increasing
and the Federal Government recognizes the importance of responding to
these increasing demands. In order to ensure climate information and
services are available to meet current and anticipated demands, many
scientific agencies, including NOAA, the Department of Energy (DOE),
the Department of the Interior (DOI), the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), will continue climate
research activities to provide the valuable data required to understand
how our climate is changing. The contributions of these agencies are
coordinated by the National Science and Technology Council through its
Subgroup on Global Change Research.
At a hearing this committee held in May 2007, the Western Governors
Association stated that ``decision-makers at all levels of government
and in the private sector need reliable and timely information to
understand the possible impacts and corresponding vulnerabilities that
are posed by climate change so that they can plan and respond
accordingly.''
Specific examples of requests for climate services include the
following:
The wind power industry has identified a need for
baseline data and future projections of wind measurements that
would aid them in long-term planning for wind energy
development to ensure a return on their investment.
Corn growers have requested regional and long-term climate
forecasts that would help them in making decisions about when
and what they should grow.
Federal agencies with land and water management
mandates, such as the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army
Corp of Engineers, have requested scientific information and
technical training on climate change impacts.
Around the country, decision-makers at all levels of government are
considering options for how to best prepare their communities for the
impacts of a changing climate. As we move forward with efforts to
mitigate and adapt to our changing climate, we will need to draw from
the expertise of all federal agencies engaged in climate change science
to support the development of climate services to enable decision-
making. The Nation needs an objective, authoritative, and consistent
source of consolidated, reliable, and timely climate information to
support decision-making.
As I mentioned during my confirmation hearing, I believe our
country must address the impacts of the changing climate head-on. In my
work on the Pew Ocean Commission, I heard first-hand from businesses
and State and local governments in communities all across this country
about the need for reliable information and predictions about the
impacts of climate change. From concerns about droughts and sea level
rise to changes in the chemistry of the ocean, there is a real hunger
for more and better information. NOAA is equipped, and ready to work
with its partners, to provide this information.
KEY COMPONENTS OF A NATIONAL CLIMATE SERVICE
Unlike climate services, weather services are familiar to most
citizens. Weather services focus on the description, analysis, and
atmospheric forecasting on very short time scales, from minutes
extending up to a period of one week to ten days. The objective is to
provide forecasts of continually changing weather conditions and
warnings of severe weather events to protect life and property. The
benefits of this service are measured in lives saved, injuries avoided,
and reduction in property damage.\6\ For example, through NOAA's
hurricane research to operations efforts, NOAA has improved wind speed
estimates by 15 percent since 2004 and reduced track forecast error by
50 percent since 1990. These hurricane forecast improvements are
estimated to save taxpayers $640,000 per non-evacuated mile.
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\6\ Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, National Research
Council (2001) A Climate Services Vision: First Steps Toward the
Future.
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In contrast to weather, climate refers to the longer-term
statistical properties of the atmosphere-ocean-ice-land system. Climate
variability and change are products of: (1) external factors, such as
the sun; (2) complex interactions involving the different components of
the Earth system; and (3) human-induced changes to the Earth system.
Climate services encompass a variety of types of activities in order to
address the range of short- to long-term variations and changes in
climate, including those that are natural and human induced. Such
activities are often associated with different types of users or
decision-makers and with different types of needs and products.6
Improving development and targeting delivery of climate information
through a National Climate Service offers untold economic, public
health and safety, and national security benefits.
NOAA has a vision of a National Climate Service as a partnership
that would be established with other federal agencies, various levels
of government, and the private sector. The National Climate Service
would provide credible and authoritative climate information and
services to assist the Nation, and by extension the world. This would
include policy-relevant information for decisions related to climate
change mitigation and adaptation. This concept of developing a National
Climate Service as a single point of accountability for providing
climate information and services to the Nation has been studied by
NOAA, the National Academy of Sciences,\7\ external advisory groups,
and by Members of this committee. Each of these studies has raised
important issues that will need to be addressed. NOAA's current vision
for a National Climate Service has evolved as a direct result of these
studies, as well as input and feedback from public and private sector
partners and constituents around the Nation.
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\7\ National Research Council, Panel on Strategies and Methods for
Climate-Related Decision Support, Committee on Human Dimensions of
Global Change (2009) Informing Decision in a Changing Climate.
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The overarching goal of a National Climate Service would be to
provide the essential climate change information needed for effective
decision-making. As such, a National Climate Service must enable
decision-makers, including resource managers, and the public to better
anticipate, plan, and respond to impacts of changing climate
conditions. A National Climate Service must also remain engaged in
climate change science to maintain credibility, awareness, and
flexibility, and to avoid insularity. In similar fashion, the National
Climate Service must engage with a diversity of users to fully
understand the needs and provide salient and usable information, tools,
and expertise.
The National Climate Service will build on many agencies' strengths
and experience. The scientific basis for evaluation of climate change
and climate change impacts on a global and regional level will come
from existing collaborative efforts underway among NOAA and the other
leading climate research agencies, including DOE, DOI, EPA, NASA, and
NSF, in the following areas:
climate observing systems and effective data
management and delivery systems;
problem-focused research and a close coupling with
fundamental climate change research that establishes scientific
credibility of evolving products;
climate modeling for predictions and projections; and
local, regional, national, and international
assessments of climate change.
Working with its partners, the National Climate Service will help
support the following core climate services:
ongoing, deliberate dialogue with users to understand
evolving needs,
climate tools and other products at scales relevant
to support user decision-making;
user outreach and capacity building; and
public understanding.
In order to build and maintain a bridge linking information and
users, the Service will provide information to meet the key needs of
government and society. Some of these products and services will be
relevant for relatively short-term adaptation and mitigation decision
support; others will be tailored to be relevant for longer-term
choices. Some will be operational in nature; others will inform
assessments of the state of climate research.
The National Climate Service must have a clear set of principles
regarding its products and services to ensure that it remains
appropriately focused and managed in an effective way that best serves
the Nation. NOAA envisions a successful Service guided by the following
principles:
provide balanced, credible, cutting edge scientific
and technical information;
focus on human-caused climate change, but link human-
caused climate change and changes in natural variability, such
as the frequency and duration of droughts, to meet broad user
needs;
provide and contribute to science-based products and
services to minimize climate-related risks;
provide predictions and projections of climate at
scales relevant to decision support;
strengthen observations, standards, and data
stewardship;
ensure timely assessments;
improve regional and local projections of climate
change;
inform policy options;
inform decisions and management options of others;
foster climate literacy and workforce development;
and
engage a diversity of users in meaningful ways to
ensure their needs are being met.
An effective response to the societal demands of a changing climate
is well beyond the scope, authority, or mission of any one federal
agency. NOAA commissioned an external review of the challenge of
developing a National Climate Service. This external review recommended
each federal agency collaboratively define its role and level of
commitment in a National Climate Service, but made clear that there
must be a lead federal entity. This view is further endorsed by a
recent report by the National Research Council,\8\ which stated:
``Because successful programs have a leader (NRC, 2005),\9\ the
committee recommends that one agency take the lead in developing the
climate service, although multiple agencies would have to be involved
in its design and implementation.'' With respect to implementation, a
more recent report by the National Research Council\10\ notes ``. . .
that (the panel) does not recommend centralizing the initiative in a
single agency,'' reflecting on the importance of integrating research
and service functions across multiple agencies. NOAA agrees with these
recommendations and is ready to meet the challenge of helping lead the
development of a National Climate Service and working with our partners
in its implementation to provide targeted climate information to the
public and private sector to inform decision-making.
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\8\ National Research Council (2009) Restructuring Federal Climate
Research to Meet the Challenges of Climate Change.
\9\ National Research Council (2005) Thinking Strategically.
\10\ National Research Council, Panel on Strategies and Methods for
Climate-Related Decision Support, Committee on Human Dimensions of
Global Change (2009) Informing Decision in a Changing Climate.
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An effective National Climate Service will rely upon strong
partnerships within and among federal agencies, and across levels of
government, academia and the private sector to provide the Nation with
the science-based and user-responsive climate services it needs. This
vision also requires that NOAA integrate its own resources and
coordinate efforts with its partners to ensure reliable delivery of
climate services and information.
As I've stated earlier, no single agency can address the climate
challenge on its own. NOAA is well positioned to provide leadership for
a National Climate Service, based on the climate research efforts and
experience in providing user-centric services of the collective Federal
Government and nongovernmental partners. NOAA will continue to work
with our interagency partners and most especially the agencies that
participate with us as part of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.
These agencies will provide much of the data and information that will
support the delivery of climate services, and include: the Departments
of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, the
Interior, State, and Transportation; together with the Environmental
Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
the National Science Foundation, the Agency for International
Development, and the Smithsonian Institution, and overseen by the
Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Council on Environmental
Quality, the National Economic Council and the Office of Management and
Budget.
Further design of a National Climate Service must be based on an
interactive process that engages federal agencies and individuals from
across the spectrum of climate research, service provision, users,
partners and stakeholders. This process must be interdisciplinary,
user-focused, regionally-representative, and include analysis of
strengths and gaps in capacities. A critical design consideration that
must be addressed in these processes is the best arrangement for
federal agencies to work in partnership to maximize delivery of climate
services to the Nation. As such, it would be appropriate for the White
House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to lead an
interagency process to analyze capacities and options. This effort
would complement the broader interagency effort being led by the
Council on Environmental Quality, OSTP and NOAA to prepare a federal
adaptation strategy to help the Federal Government, along with State,
local and private actors, increase their resilience to a changing
climate.
The public-private partnership that makes today's National Weather
Service so successful provides a useful model to emulate. The Federal
Government would not be able to fully provide critical information to
the Nation without the private sector. We envision the government will
develop and maintain an infrastructure of observation and information
services on which the public (Federal, State, and local governments),
private, and academic sectors will rely. The private sector will be
able to use data collected by this infrastructure to create unique
products and services tailored to the needs of their company or
clients. We believe this cooperative relationship will lead to an
extensive and flourishing set of climate services that will be of great
benefit to the U.S. public and to major sectors of the U.S. economy.
Finally, addressing the evolving climate challenge will require
supporting decision-makers not just for a few years, but over many
decades. The National Climate Service must be highly-responsive to
changing user needs and able to lead based upon expert evaluation of
new data and knowledge. The scope and nature of user interactions and
partnerships required to support this effort will demand an
extraordinary investment in ensuring continuous feedback and adaptive
learning among users and providers. Similarly, products and services
must be able to evolve, and be initiated rapidly, in response to new
scientific information. These complex characteristics and relationships
will necessitate ongoing assessments and evaluations of progress,
plans, user requirements, and outcomes as a core component of an
adaptively-managed National Climate Service.
FROM NOAA'S CURRENT CLIMATE CAPABILITIES TO A NATIONAL CLIMATE SERVICE
There is much work to be done to fully realize a National Climate
Service. The development of a National Climate Service will take
leadership and sustained efforts across the Federal Government to work
collaboratively. Through its climate research and science, NOAA is
currently delivering climate services that generate significant social,
economic, and environmental benefits for the Nation. These services are
outlined below, as requested by the Committee in my letter of
invitation, and represent some of the contributions that NOAA would
bring to a National Climate Services.
NOAA's current climate and climate-related capabilities and mandates
NOAA's mission is to understand and predict changes in Earth's
environment and conserve and manage coastal and marine resources to
meet our nation's economic, social, and environmental needs. This
mission already encompasses the delivery of some climate services. As
the lead federal agency responsible for delivering national weather,
ocean, fishery, coastal, and environmental data products and services,
and among the leaders in climate and satellite information, NOAA
provides some of the many scientific underpinnings required for an
effective National Climate Service.
The breadth of NOAA's climate and climate-related capabilities
includes:
A long history of building sustained partnerships and
interacting with other federal agencies, the private sector,
all levels of government (international, national, State,
tribal, local), non-governmental organizations, and the public.
Extensive experience in both weather and climate
forecasts and predictions. Weather forecasts, seasonal
outlooks, inter-annual to decadal predictions, and climate
change projections require observations, models, and scientific
understanding of the Earth system. NOAA has established a
strong and sustained capability and infrastructure in all of
these areas.
Existing strengths in climate and earth system
research and modeling. NOAA maintains a range of capabilities
to understand and address key impacts of climate such as
coastal hazards, ocean acidification, droughts and floods.
At an international level, NOAA along with other
leading climate research agencies has played a major role in
informing policy decisions by contributing to scientific
assessments including the World Meteorological Organization/
United Nations Environment Programme Scientific Assessments of
Ozone Depletion and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change assessment reports. NOAA has served as one of the lead
agencies of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) and
had a primary role in its predecessor, the U.S. Global Change
Research Program. NOAA has led several of the CCSP synthesis
and assessment products, including the forthcoming report on
Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States.
A unique breadth of mandates and experience in
environmental service delivery that provide a strong foundation
for a National Climate Service. NOAA's mandated
responsibilities include, for example: fisheries, endangered
species and marine mammal management, National Marine
Sanctuaries, and coastal and estuarine management. With each of
these mandates, NOAA managers must account for the effects of
climate variability and change on coastal and marine
ecosystems, and resources and communities, as well as adapt
their management practices accordingly. NOAA and its partners
in coastal and marine resource managers are among the vanguard
of users of climate information. In addition, the National
Weather Service has an established and credible field
infrastructure that currently delivers climate products daily
at a national, regional, and local level.
NOAA contributes to sustained climate observing
networks comprised of a suite of operational satellites and in
situ networks for integrated atmospheric and oceanic
observations, including measurements of air and ocean
temperatures, greenhouse gases, aerosols, and ozone. NOAA also
maintains several of the Nation's permanent archives of
weather, climate, and oceanographic data through its data
centers. NOAA, along with the other leading climate research
agencies, provides analyses of the observed records, including
the Nation's climate statistics and reanalysis of observations
for initial conditions for climate prediction. With its wealth
of observational data, NOAA makes major contributions to the
process studies required to attribute the causes of climate
change.
Transitioning to a National Climate Service
Through our existing statutory responsibilities under the National
Climate Program Act of 1978 (15 U.S.C. 2901-2908), NOAA has a long
history of producing climate information, delivering products and
services, and building the capacity of others through established
networks and partnerships at all levels.
We expect that development of a National Climate Service will
stimulate advancements of similar stature as those generated through
NOAA's integrated weather services. For example, NOAA's `end to end'
weather services have increased annual average lead times for tornadoes
from less than four minutes in 1987 to almost 15 minutes today, and
flash floods from less than 10 minutes in 1987 to better than 50
minutes today. Such advancements are estimated to have contributed to
NOAA's weather services preventing over 330 fatalities and 7800
injuries from tornadoes, and to have resulted in health and welfare
benefits that we estimate to be of over $3 billion between 1992 and
2004.
Development of a National Climate Service can benefit from NOAA's
existing expertise, infrastructure, and capabilities in climate
science; its extensive experience in service delivery; its
relationships with other federal, State, and local partners; and must
leverage the extensive experience of the other leading climate research
agencies. NOAA's existing climate products and services include climate
data services, climate predictions and climate change projections,
assessments, and decision support information.
Existing networks include interagency and other partnerships that
comprise the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS),
National Weather Service Forecast Offices and River Forecast Centers,
National Data Centers, Regional Integrated Science and Assessment
projects at universities, Regional Climate Centers, State
Climatologists, Sea Grant, the Coastal Services Center, international
climate research institutes, NOAA Cooperative Institutes, and extension
agents.
Two examples illustrate NOAA's experience as a leading source of
climate information and provide a strong indication of the agency's
foundation for the development of climate services: (1) NOAA's
partnership with the National Association of Home Builders and
Department of Housing and Urban Development, and (2) its leadership of
NIDIS.
Partnership with the National Association of Home Builders and the
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)--NOAA performed a
decade of research to develop an Air Freezing Index, which has now
translated into operational use by the construction industry. Home
builders can now construct a frost protected shallow foundation as a
practical alternative to deeper, more-costly foundations in cold
regions with seasonal ground freezing and the potential for frost
heave. Construction of a frost protected shallow foundation can be
informed by NOAA's Air Freezing Index, and incorporates strategically
placed insulation to raise the frost depth around a building. NOAA's
air freezing research is estimated to provide an annual savings benefit
to U.S. homeowners of $300 million saved in new construction costs and
energy savings of 586,000 megawatt-hours.
National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS)--The growing
impacts of drought on society led to a call by our State governors for
drought preparedness information. NOAA's implementation of the NIDIS
Act of 2006 is being achieved through the coordination and
collaboration of federal, State, tribal, academic, and local
representatives on issues including water resources, agriculture,
ecosystem impacts, energy and coastal environments. NIDIS is working to
provide dynamic and easily accessible drought information for the
Nation by serving as an integrated knowledge center by identifying,
collecting, and disseminating existing innovations at the national,
regional, watershed, State, county, and private sector levels. NIDIS
provides data to help decision-makers assess the risk of having too
little water and to prepare for and mitigate the effects of drought
(such as farmers making decisions about crops, forestry professionals
planning ahead for the next fire season, and urban water managers
preparing for high-demand seasons). Still in its initial phases, NIDIS
is continually developing more robust services and regional decision
support resources.
While significant in their own right, these examples are only a
snapshot of how, through a National Climate Service, NOAA can apply its
current climate capabilities and mandates, and leverage the expertise
and strengths of the other leading climate research agencies to address
the growing demand for climate services. As NOAA works to define its
role in a National Climate Service, we will continue to develop and
expand, in partnership with the other leading climate research
agencies, the products and services to assist a number of key social,
economic, and environmental climate change decisions, particularly
those at regional and national levels.
Examples of emerging issues that a National Climate Service could
address through collaborative and coordinated effort among federal
agencies and other partners include:
Mainstreaming climate change adaptation for critical
infrastructure--Current infrastructure design criteria and construction
codes may be inadequate for climate change and exacerbate vulnerability
to increasing storm intensity and flooding. For example, along the U.S.
Gulf Coast, from Houston, Texas to Mobile, Alabama, 27 percent of major
roads, nine percent of rail lines, and 72 percent of ports in the area
are built on land at or below four feet in elevation; a level within
range of projections for relative sea-level rise in this region in this
century. A National Climate Service would provide information that
would allow the U.S. to relocate and/or secure these installments as
well as improve planning for future infrastructure investments.
Delivering regional and decadal climate information--Currently,
U.S. climate modeling efforts allow us to provide information at
centennial and continental scales. With funds from the American
Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, NOAA will be able to continue to
increase its computing power so that its climate models can provide
information at the decadal and regional scales, which are most relevant
to decision-makers. It is important to recognize that the reliability
of this information depends on more than just greater model resolution.
Critical research efforts will be required to ensure that all essential
processes at these new scales are represented in the models in order to
produce reliable information. This new information coupled with
advances in tools and expertise led by the other leading climate
research agencies will open the door to opportunities for a National
Climate Service to develop and work with its partners to deliver
authoritative products and services to users at scales previously not
possible.
National security--Climate change has the potential to affect
national security by reducing predictability and stability throughout
the world, for example, through disruptions resulting from food and
water shortage. The U.S. will also need to anticipate and plan for
growing immigration pressures both at home and in other countries. A
National Climate Service could help to prepare for and adapt to these
changes by providing the observations and forecasts that can be
utilized by agencies such as U.S. Agency for International Development
and the Department of State to develop policies and action to mitigate
these impacts (e.g., new agricultural practices).
Underpinning research--Providing reliable climate information at
the fine spatial scales relevant to human activities requires further
and rapid progress in scientific understanding and quantitative
predictions. NOAA, in partnership with other agencies, will enhance
essential climate research programs to shape and inform our fundamental
understanding of climate change, its pace, and its consequences.
Meeting these new challenges and delivering timely, relevant, and the
best scientifically-informed climate information and services to
decision-makers will require a coordinated effort that builds upon and
expands the Nation's observational, research and modeling
infrastructure.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
This is a time of rapid change. The pace and nature of changes in
the Earth's climate reinforce the need for delivering targeted climate
services at appropriate scales. We will need to draw from the expertise
of all federal agencies to support the development of science-based and
user-driven climate services to enable decision-making. Development of
a National Climate Service will take leadership, sustained efforts, and
a commitment across the Federal Government to work collaboratively.
Much work lies ahead of us. NOAA will contribute to this effort by
building on its existing capabilities, partnerships and networks to
deliver an evolving suite of climate information and services, in
collaboration with our partners. We are prepared to provide leadership,
in partnership with other federal agencies, to the design and
development of a National Climate Service through an interactive
dialogue that engages the breadth of climate service interests,
including service providers, researchers, and users.
I look forward to working with the Office of Science and Technology
Policy, other federal agencies, our partners, and this committee to
further evaluate the merits of this effort.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify today. I look
forward to answering your questions.
Biography for Jane Lubchenco
Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a marine ecologist and environmental scientist,
is the ninth Administrator of NOAA. Her scientific expertise includes
oceans, climate change, and interactions between the environment and
human well-being. Raised in Denver, she received a B.A. degree in
biology from Colorado College, a M.S. in zoology from the University of
Washington and a Ph.D. in ecology from Harvard University. While
teaching at Harvard (1975-1977) and Oregon State University (1977-
2009), she was actively engaged in discovery, synthesis, communication,
and application of scientific knowledge.
Dr. Lubchenco has studied marine ecosystems around the world and
championed the importance of science and its relevance to policy-making
and human well-being. A former President of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the International Council for
Science and the Ecological Society of America, she served 10 years on
the National Science Board (Board of Directors for the National Science
Foundation). From 1999-2009 she led PISCO, a large four-university,
interdisciplinary team of scientists investigating the large marine
ecosystem along the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California. She
has a special interest in Arctic ecosystems, with recent work in
Svalbard, Greenland and the Alaskan arctic.
Dr. Lubchenco has provided scientific input to multiple U.S.
Administrations and Congress on climate, fisheries, marine ecosystems,
and bio-diversity. Dr. Lubchenco served on the first National Academy
of Sciences study on `Policy Implications of Global Warming,' providing
advice to the George H.W. Bush Administration and Congress. In 1997 she
briefed President Clinton and Vice President Gore and Members of
Congress on climate change.
Her scientific contributions are widely recognized. Eight of her
publications are ``Science Citation Classics''; she is one of the `most
highly cited' ecologists in the world. Dr. Lubchenco is an elected
member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Royal
Society. She has received numerous awards including a MacArthur
(`genius') Fellowship, nine honorary degrees, the 2002 Heinz Award in
the Environment, the 2005 AAAS Award for Public Understanding of
Science and Technology and the 2008 Zayed International Prize for the
Environment.
Dr. Lubchenco co-founded three organizations that communicate
scientific knowledge to the public, policy-makers, the media and
industry: (1) The Leopold Leadership Program (teaches environmental
scientists to be effective communicators), (2) COMPASS (the
Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea, communicates marine
sciences); and (3) Climate Central (a non-advocacy source of
understandable scientific information about climate science and
solutions). She co-chaired the Synthesis for Business and Industry of
the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an international scientific
evaluation of the consequences of environmental changes to human well-
being. She also served on the Pew Oceans Commission and the Joint
Oceans Commission Initiative and the Aspen Institute Arctic Commission.
Discussion
Chair Baird. Thank you very much, Doctor. I will recognize
myself for five minutes.
The Structure of a National Climate Service
You know, when you talk about the implications of this, Mr.
Inglis talked about fires. We look in our area, in terms of El
Nino events, whether they or not will happen has profound
implications for our agricultural industry, our power supply, a
host of other, fishing, for example, in the Northwest, as you
know better than I. So, this is really something we recognize,
on this committee, the importance of.
The question, then, is really what are the best ways, how
do we best go about structuring this? Given that there are
various aspects, as you mentioned, various aspects of what the
data can be used for--we will hear from a panel in a minute
about that--but also, various entities within government that
also provide some of the pieces.
What are your thoughts about the best way to put the pieces
together? Do we have a coordinating body? Do we create a new
entity? Do we draw upon the various agencies separately, or do
we integrate them?
What are your thoughts? And we will hear, there may be
other thoughts later on here, but what are your ideas about
this?
Dr. Lubchenco. Mr. Chairman, I believe that this topic has
actually been addressed by some of the different studies that
have looked at this concept of National Climate Service, and
there are some continuing themes that loop through each of
those different reports: the need for an integrated national
effort, number one; an effort that draws on the wealth of
existing research information, and is tied to the ongoing
discovery of new information; three, an effort that is
connected to and cognizant of users' needs; and three, that
draws--four, that draws on the wealth of experiences that
currently exist through existing federal agencies, for example,
within NOAA, the experiences we have had with the National
Weather Service, but the Regional Climate Centers, the Regional
Integrated Assessment and Service Organizations that are
providing a wealth of existing climate services.
So, I think, to sum that up, there are a lot of existing
pieces in play. I believe that a single effort is needed to
look broadly across those capacities and lessons learned, and
to integrate them at the federal level. I would envision an
interagency process led by the Office of Science and Technology
Policy as the appropriate entity to really take stock of, and
lead that designing effort. We now, I think we have gotten to
the point where we are in agreement that something is needed,
something that does not now exist, and the question is how to
design that.
Typically, in an interagency process, there is a lead
federal agency. NOAA is willing to play that lead. We would not
insist on that. It just seems logical, because of the wealth of
our capacities, capabilities, and experiences. But I believe
this really is an interagency process, but one that does not
ignore the regions and the local experiences and capacities,
because it really is delivery of services at the local and
regional level that should be the focus.
Chair Baird. I share that belief that NOAA is the best
suited and qualified, and has the longest history of dealing
with this, so I would certainly support that.
Applications of a National Climate Service
Let us talk a little bit about the applications now. How
would you envision, obviously, for agriculture, this is
critically important, when you look at, and downstream, for
those of us who eat the products of agriculture, it is
important. When we look at predictions of what might happen,
for example, to the regional ability to grow different crops,
or needs for irrigation or chemicals, or other factors, how do
you envision getting the information out effectively to the
various regions of the country, which will have different
needs, based on crops and climate in those regions?
Dr. Lubchenco. Mr. Chairman, our current ability to make
reasonable forecasts about climate scale information is really
best at the scale of the entire continent, and best at the
scale of a century. Neither of those time or space scales is
what we need. Our modeling capacity is getting better and
better, and with the recent new supercomputers, we have reason
to believe we will be able to deliver regional scale
information, hopefully on the 20, 30, 50 year timeframe.
So, our capacity to provide the kind of information that
users are asking for and needing is getting better and better,
which is why it is so timely to be designing the mechanism for
sharing that information with users that are asking for it.
So, relative to what trees to plant, what crops to plant,
how to think about water management, how to think about fire
management, how to think about building coastal cities, all of
those will require information that is at that 20 plus time
horizon, and more at a regional scale. So, that is where we
need to be heading.
Chair Baird. So, we have a combination of a challenge of
the research necessary to refine that precision of our
predictions, but also, then, a process of making that, those
predictions relevant and valuable to the consumers in the
field.
Dr. Lubchenco. Yes, Mr. Chairman, although I think it is
probably more appropriate to be talking about forecasts as
opposed to predictions. Predictions implies more certainty than
will probably be appropriate, but forecasts, much like we do
for the weather forecast, with some uncertainty described, is
probably what we are looking at.
Chair Baird. Thank you. I recognize Mr. Inglis for five
minutes.
Mr. Inglis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Lubchenco, we very
much appreciate your work at NOAA.
The Size of Federal Government
And you know, I was interested in your observation that
NOAA is well positioned to collaborate, and I can definitely
speak to that, having been with Dr. Baird in Australia, and
seeing employees of NOAA there. It is very impressive that NOAA
is that extramural, I think you call it, that we are, I am also
on Foreign Affairs as well as the Science Committee, and
realizing the opportunity there to generate and keep, in the
case of Australia, good will, by having our employees present
there working on something that is very important to them, the
Great Barrier Reef, which also is important to us in gathering
science and information. This really is, it substantiates what
you were saying about NOAA being well positioned to lead this
collaboration.
So, tell me, for folks that are concerned about creating
new things in the Federal Government, the goal, it seems to me,
is to create stronger, smarter, simpler, more flexible kinds of
government agencies. How would this fit with that criteria, or
would it just be growing larger? The concern that a lot of
people have is we grow the Federal Government larger.
Dr. Lubchenco. Thank you for that question. I think that it
is likely the case that we can make better use of many of our
current capacities, make them more efficient, make them more
synergistic, connect, set international, federal, regional, and
local efforts in a more efficient fashion.
That said, what will be required, and what is already being
asked by many users of us, will require significantly greater
investment than currently now exists, so I think we can do some
combination of synergies and finding efficiencies, but that
alone will not be able to deliver the range of products and
services that we believe would best serve the Nation.
Mr. Inglis. So, in other words, your hope is, I suppose to
actually get more bang for the buck, in terms of the
expenditures, more synergistic effects. Of course, that is what
we are looking for in the Federal Government, it seems to me,
as we think about ways to make it stronger, simpler, more
effective, more efficient.
And so, I hope that that is what we can achieve here.
Dr. Lubchenco. Congressman Inglis, could I clarify. I do
think that that is possible, but I also think that we are
talking about something new, as well, that there are new, there
will be new efforts required to, in addition to the synergies
and the efficiencies, to be delivering the services that we
think are going to be needed.
Mr. Inglis. Right, and of course, our challenge, as Members
of Congress, as we encounter these new challenges, we need to
go figure out what it is that we have already licked, and get
rid of some of those things. You know, there are places in the
Federal Government where agencies keep on going forever, long
after the problem is licked.
So, hopefully, we can do that together. We can add to
capabilities here, but eliminate things elsewhere. Perhaps in
NOAA, but certainly, across the Federal Government in other
places.
So, I have just a brief little time left, but it is a good
way to ask the question, I suppose, with a time limit. Let us
say you got on the elevator out here, and somebody told you
just nonsense, that there are anthropogenic causes of climate
change. What is your elevator answer? You have got three
floors, you have 49 seconds to get down to the bottom. What
would you say? I am just curious.
Dr. Lubchenco. Regardless of what you think the causes of
climate change are, I think the evidence is unassailable that
there is change underway, and most people are experiencing that
in their daily lives. The temperatures are increasing. We are
seeing more extreme precipitation events, more floods, more
droughts. We are seeing, as a consequence, more fires, more
insect outbreaks. Sea level is rising, and the oceans are
becoming more acidic, and all of those changes are well
documented.
Now, the challenge, relative to the topic of today's
hearing, is how do we deal with those changes in a way that is
most useful?
Mr. Inglis. Great. Thank you. The elevator just got to the
first floor.
Chair Baird. Thank you, Mr. Inglis. I recognize Ms. Woolsey
for five minutes.
Ms. Woolsey. Thank you very much. Thank you, Doctor, for
being here. We are so pleased to have a real scientist leading
your organization, so congratulations.
Dr. Lubchenco. Thank you, Congresswoman.
Ms. Woolsey. It gives all of a lot of confidence that----
Dr. Lubchenco. Thank you.
Monitoring Greenhouse Gases
Ms. Woolsey.--we are going to go in the right direction. In
your testimony, you talk about global climate change and how a
National Climate Service can be used in mitigation and
adaptation, and to the problem that we are creating.
So, this leads me right up to where do you see, or where do
you see the role of the National Climate Service in monitoring
greenhouse gases?
Dr. Lubchenco. Congresswoman, it really is important that
as we think about different types of mitigation, and as we work
toward the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we will
need to monitor the types of, or the amounts of greenhouse
gases that are being emitted, and that are in the atmosphere,
and we currently do some of that. We need to be doing more of
that, and we need to have mechanisms to be reporting that on an
ongoing basis.
So, I think there is absolutely a need to have that
capacity, and----
Ms. Woolsey. So, would that be, when you talk about,
Congressman Inglis asked about, you know, growing our
government, that new doesn't mean that we replace existing, so
would this be some of the new responsibility?
Dr. Lubchenco. We already do some monitoring of greenhouse
gas emissions. We need to be doing that on an ongoing basis,
and probably at greater scale, for verification purposes. So,
that need will continue and will grow, along with the need to
provide information that will focus more on the adaptation end
of the climate challenges.
Potential New Programs
Ms. Woolsey. So, are there any other examples you would
like to give us of what new programs we will need, while we
continue with our existing important NOAA programs?
Dr. Lubchenco. Well, I think some of the other benefits of
having something like a climate service, would be enabling
those in the private sector who are thinking about new types of
renewable energy sources, information that would enable them to
do a better job of having successful businesses. Say, for
example, that you are interested in building a wind farm. You
would like to know not where the winds have been good for the
last hundred years, but where they are likely to be good for
the next hundred years, and so, that information would be
extremely useful to you in helping to design where to place,
where to site, you know, decide whether this is a good
investment or not.
So, there are many kinds of services that a climate,
National Climate Service could provide that would help with
creation of new jobs, new industries, and provision of clean
energy.
Ms. Woolsey. So, do you see a need for the oceans being
considered in relationship to climate? Where is that going to
come into play?
Dr. Lubchenco. Oceans in coastal areas are being strongly
affected by the increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
This committee has been, and the Chairman in particular, have
been strong champions of focusing on the changing chemistry of
the oceans. As oceans are absorbing the carbon dioxide, they
become more acidic, and that, in turn, is affecting our
ecosystems, especially along the West Coast, but also
elsewhere.
In addition to that, ocean ecosystems are responding, as a
result of changes in temperature, changes in ocean currents,
changes in coastal winds, and then, of course, sea level rise.
And all of those consequences of climate change to ocean
ecosystems are affecting the way people interact with those
ocean ecosystems, whether they are on the land side or the
ocean side. And as we deal with this range of changes that is
underway, information to help guide decisions about growth in
coastal areas, planning of where to move infrastructure,
planning of where to move communities, where to build airports,
where to build wind farms, wave energy facilities, all of those
will be vastly enhanced by having more, by having information
that we envision being able to be provided by a National
Climate Service.
Ms. Woolsey. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chair Baird. Thank you, Ms. Woolsey. Dr. Ehlers.
Mr. Ehlers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have no questions, but I did just want to say I am very
pleased that Dr. Lubchenco has received this appointment, and I
look forward to a lot of good work happening in NOAA in the
future. Thank you.
Dr. Lubchenco. Thank you, Congressman, and thank you for
all of your efforts over the years as a strong champion of
science.
Mr. Ehlers. Thank you.
Chair Baird. There has been no stronger champion over the
years than Dr. Ehlers, and you will appreciate his expertise in
many realms, and Dr. Ehlers, thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher.
Observing Climate Change
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I
have been a long-time fan of NOAA, and I wish you success, and
look forward to working with you.
Chair Baird. Dr. Lubchenco, be advised that Mr. Rohrabacher
is an avid surfer, and so he brings us the perspective----
Dr. Lubchenco. Excellent.
Chair Baird.--of someone who spends a lot of time in the
water.
Mr. Rohrabacher. As well as scuba diver, let me note that,
but not as avid a scuba diver as my Chairman.
The climate change, you are referring to climate change--
were you, at any point in your career, someone who used the
words global warming instead of climate change?
Dr. Lubchenco. Yes, Congressman, I think most of us have
used both of those terms.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Why is it that you stopped using the word
global warming and have now moved to climate change?
Dr. Lubchenco. The words global warming, to me, imply
something that is gradual, and something that is only about
temperature, and the sum total of the changes that are underway
are much more than gradual and just temperature.
Mr. Rohrabacher. But the temperature change itself, correct
me if I am wrong, for the last eight years, there has not been
higher temperatures. Could that have something to do with your
change of wording, from global warming to climate change?
Dr. Lubchenco. No, sir. I don't believe that the change of
wording, at least in the way that I understand the words, is
anything other than an honest attempt to communicate better
with the public about the range of changes that are underway.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, I am sure you are always, I am in no
way implying you ever were, or people who I disagree with have
ever been dishonest with the public. Let me just put that on
the record. People can have honest disagreements, but also,
people can be wrong, and my suggestion is that there are so
many people who are using the word global warming, and now,
don't use it, because it hasn't been getting warmer. I think it
is, and I am not saying this about you, but for many other
people, I think it is that they were wrong and refused to admit
it.
Let me ask you, so is that correct that there has not been
warming on the planet, generally, in the last eight years?
Dr. Lubchenco. Congressman, I think, if, may I use an
analogy that is on the beach, if you will? If you are standing
on a shore that you have never been at before, and you are
trying to decide if the tide is going in or coming out, and you
watch eight waves come in, you can't tell whether the tide is
ebbing or flowing. You need to look at it over a longer period
of time.
The same is true with climate records. Looking at an eight-
year record is insufficient to tell you if there is any
meaningful change through time. You need a longer period of
time to be examining whether there really is a change, whether
it is going one way or another.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I was assuming that the Weather Service
and the scientists that were using the words global warming,
had actually been studying the trends over long periods of
time. Tell me, is the climate of this planet, someone who is an
expert in this area, would you say the climate on the planet
over the millions of years of our planet's history has been a
stable climate, or someone that has been volatile?
Dr. Lubchenco. Over millions of years, the climate has gone
through many different cycles. We have good evidence, going
back some 650,000 years, from ice core data, for example, that
give us better insight into that fairly long period of time.
And during that interval, we know that what is happening
now is outside of the normal ranges of the climate cycle.
Mr. Rohrabacher. But there have been major changes in the
climate over that time period. About ice cores, does the ice
core prove, and I have several scientists that we have put in
the record here, major heads of major university science
laboratories, et cetera, that have said that the idea that
CO2 introduction has caused the climate to change
was wrong, the wrong analysis ten years ago. And they have
studied it, and they now believe that it is warming that causes
the CO2 to go up, and not the other way around.
Do you disagree with those scientists?
Dr. Lubchenco. I disagree with that, and I think there has
been resolution of that particular issue. I think it is now
commonly accepted that increases in carbon dioxide are, in
fact, causing both a general warming trend and increasing
variability of the climate, and there is good evidence that
that is happening.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And has the CO2 gone up in the
last eight years, and we have not seen--instead, we have a
cooling now, yet the CO2 continues to go up?
Dr. Lubchenco. Congressman, this is the same phenomenon
that I was describing earlier. Eight years is not enough to
detect a trend in a system that has some natural fluctuation,
and we are seeing over the last century, significant warming
through that time, and very significant increases in carbon
dioxide. I think there is considerable unanimity within the
scientific community on those points.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I would suggest, and I have already put it
in the record, many scientists, prominent scientists who don't
agree with that. And my time is up. Thank you very much, Mr.
Chairman, and thank you to the witness.
Ocean Acidification
Chair Baird. Thank the Chairman, or Mr. Rohrabacher. I
don't plan to have a whole second round, but what are we seeing
in the area of ocean acidification, over the time period? This
is basic chemistry. Is there anyone who would suggest that more
CO2 is in the air is going to lead to less
acidification of the ocean and less adverse effects? You are an
expert in that particular area. Could you enlighten us a little
bit about that?
Dr. Lubchenco. Mr. Chairman, this is an area where there
really is no controversy at all. It is very straightforward
chemistry. As you increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere, the ocean absorbs it, and that makes ocean water
more acidic is the very simple, straightforward thing.
We know that over the last 100 years or so, the amount of
acidity in the ocean has increased by about 30 percent, and
that is having a very significant impact on everything from
coral reefs to the microscopic plants in the ocean, the
phytoplankton, on anything that has a shell or a skeleton, from
mussels to clams to sea stars, sea urchins, oysters. And all of
those changes that are underway are likely to continue for some
time, because of the carbon dioxide that is in the atmosphere
now.
Chair Baird. Even if we were to stop additional
CO2, we would still have continued acidification
impacts?
Dr. Lubchenco. We would indeed.
Chair Baird. Unless any of my colleagues have urgent
questions, I think we will thank the Director for her service,
look forward to many future conversations, and working closely
with you and your agency on developing a National Climate
Service and legislation to support that.
And with that, we will take a brief break. Dr. Lubchenco,
you are excused, and thank you very much for joining us again.
Hope to see you soon.
Dr. Lubchenco. Thank you so much.
Chair Baird. A very brief break, as we seat the next panel,
and our staff puts the proper nametags in the proper place.
Thank you again, Dr. Lubchenco, and thank my colleagues.
Panel II
Our panel is now seated. We want to thank the panelists. I
also acknowledge we have been joined by Eddie Bernice Johnson,
as well, the gentlelady from Texas, and we will now introduce
our second panel. I thank you for your patience, gentlemen, and
thank you for your background and contributions today.
Dr. Arthur DeGaetano is the Director of the Northeast
Regional Climate Center. Dr. Eric Barron is the Director of the
National Center for Atmospheric Research. Dr. Philip Mote is
the Director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute
and Oregon Climate Services at Oregon State University. And Mr.
Richard Hirn is the General Counsel and Legislative Director
for the National Weather Service Employees Organization.
Thank you all for being here very much. We look forward to
your comments. As mentioned earlier, each witness will have
about five minutes to speak, and you will watch the lights, and
they will turn yellow when you are about one minute, and we try
to keep it as close as we can to five, and then, we will follow
with a series of questions by panel.
And with that, we begin by recognizing Dr. DeGaetano. Thank
you.
STATEMENT OF DR. ARTHUR DEGAETANO, DIRECTOR, NORTHEAST REGIONAL
CLIMATE CENTER, CORNELL UNIVERSITY
Dr. DeGaetano. Thank you, Chairman Baird.
I am a professor at Cornell University and Director of the
Northeast Regional Climate Center. The NRCC is one of six
Regional Climate Centers that have been supported by Congress
for nearly two decades. It is administered by NOAA.
We provide timely, efficient, and reliable climate services
to a wide variety of sensitive sectors within our regions. I
hope this experience will serve as a model for climate services
in the years to come. In the next few minutes, I will elucidate
several key characteristics of climate services, based on the
25 year history of the RCC program.
As I expand on these characteristics, please try to see the
ties between them, because just like effective climate services
cannot be done by any one organization, the characteristics of
climate services in general are also interwoven.
The first characteristic is partnership and integration.
Partnerships are critical. The Climate Centers have seen this
in our interactions with the National Climatic Data Center, and
with partners represented by many of my fellow witnesses. Web-
based tools developed by the RCCs facilitate climate services
by local National Weather Service offices, State
climatologists, and Natural Resource Conservation Service
offices in every U.S. county. They integrate data from across
the State, local, and other federal networks that are used by
these partners, another key area of integration.
Partnerships should also extend to our stakeholders. Trust-
based, active, two way dialogs between climate scientists and
users of climate information is critical for effective climate
services. Examples based on these feature can be relatively
simple, but solve a substantial problem for the user. Like the
investment banking industry's need for degree days to be
tabulated from Friday to Thursday to match industry practices.
Or more complex, such as ongoing applied research to develop
climate-dependent tools for monitoring and controlling the
spread of vectors of West Nile virus.
Such data-driven climate decision models will become more
and more entrenched in climate services in the coming years. It
is not enough to just provide climate data. Users require
climate products, and these analyses must be capable of
interacting with other models. A robust computer
infrastructure, that operationalizes research results and
dynamically links data to decision tools, is a third climate
service component. We have seen this in our interactions with
the RISAs. The RCC computer infrastructure interfaces with
hydrological models developed by the Climate Impact Groups at
the University of Washington, in Chairman Baird's home state,
providing real-time data for water management decisions.
Responsiveness to local and regional issues is a fourth
component. Responsiveness not only includes being there day in
and day out to provide the types of operational products
described previously, but it also includes the ability to react
when unanticipated climate anomalies develop, be they
hurricanes, droughts, or other crises indirectly related to
climate. Just the other day, my Center provided data to help
track the spread of the hemlock woolly adelgid, an invasive
pest.
Responsiveness also includes being in tune with important
political, social, and environmental considerations within a
region. A Climate Center example from the Northeast involves
the influence of climate on nitrogen runoff into the upper
Susquehanna and Chesapeake Bay. The above example also
highlights interdisciplinarity. Having climate service partners
affiliated with universities offers ties to disciplines outside
the atmospheric sciences, provides a link between basic and
applied research, and capitalizes on established affiliations
with cooperative extension, the Land Grant college system and
NOAA Sea grant.
I once heard a farmer say that he deals with change every
day, changes in technology, changes in economics, changes in
environmental regulations. Climate is only one of the many
changes facing agriculture and other industries. This
highlights the final element of a National Climate Service,
that if you are prepared to deal with adaptation to climate
change.
I leave this critical component for last, to make the point
that traditional approaches to solve past climate problems,
like I have discussed, trust-based relationships with
stakeholders, partnership, interactive decision tools, modeled
link with data, collaborations between climate service
providers and researchers from other disciplines, provide the
foundation for responding to concerns about future climate
variations and change.
Let me conclude by saying that the United States needs a
comprehensive National Climate Service that has the ability to
address the broad spectrum of climate needs facing the Nation.
The existing core set of organizations and capabilities
provides a useful and functional framework. To meet newer
challenges, this incomplete infrastructure requires consistent
and reliable support, augmentation of capabilities, and much
better integration across a wide variety of boundaries.
NOAA capabilities and affiliated programs, such as the
Regional Climate Centers, will be integral and necessary
components, but alone are not sufficient.
Thank you for your attention.
[The prepared statement of Dr. DeGaetano follows:]
Prepared Statement of Arthur DeGaetano
Mr. Chairman and distinguished Members: Thank you for inviting me
to testify before this subcommittee, to address the expansion of
climate services within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA). I am a Professor in the Department of Earth and
Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University and Director of the
Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC). The NRCC is one of six
Regional Climate Centers (RCCs) that have been supported by Congress
for nearly 25 years. Over this time the RCC Program, administered by
NOAA, has provided basic climate services in a timely, efficient and
reliable manner to a variety of climate sensitive sectors within their
regions. I hope this experience will serve as a model for expanded
climate services in the years to come, particularly with regard to the
vital requirement that climate services be regional in nature and
responsive to stakeholder needs, and transition to a comprehensive
Service that can meet sector needs to respond to future uncertainty in
a changing climate.
The six RCCs serve all fifty states in the Nation. Through its
history, the RCC Program has coordinated with partners in the NOAA
National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the NOAA National Weather Service
(NWS), the American Association of State Climatologists (AASC), NOAA
Cooperative Institutes and research programs, numerous State and
federal agencies, private industries, and individual citizens to
deliver a comprehensive suite of climate services at national,
regional, State and local levels. This successful effort provides
jointly developed products, services, and capabilities that enhance the
delivery and usefulness of climate information to the American public.
As NOAA and Congress work to help society adapt to climate change and
variability, these collaborative efforts form a framework for data
stewardship, climate services, climate assessment, and applied research
geared toward helping individuals, communities, government agencies,
and industries make informed decisions using climate information.
Strong Congressional support for the RCC program over the last two
decades has allowed for development of trust-based relationships
between the Centers and decision-makers from various economic sectors.
These relationships have been fruitful for both the users as well as
the RCCs. Decision-makers receive the data and information they need in
a format, time-frame, and manner that is most useful for their
application, while the RCCs capitalize on the feedback received from
users of climate information to develop robust and efficient data
delivery systems, drive applied research projects, and synthesize the
climate-related applications that impact social and economic sectors
within their regions.
Dependable relationships with credible partners, accumulated
climate knowledge and a robust computing infrastructure are critical
components for effective climate services at local to national scales.
Attempting to recreate this efficient, established, proven, and
reliable system, would be wasteful in terms of resources and disruptive
to a large user base that relies upon operational RCC data products 24
hours a day. Through this testimony, I hope to elucidate several key
characteristics of climate services based on the accumulated experience
of the RCC program. Examples are used to illustrate existing features
that could be incorporated into an expanded National Climate Service.
Drawing upon their history and familiarity with user communities, the
RCC's vision for a National Climate Service includes:
Providing services based on direct interaction with
climate stakeholders
Enhancing established climate service partnerships
Distributing accurate and unbiased climate data,
data-products, and summary information in response to changing
user needs
Developing decision support tools through
interdisciplinary applied research
Educating stakeholders on emerging regional climate
issues
Developing adaptation strategies for changing
environmental, technological and societal conditions
Key Components of a National Climate Service
Integration--Local to National
In partnership with NOAA and the American Association of State
Climatologists (AASC), the RCCs envision an integrated climate service
structure that supports improved decisions to enhance industries,
protect the environment, and promote public safety at State, regional
and national levels. Through integration, national climate services
will benefit from
Access to local data sources from regional, State,
local and private networks
Dynamic products that span time scales from
historical to real-time to near-term forecast to longer range
climate projection
Local knowledge of climate impacts, climate extremes
and emerging issues
Synchronized data values and consistent analyses
Such a structure is already in place within the RCC regions.
The Western RCC (WRCC) has teamed with the State of
California to integrate NOAA data with observations from a
variety of State, local and other federal networks. This
expanded data network, when linked to WRCC analysis software
and interpretive human expertise, informs decisions related to
water resources, fire risk and air quality.
At all RCCs, a distributed climate data access system
(ACIS) enables State climate offices to respond to requests for
climate information from engineers, insurance companies,
banking institutions and energy firms using the most up-to-date
NOAA data and standardized processing routines.
Crop disease risk models developed by the Northeast
RCC merge hourly NOAA data, observations from privately
operated weather stations and NWS gridded forecasts. NRCC data
systems provide a mechanism for NWS access to the private
climate observations.
Active Local Stakeholder Engagement
Through decades of experience, the RCCs have learned that effective
and meaningful climate services must be defined broadly to satisfy
stakeholder needs. Climate services should satisfy the domain-specific
needs of stakeholders in ways that can be directly assimilated into
their business practices and decision strategies. Effective climate
services should include:
Two-way dialogues between climate scientists and
users of climate information
Timely access to quality climate data, products, and
analyses from integrated data sources that incorporate State,
regional, and national data networks
General and specific assessments of climate
conditions at pertinent spatial and temporal scales
Responsiveness to new climate issues as they arise,
such as adaptation to climate change and variability
Access to research results pertaining to basic and
applied climate issues
Decision support tools developed for domain-specific
applications
An example from the Northeastern United States epitomizes this
strategy. Heating degree days have been used as a common measure of
heating demand, and hence fuel usage, for decades. These data,
available from NOAA and a variety of other sources, have typically been
tabulated on a weekly basis from Sunday through Saturday. Through
discussions with UBS, a nationwide investment firm, the NRCC learned
that this definition of a week did not coincide with energy trading
practices which operated on a Friday-Thursday time interval. The
mismatch in summary period affected the accuracy of the forecast models
used by the industry. By working with these companies and the NOAA
Climate Prediction Center, the NRCC now provides these data to USB and
other investment firms in a format that addresses their needs.
Adaptation Strategies for Climate and Environmental Change
A core component of a National Climate Service should include the
capacity and ability to provide data and insight on climate change
adaptation strategies. The RCCs have been increasingly called upon for
information related to future climate conditions. Users are more aware
of variations in climate conditions and require information to assist
them in managing year-to-year climate variations and adapting to
changing climate conditions. As with traditional approaches to solve
past problems, those that focus on climate change adaptation require
extensive stakeholder dialogue. Furthermore, the inherent uncertainly
of longer-term climate projections makes established trust between
climate service providers and decision-makers an even more important
component of climate adaptation research, outreach and service. Again
from past experience, it is evident that these types of relationships
can best be established at local, State and regional levels. To address
climate change adaptation a national climate service should:
Assess vulnerability to climate change impacts and
research appropriate strategies and plans to reduce such
vulnerability at local, State, regional, and national levels
Develop dynamic climate information products,
databases, decision tools, and services for decision-makers and
policy-makers at multiple temporal and spatial scales
Educate stakeholders about the potential
uncertainties in climate projections and work with decision-
makers to determine how best to apply these projections in
light of uncertainty
Users are more comfortable when tools for climate adaptation are
derived from existing climate products and decision support systems
available through established relationships. Most of the data, tools
and products currently provided by the RCCs can be used or modified to
support climate change adaptation. The climate services partners such
as the RCCs and AASC have the expertise to help local sectors identify
vulnerabilities in relation to climate. The key to using these tools
effectively will be to understand how climate is changing--what might
change, what will be the magnitude, and over what time periods. For
example, a crop yield model used currently to project seasonal yields
can be used to plan for adaptation to climate change by providing
outcomes for different scenarios of temperature, precipitation, and
other climate-related inputs in the model. New risk-management tools
can be developed to help utilize these results for making decisions
about adaptation. Because of the RCC understanding of many stakeholder
needs, the RCCs help agencies determine critical climate thresholds
that will impact a particular sector.
Innovative Environmental Data Management
The RCCs have been in the forefront of developing operational
climate data support systems. The Applied Climate Information System
(ACIS) is the foundation for RCC data management and electronic
information delivery. ACIS was developed to provide operational
efficiency, redundant reliability, and flexibility to accommodate
evolving information system configurations and needs. ACIS is becoming
an effective operational component of international GEOSS activities
through a partnership with the Northrop Grumman Corporation. The
flexible design of ACIS provides data to web servers and services,
automated data delivery systems, and on-demand data polling from remote
users and user applications. The RCCs envision such a system as a key
component of a National Climate Service. It already provides
operational support to federal climate service providers and the
general public through:
xmACIS
An interface for NOAA partners to access RCC data products
and data holdings that alleviates the need to maintain and
update separate databases at individual local NWS offices.
NOWData
An abbreviated version of xmACIS designed for use by the
general public and available on each local NWS office website.
ThreadEx
A product developed in collaboration with the RCCs, NWS,
NCDC, and The WeatherChannel to standardize the reporting of
weather extremes.
AgACIS
Specially designed climate data products for use by Natural
Resource Conservation Service field offices in each of the 3140
U.S. counties.
WxCoder III
A web-based interface that allows NOAA Cooperative weather
observations to be entered electronically, providing timely
access and eliminating the need to digitize handwritten
observations.
These systems deliver tens of thousands of products every month and
provide a cost-effective method to deliver NOAA and non-NOAA climate
data and products to the public.
Information systems such as ACIS also provide a means for linking
decision support tools developed through NOAA research programs such as
the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA), Sector
Applications Research Program (SARP) and Transition of Research
Applications to Climate Services (TRACS) program to real-time
operational climate databases. The RCCs expect that ACIS will be
required to transition these research results into operational
products. Such data systems will also be advantageous, as they have the
ability to seamlessly incorporate data from disparate networks, remote-
sensing platforms and meteorological and climatological models into
existing decision tools.
Responsiveness to Local and Regional Issues
A national climate service must be closely attuned to regional
issues and ready to provide nimble and appropriate responses as
anomalous climate conditions develop or unanticipated situations arise.
Under such circumstances, the value of a National Climate Service is
more clearly apparent. Effectively addressing these issues requires:
Local knowledge of important political, environmental
and social considerations
Established trust-based stakeholder relationships
Pre-existing tools, data and information ready for
rapid application
A network to engage stakeholders at State and local
levels, such as the one that exists through the 50 State
climatologists, the USDA Cooperative Extension Service and NOAA
Sea Grant
The regional diversity of local climate issues that need to be
addressed by a National Climate Service is best illustrated by examples
from each of the RCCs.
The Midwestern RCC
The Midwestern Regional Climate Center (MRCC) monitors the climate
in the Nation's major corn and soybean growing region and provides
tools for producer and agribusiness decisions. A method to produce
county-level soil moisture measurements based on radar and
precipitation measurements is used to produce up-to-date maps of soil
moisture estimates in the Midwest. During the growing season, crop
yield models provide yield estimates of corn and soybeans. Numerous
agribusinesses, ranging from large international conglomerates such as
Cargill, Inc. to seed companies and local producers, rely on RCC data
and products to assess current conditions and provide guidance for
operational decisions.
The Southeast RCC
The Southeast Regional Climate Center (SERCC) is taking the lead in
exploring links between climate and health, largely because of the
existing expertise of Center staff, the location of a major School of
Public Health on the same campus, and the presence of the Centers for
Disease Prevention and Control in the southeast region. At the federal
level, RCC staff participates in an interagency working group assessing
likely responses to public health threats posed by climate change.
Major emerging roles for the Center are provision of information about
climate variability and change at the local level in a form
understandable to and usable by local, State and federal public health
organizations, and assistance in translating the information into an
assessment of potential health impacts.
The SERCC is also linking the health-related work with the
disaster-related concerns of the Department of Homeland Security.
SERCC, along with the Southern Regional Climate Center, is involved
with assessing the direct physical threats posed by hurricanes to the
Atlantic and Gulf coastlands. In addition, SERCC is in a position to
assist in the development of strategies to deal with the health
aftermaths of a hurricane strike.
The Southern RCC
Since 1992, the SRCC has provided decision support to the Louisiana
Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness
during tropical storm and hurricane events affecting Louisiana coastal
communities. SRCC personnel provide observational data and
interpretation of official NOAA forecasts and warnings that help
emergency managers make informed decisions on evacuations, emergency
sheltering, resource staging, rescue missions, and other critical
decisions that depend on continually changing assessments of risk. In
the past few years, LSU has increased its support of these activities
providing additional services that include damage and mortality
modeling, storm surge modeling, and post-storm recovery support in
which the SRCC plays a major role.
The Northeast RCC
The NRCC frequently deals with urban issues related to water
resources and temperature extremes. It has ties to corporations ranging
from energy providers to investment banking firms. In addition,
agriculture is an important industry in the region. Climate related
decisions in this sector have both economic and environmental
implications. Coastal issues are also within the realm of the center,
given it is bordered by both the Atlantic Ocean and Great Lakes. A
project that syntheses these interrelated issues deals with the
management of agricultural nitrogen. Across department collaborations
at Cornell have resulted in the creation of Adapt-N, a web-based tool
that links high resolution climate data derived from Cooperative
Network observations, radar estimates and meteorological model
initialization fields with soil nitrogen and crop yield models. Adapt-N
provides recommendations for nitrogen application rates in maize that
incorporate ambient weather conditions. These recommendations optimize
corn yield, while minimizing nitrogen losses. Nitrogen runoff within
the Upper Susquehanna River Basin and ultimately Chesapeake Bay is a
primary concern of the NY Department of Environmental Conservation and
the Susquehanna River Basin Commission. Farmers using the tool also
derive an economic benefit via more efficient nitrogen use.
The Western RCC
The WRCC addresses a broad spectrum of climate issues and user
needs. For example, federal and State land management agencies rely on
WRCC for data products supporting wildland fire decision-making,
including data management of the 2,400 sites of the national Remote
Automated Weather Station (RAWS) network, and archival of National
Lightning Detection Network data for fire management use. WRCC has
worked closely with the National Park Service nationwide on needs for
and provision of weather and climate data and information for
operations, research, and public interpretation of climate.
Drought has been present in the West every year since 1995 as a
serious and persistent problem. WRCC has played an influential role in
the development and implementation of the National Integrated Drought
Information System and its western activities. The West has warmed much
more than the rest of the U.S. over the past 35 years; this has
significant implications for future water supplies, most of which rely
on snowpack. Adaptation to climate variability and change are becoming
a major WRCC theme. This Center specializes in mountain environments,
the source of water, timber, recreation, minerals, renewable energy,
and tourism, all greatly affected by climate. The region is over 50
percent public land, and WRCC interacts with numerous federal,
regional, tribal, State and county resource management agencies to
monitor, understand, and provide sustainable utilization of these
shared resources. Ecosystem services and environmental health are now
seen as vital to the western economy, and are strongly tied to climate.
WRCC provides front-line information delivery capability for NOAA, and
in turn knowledgeably informs and participates in development of
improved information capabilities tailored to the unique needs of this
diverse region.
The High Plains RCC
The High Plains Aquifer (Ogallala) is one of the world's largest
aquifers. About 27 percent of the Nation's irrigated land overlies this
aquifer and about 30 percent of the U.S. ground water used for
irrigation comes from the High Plains Aquifer. Clients using the HPRCC
irrigation tools can select the nearest weather stations, the crop that
will be addressed, its maturity level, emergence date, and enter local
precipitation from the field of interest, if available. The output
provides an estimate of how much additional water the soil can hold and
a projection of soil water relative to crop water stress level. The
goal is to keep the water in the soil well above the stress level and
to leave enough room in the soil for any rainfall anticipated from the
forecast. Informed scheduling of irrigations reduces the number of
irrigations and thus conserves water, reduces energy used for pumping,
minimizes run-off, and maintains potential yields (even in semi-arid
climates).
The HPRCC is also engaged in climate variability and climate change
analyses to build tools for current clients to provide assessments on
possible climate change impacts on the Plains: future frost-free
seasons, heat during the growing season, impacts on water use/yield and
shifting of crop production zones.
Interdisciplinary Collaborations
Climate is just one of many issues that decision-makers must
consider. Thus effective climate services must have the ability to
synthesize non-climatic influences and data sources. Interactions
between climatic and non-climatic factors are often non-linear,
particularly in situations where the climate and associated factors are
changing. Economists, social scientists, communication specialists,
innovative instruction experts, agronomists and entomologists represent
interdisciplinary collaborations that the RCCs have fostered to address
climate related problems. Scientists from these and other diverse
fields are critical components of national climate services. An
efficient means of integrating scientists is through the inclusion of
research universities as partners in a National Climate Service. A
National Climate Service-university relationship also benefits climate
services in general by:
Leveraging resources for research funds from federal,
State, and private sponsors
Fostering unique interdisciplinary collaborations
Providing substantial cost sharing support
Establishing links to Cooperative Extension and Sea
Grant
The RCCs, AASC and RISAs currently provide ties to major U.S.
universities. Each year the RCC base funding is leveraged considerably
through external grants and contracts. The RCC directors are on faculty
at major research universities and they maintain active research
programs that further the goals of national climate services in data
quality, novel data products and climate related decision-modeling.
Concluding Remarks
The United States needs a comprehensive National Climate Service
that has the ability to address the broad spectrum of climate needs
facing the Nation. These needs are spread across a wide diversity of
disciplines and economic sectors that touch nearly every aspect of
society. The existing core set of organizations and capabilities
provides a useful and functional initial framework. To meet newer
challenges, this patchy and incomplete infrastructure requires
consistent and reliable support, augmentation of capabilities, and much
better integration across a wide variety of boundaries. NOAA capacities
and programs such as those we have outlined will be integral and
necessary components but, alone are not sufficient. Climate is so
pervasive an issue that the success of a National Climate Service, on
the scale and broad scope that we need, can only derive from a sense of
shared ownership of the Service among its widely scattered
participants: federal, regional, State and local agencies and
organizations inside and outside government. It is my opinion that this
nation has the talent, the attitude, the motivation, and the resources
to provide global leadership in this crucial endeavor.
In closing, I thank the Committee for inviting me to testify today.
Biography for Arthur DeGaetano
Art DeGaetano is Professor in the Department of Earth and
Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell. He is also the Director of the
Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC) and Associate Chairman of
Earth and Atmospheric (EAS). The NRCC's mission is to enhance the use
and dissemination of climate information to a wide variety of sectors
in the Northeastern United States in partnership with NOAA's National
Climatic Data Center. Art serves as an associate editor for the
American Meteorological Society Journal of Applied Meteorology and
Climatology. Art has been at Cornell since 1991 serving as the Center's
Research Climatologist until 2001. Prior to his arrival at Cornell Art
was an Assistant Professor with the Meteorology Department at the South
Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City. He received an
interdisciplinary Ph.D. focusing on Climatology and Horticulture from
Rutgers University in 1989.
Chair Baird. Thank you. Dr. Barron.
STATEMENT OF DR. ERIC J. BARRON, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CENTER FOR
ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH; CHAIR, CLIMATE SERVICES COORDINATING
COMMITTEE, CLIMATE WORKING GROUP, NOAA SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD
Dr. Barron. Chairman Baird, Ranking Member Inglis, and
Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to
testify on the important topic of creating a National Climate
Service. My name is Eric Barron, and I am the Director of the
National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The climate debate has changed dramatically over the last
decade. We now know that we are going to be forced to make a
number of decisions that are climate-related, and some mix of
adaptation and mitigation is going to be inevitable.
Unfortunately, our nation is not ready for those decisions.
It lacks the capability to provide a diverse range of climate
information that could benefit society. The simple fact of the
matter is there is no single source of authoritative, credible,
and useful information that will allow society to span the
connections between climate and human health, water, energy,
changes in severe weather, agriculture, and environmental
stewardship.
It is interesting, every time I talk to a natural resource
manager, I discover that many of them just don't know where to
go to get the information that they need, and many of them are
particularly concerned that they need information that is
authoritative, the very best information available, if they are
going to make decisions that can withstand the tests of our
society or even of litigation within our society.
You know, consider the fact that we have dozens of climate
models out there. Should a manager from Washington State or
from South Carolina, California, Texas, or New York turn around
and just pick whichever climate model they might want to use
for a particular problem? Or would we rather have a single
source, where you can go see the full range of predictions, and
see with those full range of predictions, the information about
uncertainties and their ranges, and other expert opinion?
In other cases, we know that if we can put users,
information, and new research together, we can actually solve
problems. We can tailor the information to the needs of a user,
to remarkable benefit.
Recently, I chaired the Climate Services Coordinating
Committee, a body within the Climate Working Group of NOAA's
Science Advisory Board. The Committee prepared a report that
was entitled ``Options for Developing a National Climate
Service.'' I would like to bring the conclusions of this report
to your attention.
First, NOAA must play a key role in any climate service.
This agency already contains many of the fundamental components
of a climate service, and it has a considerable history of
providing authoritative services to the Nation. However, in the
panel's opinion, weather and climate within NOAA have to be
better integrated, and research operations and users have to be
better joined if their role is to be successful.
Second, in addition to NOAA, there are several federal
agencies that are positioned to contribute expertise,
information, and resources to support a National Climate
Service. Each federal agency needs to define collaboratively
its role and its level of commitment to this Service, and it
can't be optional. It needs to be persistent and consistent.
Third, to make this work, the overall authority and
guidance must be at the highest possible level within the
federal system, preferably within the White House. There are
simply too many pieces out there in too many federal agencies
to have this work well without clear and potent leadership.
Fourth, a National Climate Service requires a defined,
independent budget that is large enough to influence the
direction of the Climate Service, and ensure that we achieve
its mission. Some of our most successful regional climate
services are chronically underfunded, and not all parts of this
Nation are even represented. The Service needs a budget that is
appropriate to match societal need.
Fifth, the Service needs to be able to connect with and
actively engage a broad range of users. We need a nimble and
flexible structure that empowers users, that can put industry
at the table, that can promote interaction between users and
the research community. Frankly, this is something that the
Federal Government doesn't do well. Our view is that we need a
separate consortium or nonprofit that is directly funded
through a lead agency, and is designed specifically to promote
this interface. We need an entity that has a single focus, no
competing agenda, in order to connect credible climate
information to those who need it, whether it is a city, a
state, a climate services corporation, or a research manager.
I believe that a National Climate Service that is
structured well and implemented effectively will dramatically
increase our ability to respond to these challenges. The
potential to serve our nation, I think, is enormous if we do
this well.
Thank you for this opportunity, and I would be pleased to
answer any questions when the time comes.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Barron follows:]
Prepared Statement of Eric J. Barron
Chairman Baird, Ranking Member Inglis, and Members of the
Subcommittee: Thank you for inviting me to testify on the importance of
creating a National Climate Service. My name is Eric Barron, and I am
the Director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a
federally-funded institute based in Boulder, Colorado, that supports
and conducts research and scientific inquiry into our atmosphere and
its interactions with the Sun, the oceans, the biosphere, and society.
In all these areas, our scientists are looking closely at the role that
humankind plays in creating climate change, increasing our ability to
predict future changes, and assessing the impact that climate change is
having, in turn, on us.
I am also Chairman of the Climate Services Coordinating Committee,
a body within the Climate Working Group of NOAA's Science Advisory
Board which formed last year to examine options for developing a
National Climate Service. The Committee recently prepared a report
titled Options for Developing a National Climate Service, which I would
like to bring to your attention as a key document and resource on this
topic. This report is intended to provide Members of this committee,
other Members of Congress, and the new Administration, with a solid
foundation on which to make well-reasoned choices on the development of
a National Climate Service. At the core of the Report, we identify four
options for developing a National Climate Service, weigh the pros and
cons of each option, and list key recommendations for design and
implementation.
I recommend that you review and take into consideration the
findings and recommendations of Options for Developing a National
Climate Service. It reflects the coordinated efforts, over the course
of more than a year, of an authoritative group of climatologists,
climate policy experts, federal policy-makers, potential users of a
National Climate Service, and other key stakeholders. It is
representative of a broad spectrum of interests from a range of sectors
and backgrounds, all of which have a stake and should be taken into
account in the integrated design of a National Climate Service.
The outcome of our Committee's efforts--distilled in the form of
our report--offers an informed and well-considered analysis of how to
best approach the design and implementation of a National Climate
Service. I hope that, as you formulate policy ideas, and especially if
you begin to draft an authorization bill for the National Climate
Service, you will make ample use of our report, take advantage of our
hard work, and use the members of the Coordinating Committee as
resources.
Today, climate services--provided by a number federal agencies,
universities, non-profits, and private sector firms nationally--provide
decision-makers with information about long-term trends in the weather
and other Earth systems. While such climate services met some of user
demand in the past, demand for climate information and the range of
information that is needed are rapidly growing as decision-makers are
increasingly concerned about the consequences of global warming: How
should my community prepare? How can my community minimize losses? How
can we maximize gain? Planners, commissioners, policy-makers, and other
decision-makers want to know detailed and specific information about
how climate change will affect their state, region, community,
industry, or utility. They need a dependable and accurate source of
information to which to turn. They need a level of engagement with
experts that enables them to make informed decisions. They need a
research community that recognizes and responds to their problems. The
lives and the well-being of their clients and constituents are at
stake, as are economic vitality of their communities and other
priorities like environmental stewardship and sustainability.
The patchwork of climate services that currently exists does not
have the capacity to meet growing needs and demands. Rather, climate
services are disparate and disconnected by type and region, lacking
central coordination, focus, and direction. They generally do not
obtain data, predictions, and syntheses across a broad span of sectors
and regions, nor do they have the resources to tackle the advanced
computer climate modeling that is required to produce high-resolution,
down-scale climate predictions. Currently, there is no single source of
authoritative, credible and useful information that will allow society
to span such important topics as the physical aspects of sea level
rise, temperature and precipitation, the resource implications of
failed crops, anticipating adverse human health outcomes, robust water
supply, managing changes in ecosystems, or the social implications of
migrations and resource competitions. In short, current climate
services as they are presently constituted are not suited to new
challenges or the rapidly growing demand for climate information.
As we face the certainty of a warming planet over the next 100
years--``unequivocal'' in the words of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change--a National Climate Service would dramatically
increase our ability to respond, and it's necessary to unify,
strengthen, and optimize our nation's existing climate services. The
purpose of the National Climate Service would be to provide the best
possible information to the public to assist in understanding,
anticipating, and responding to climate, climate change, and climate
variability, and their impacts and implications. Centralized within the
Federal Government, integrated across region and type of services, and
supported with sufficient resources and leadership, a National Climate
Service would be unique in its capacity to produce and deliver
authoritative, timely, and useful information on climate change. It
would enable decision-makers to manage climate-related risks and
opportunities, along with other local, State, regional, tribal,
national, and global impacts.
A National Climate Service should:
1) promote active interaction among users, researchers, and
information providers;
2) be user-centric, ensuring that scientifically-based
information is accessible and commensurate with users' needs
and limitations; and
3) provide usable information and enable the development of
decision support tools through a sustained network of
observations, modeling, research activities, and user outreach
and assistance.
Critical to the survival and success of a new National Climate
Service are the functions of design, leadership, and funding. These are
addressed in the key recommendations laid out in Options for Developing
a National Climate Service, the following five of which are critical to
implement:
Recommendation #1. Internally Reorganize at NOAA. Given NOAA's mission
and operational capabilities, it is an agency that should play a key
role in the establishment and implementation of a National Climate
Service. NOAA already contains many of the fundamental components of a
climate service and they have considerable history in providing
services to the Nation. However, as it is currently organized, NOAA is
not well-suited to the development of a unified climate service
function. An internal reorganization of NOAA that allows greater
connectivity between weather and climate functions, and between
research, operations, and users, is a necessary step for success.
Recommendation #2. Define Role of Each Agency. There are several
federal agencies that are positioned to contribute expertise and that
must contribute resources to support a National Climate Service. Each
federal agency needs to collaboratively define its role and level of
commitment in a National Climate Service. To achieve success, each
agency must commit a set amount of funding that is not optional and
must commit to participation at a very high level within the agency.
There are examples of interagency programs that have failed because
leadership was not involved and participants did not have the authority
to make commitments on behalf of their agency. This service is too
important to the security and well-being of the country to risk that
approach. We must also define a lead federal entity. There is also good
logic for considering NOAA as the lead agency. A lead agency provides a
greater ability to speak with an authoritative voice, and a NOAA-lead
allows us build quickly from existing components of a climate service,
ensure support of inherently governmental functions (observing systems,
operational systems), and increases our ability to ensure ``one-stop
shopping'' if weather and climate functions are integrated.
Recommendation #3. Place under High-Level Leadership. Success of a
National Climate Service requires recognized, clear, authoritative,
responsible leadership within the Federal System at the highest level
possible, ideally within the White House. The importance of this cannot
be overemphasized. The service must be interagency and involve State
and local governments as well as the private and public sector. To make
this work, someone with clear and obvious authority must take the lead.
Recommendation #4. Grant a Large, Dedicated Budget. A National Climate
Service requires a defined, independent budget large enough to
influence the direction of the Service and achieve its mission.
Recommendation #5. Establish a Federated Structure. A National Climate
Service requires an interface best described by a federated structure
(i.e., non-profit or federation). This point is extremely important.
The greatest strengths of the federated or non-profit option is their
flexibility and nimbleness (especially the non-profit option), ability
to connect and actively engage a broader range of users and members of
the research community, and potential to have a single focus (no
competing agenda).
Implementation of the recommendations outlined in the report will
establish an efficient and effective service that promotes interactive
partnerships among scientists, information providers, and a variety of
users. For instance, accurate and properly-scaled predictions of long-
term trends in wind volume and sunshine levels at a research
institution can help renewable energy companies plan where to build
their new wind turbine farm or concentrated solar thermal plant. A
national clearinghouse for all carbon and climate monitoring data and
all impact analyses, based in Washington, D.C., could support policy-
making and provide an authoritative signal to Congress about how
rapidly and deeply you should cut or mitigate greenhouse gas emissions
to minimize losses. A civil engineer's high-resolution model of how
streamflow will change over the long-term for a key river could help
fisherman improve management of that river's fisheries, farmers improve
irrigated agriculture along the river, and dam operators optimize
hydropower production. And authoritative information on weather and
climate parameters associated with causes of adverse health outcomes
could help officials at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention
and other health professionals respond to adverse health outcomes in
advance and prepare with an appropriate level of medical community
preparation.
As these examples show, the benefits of a National Climate Service
will be manifold, will extend to all parts of the economy, and will
have implications for the everyday lives of all people of this country.
Climate change is happening now and it is occurring at a faster rate
than anticipated. We need a National Climate Service that will enable
people to plan for change in a constructive, efficient manner. If we
succeed in this endeavor, I am confident that we can avoid many of the
adverse changes that could surely affect our society otherwise.
Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Inglis: Thank you again for the
opportunity to testify before your Subcommittee regarding this very
important program. I would be more than happy to field any questions
you or the other Members of the Subcommittee have for me today.
Biography for Eric J. Barron
Eric J. Barron, Director of the National Center for Atmospheric
Research (NCAR), began a career in geology with an undergraduate degree
from Florida State University (1973). After obtaining his Master's
degree in oceanography, marine geology and geophysics from the
University of Miami (1976), his interest turned to climate studies with
a Cray Supercomputing Fellowship at NCAR. Upon completing his Ph.D. in
oceanography from the University of Miami (1980), he returned to NCAR
as a postdoctoral research fellow and then continued as a research
scientist in the global climate modeling group. In 1986 Barron went to
Pennsylvania State University to direct the College of Earth and
Mineral Sciences' newly formed Earth System Science Center (ESSC), and
was promoted to Professor of Geosciences in 1989. Under Barron's
leadership, the growth of ESSC resulted in the establishment of the
College of Earth and Mineral Sciences' Environment Institute,
encompassing the ESSC and a group of other research center. Barron
became the Director of this new institute in 1998 and earned the title
of Distinguished Professor in 1999. In 2002 he was named Dean of the
College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State. Prior to coming to
NCAR in July 2008, Barron served as Dean of Jackson School of
Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin.
Barron's research interests are in the areas of climatology,
numerical modeling, and Earth history. During his career, he has worked
diligently to promote the intersection of the geological sciences with
the atmospheric sciences and the field of Earth system science. He
served as Chairman of the Climate Research Committee of the National
Research Council (NRC) from 1990 to 1996. In 1997, he was named Co-
Chairman of the Board on Atmospheric Sciences (BASC) of the NRC, and
since 1999 he has chaired the BASC. Additional NRC panels on which
Barron has served include the Committee on Global Change Research, the
Assessment of NASA Post-2000 Plans, Climate Change Science, the Human
Dimensions of Global Change, the Panel on Grand Environmental
Challenges, and the Committee on Tools for Tracking Chemical,
Biological, and Nuclear Releases in the Atmosphere: Implications for
Homeland Security. In addition to serving on the National Research
Council, Barron chaired the Science Executive Committee for NASA's
Earth Observing System and NASA's Earth Science and Applications
Advisory Committee (ESSAC). He has also served as Chairman of the
USGCRP Forum on Climate Modeling, the Allocation Panel for the
Interagency Climate Simulation Laboratory, the U.S. National Committee
for PAGES and the NSF Earth System History Panel.
Barron is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the American
Meteorological Society, the Geological Society of America, and the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2003, he
received the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal.
Chair Baird. Thank you. Dr. Mote.
STATEMENT OF DR. PHILIP W. MOTE, DIRECTOR, OREGON CLIMATE
CHANGE RESEARCH INSTITUTE AND OREGON CLIMATE SERVICES, OREGON
STATE UNIVERSITY; PROFESSOR, COLLEGE OF OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC
SCIENCES
Dr. Mote. Thank you, Chairman Baird and Ranking Member
Inglis, and Members of the Committee. I am still with the
Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington for a
couple more months, in addition to my responsibilities with the
Oregon Climate Change Research Institute. And at the University
of Washington, I also serve as State Climatologist, and I am
pleased that you all have Nolan Doesken, the President of the
AASC, to speak in a few minutes.
I have been invited here to speak on behalf of the nine
university-based, regionally focused research teams known as
RISAs, which Dr. DeGaetano already mentioned. RISA stands for
Regionally Integrated Sciences and Assessments, and they are
supported by NOAA's Climate Program Office. Most of the RISA
teams have contributed to my oral and written testimony.
RISAs have been providing climate services, since the first
RISA, our own Climate Impacts Group at the University of
Washington, was established in 1995 by Ed Miles. Indeed, our
group, with Ed as lead author, wrote a paper on national
climate services, published in 2006, that helped start the
current discussion about climate services.
Climate services provide the use-inspired climate science
needed to support decisions that plan for and cope with climate
variability and change. With steady progress in science,
vigorous growth in demand for actionable climate information,
and the urgency of coping with a changing climate, the time for
a National Climate Service has arrived.
Selecting from dozens of possible examples, I provide here
a few examples of climate services that the RISAs provide,
focusing for brevity on water resources. Early on, the
Northwest and Pacific RISAs helped agencies like Seattle public
utilities and Pacific Island water resource managers apply
seasonal forecasts to estimates of water supply. Western and
Southeastern RISAs have engaged in drought planning and
monitoring and post-drought analysis. CLIMAS, the Southwest
RISA, worked with State agencies in Arizona on the Arizona
Drought Preparedness Plan. The RISA in the Carolinas developed
a drought monitoring tool to monitor low flow triggers.
Looking decades into the future, RISA scientists analyzed
the effects of climate change on the small rivers that supply
urban needs, like the Cedar River for Seattle, and on the large
basins, the Columbia and the Colorado, for example. Such
projections are now routinely being used in long-range planning
by municipal and State governments, in partnership with RISAs,
as in California, Colorado, and Washington. Western RISAs have
worked for a number of years with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and others to understand uses of climate
information.
These and other examples illustrate the importance of the
partnerships that RISAs have with NOAA offices and other
federal agencies, Regional Climate Centers, State
climatologists, extension, tribes, State and local governments,
NGOs, and the private sector. Each of these partners has unique
contributions, perspectives, and responsibilities. The RISAs,
based at universities, emphasize user-oriented research and
outreach.
In a National Climate Service, user-oriented research would
be vital, and RISAs would play a critical role. Here is an
example of what an NCS could accomplish. Redrawing floodplain
maps with a rigorous assessment of how climate change may be
changing the flood risk, also known as the hundred year flood.
Federal labs provide climate model outputs. University
researchers run hydrologic models. Political science experts
craft flexible policies to incorporate local concerns. RISAs
and State climatologists and extension services engage
emergency managers, land use planners, and so on.
Climate services are already provided in various forms by
the nine RISAs, by Regional Climate Centers, private
consultants, State climatologists, and so on, but the efforts
fall short of what is needed. For one thing, the RISA program
needs to be expanded to serve all fifty states, plus the
territories. And funding for the RISA program is so thinly
stretched now that we cannot meet user demand.
Building on the 2001 NRC report, the RISAs came up with ten
key elements that we believe will be critical to an effective
NCS. I have condensed it to five for brevity.
Number one, needs of stakeholders must be foremost, and are
best understood at the regional scale. Two, NCS must recognize
that decision contexts need climate information and much more.
Three, because capability must span a range of space scales,
implementation must be national, but with strong regional and
State components, including universities, to assist regional
and State level decisions. Four, NCS design should be flexible
and evolutionary, and be built around effective partnerships.
Five, NCS success requires that an effective larger national
and international climate science enterprise, including
observations, exist to support it.
The RISAs show that regional university/federal
partnerships can make unprecedented progress in providing
climate services, and we succeed because we are backed up by a
world-class federal science enterprise. Climate knowledge,
properly used and conveyed, will help Americans deal with, and
indeed prosper, in the face of future climate variability and
change.
Thank you for your time.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Mote follows:]
Prepared Statement of Philip W. Mote
I have been invited here to speak on behalf of the nine university-
based, regionally-focused research teams known as RISAs. RISA stands
for Regionally Integrated Sciences and Assessments, supported by NOAA's
Climate Program Office. Most of the RISA teams have contributed to my
oral and written testimony.
RISAs have been providing climate services since the first RISA,
our own Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington, was
established in 1995 by Ed Miles. Indeed, our group with Ed as lead
author wrote a paper on national climate services in 2006 that helped
start the current discussion about climate services.
Climate services provide the use-inspired climate science needed to
support decisions that plan for and cope with climate variability and
change. With steady progress in science, vigorous growth in demand for
actionable climate information, and the urgency of coping with a
changing climate, the time for a national climate service has arrived.
Selecting from dozens of possible examples, I provide here a few
examples of climate services RISAs provide, focusing for brevity on
water resources. Early on, the Northwest and Pacific RISAs helped
agencies like Seattle Public Utilities and Pacific island water
resource managers apply seasonal forecasts to estimates of water
supply. Western and southeastern RISAs have engaged in drought planning
and monitoring, and post-drought analysis. CLIMAS (the southwest RISA)
worked with State agencies in Arizona on the Arizona Drought
Preparedness Plan. The RISA in the Carolinas developed a drought
monitoring tool to monitor low-flow triggers. Looking decades into the
future, RISA scientists analyze the effects of climate change on small
rivers that supply urban needs, like the Cedar River for Seattle, and
on the large basins of the Colorado and Columbia Rivers. Such
projections are now routinely being used in long-range planning by
municipal and State governments in partnership with RISAs, as in
California, Colorado, and Washington. Western RISAs have worked for a
number of years with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and others to
understand uses of climate information.
These and other examples illustrate the importance of partnerships
RISAs have--with NOAA offices and other federal agencies, with regional
climate centers, State climatologists, extension, tribes, State and
local governments, NGOs, and the private sector. Each has unique
contributions, perspectives, and responsibilities--RISAs, based at
universities, emphasize user-oriented research and outreach. In a
National Climate Service, user-oriented research would be vital and
RISAs would play a critical role. An example of what an NCS could
accomplish: redrawing flood plain maps with a rigorous assessment of
how climate change may be changing flood risk, a.k.a. the 100-year
flood. Federal labs provide climate model output, university
researchers run hydrologic models, political science experts craft
flexible policies to incorporate local concerns, RISAs and State
climatologists engage emergency managers, land use planners, and other
local officials.
Climate services are already provided in various forms by the nine
RISAs, by regional climate centers, private consultants, State
climatologists, extension, the National Weather Service, and others,
but the efforts fall short of what is needed. For one thing, the RISA
program needs to be expanded to serve all 50 states plus the
territories. And funding for the RISA program is so thinly stretched
that we cannot meet user demand.
Building on a 2001 NRC report, the RISAs came up with ten key
elements that we believe will be critical to an effective National
Climate Services (NCS); I've condensed it to five for brevity.
1. Needs of stakeholders must be foremost, and are best
understood at the regional scale.
2. NCS must recognize that decision contexts need climate
information and much more.
3. Because capability must span a range of space scales,
implementation must be national but with strong regional and
State components, including universities, to assist regional
and State-level decisions.
4. NCS design should be flexible and evolutionary, and built
around effective partnerships.
5. NCS success requires that an effective larger national (and
international) climate science enterprise, including
observations, exists to support it.
The RISAs show that regional university-federal partnerships can
make unprecedented progress in providing climate services, and we
succeed because we are backed up by a world-class federal science
enterprise, a global climate observing system, data centers, and global
and regional climate modeling. Climate knowledge, properly conveyed and
used, will help Americans deal with, and indeed prosper, in the face of
future climate variability and change. Thank you for allowing me and my
colleagues to share our thoughts with your subcommittee today.
Executive Summary
NOAA's Regional Integrated Science and Assessments (RISA) program
consists of nine teams focused on different climatically-sensitive
regions of the United States. These teams have developed innovative
place-based, stakeholder-driven research, partnership, and services
programs over the past decade, and in doing so, have created an
effective demonstration-scale climate service for parts of the Nation.
The experiences of the RISA programs and their successful development
of decision support tools and other products indicate that the
following key elements will be critical to an effective National
Climate Services (NCS):
1. NCS must be stakeholder (user)--driven, and accountable to
stakeholders.
2. NSC must be based on sustained regional interactions with
stakeholders.
3. NCS must include efforts to improve climate literacy,
particularly at the regional scale.
4. Multifaceted assessment as an ongoing, iterative process,
is essential to NSC.
5. NCS must recognize that stakeholder decisions need climate
information in an interdisciplinary context that is much
broader than just climate.
6. NCS must be based on effective interagency partnership--no
agency is equipped to do it all.
6. Implementation of NCS must be national, but the primary
focus must be regional, where decisions are made.
8. Capability must span a range of space and time scales,
including both climate variability and climate change.
9. NCS design should be flexible and evolutionary, and be
built around effective federal-university partnership.
10. NCS success requires that an effective regional, national
and international climate science enterprise, including ongoing
observations, model simulations and diagnostics, exists to
support it.
Prepared through a collaborative effort of RISA partners, this
document reviews literature in support of the RISA approach, and
provides several examples of RISA efforts that illustrate these ten key
elements, focusing on water resource, wildfire, and agriculture.
Moreover, during the past 10 years, droughts in the western and the
southeastern U.S. have illustrated the value and utility of RISA teams
in diagnosing and predicting droughts, and in designing drought
mitigation and preparedness plans. Such efforts arise from the
interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of the RISAs, and provide a
template for NCS. Scaling up the RISA experience into an NCS poses
organizational challenges, but offers numerous important lessons, as
well as the promise of success.
1. Introduction
Climate services are intended to provide the use-inspired climate
science needed to support decision-making in society, particularly as
it relates to anticipating, planning for, and dealing with climate
variability and climate change. Owing to steady progress in climate
science and vigorous growth in public demand for actionable climate
information, the motivation for rapid expansion of climate services has
never been greater. Climate information includes paleoclimate
(reconstruction of past climate from proxies like tree rings);
statistics about means and extremes from instrumental data and
interpretations thereof; seasonal climate forecasts; projections of
global and regional climate change; and much more. Climate services are
already provided in various forms by the NOAA Regional Integrated
Sciences and Assessments (RISA) program through its nine regional
groups, by regional climate centers, private consultants, State
climatologists, the National Weather Service, and others. This document
describes the experiences of the RISA program for input as the Nation
contemplates the design and implementation of a National Climate
Service (NCS).
Basic research in climate dynamics, as well as efforts to observe
and predict the Earth system, have paid immense dividends in improved
weather forecasts, seasonal climate predictions, and responses of
global climate to external forcing like greenhouse gases or volcanic
eruptions. Climate services connect these advances to specific decision
environments, much the way the National Weather Service implements new
research in an operational, decision-relevant setting. A fundamental
aspect of this connection is a responsiveness to users' needs. It is
this responsiveness that is at the heart of the RISA success in
understanding how climate information is interpreted and used by a wide
range of stakeholder decision-makers.
The RISA program supports integrated, place-based research across a
range of social, natural, and physical science disciplines to expand
decision-makers' options in the face of climate change and variability
at the regional level. RISA teams are comprised of researchers from the
physical and natural sciences, engineering, economic, legal, and social
sciences who work together and partner with stakeholders in a region to
determine how climate impacts key resources and how climate information
could aid in decision-making and planning for those stakeholders. It
opens new conduits for the flow of information and documents innovative
practices for providing services that can lead to improvement across
the whole climate services enterprise. The significant RISA success in
meeting user needs illustrates the power of regional stakeholder-driven
interdisciplinary climate research as a complement to the more
operational, national-scale support provided by federal agencies such
as NOAA.
In this document we briefly review some relevant history of climate
services, describe key elements of climate services, provide examples
based on the RISA experience, and offer some thoughts about
implementing National Climate Service informed by the RISA experience.
2. RISA Teams and Background Literature
The network of RISA teams (Figure 1) represents a significant body
of experience and knowledge about climate services needs. Each RISA
developed independently and defined its own approaches to meeting
stakeholder demand. Since the first RISA was established in the Pacific
Northwest in 1995, the network has expanded to nine teams, each of
which has long-term relationships with users of climate information
from a wide variety of sectors, levels of government, and regions.
RISAs work closely with these users to identify and address needs
including climate literacy, fundamental use-inspired and applied
research, and development of decision-support tools.
A critical element of the regional focus is the intense, sustained
contact with users that is necessary to uncover, assess and refine the
ways in which climate services can best meet user needs. These efforts
often break new ground as they respond to the research and support
needs of regional user groups. Some specific RISA efforts have also
delved more deeply into cross-scale issues examining a local situation,
a sector, or multi-jurisdictional area within a regional context. The
efforts have generated many lessons on climate needs, as well as best
practices in effective development and delivery of services. RISAs have
also had success in the development and transfer of information
prototypes, applications, service innovation, and research
methodologies. With time, RISAs have also begun to collaborate more
regularly with each other, as well as other regional climate science
partners.
In the meantime, a steady drum beat of published statements have
stressed the need for a coordinated approach to climate services. In
2001 the National Research Council issued a report called A Climate
Services Vision: First steps toward the future (NRC, 2001). The report
highlighted that the societal value of climate information is dependent
upon many factors, including the:
strength and nature of linkages between climate,
weather, and human activities;
nature of uncertainties associated with forecasts;
accessibility of credible and useful climate
information by decision-makers;
ability of users and providers to identify each
other's needs and limitations; and
ability of users to respond to useful information.
According to the NRC report, addressing these factors requires
research, data stewardship, product development, and education
programs.
The NRC report also outlines five ``guiding principles'' for the
development of a new climate services effort:
(1). The activities and elements of climate services should be
user-centric--the user community is diverse, with a wide range of space
and time scales needed. Users are becoming increasingly diverse and
knowledgeable, with a commensurate increase in specialized needs. In
order to address these needs, evaluation, mutual information, and
feedback are needed to improve communication and accessibility of
information.
(2). If a climate service function is to improve and succeed, it
should be supported by active research, and research is needed not just
on the fundamentals of climate variability and change, but also on
diffusion of knowledge and information. This requires mission-oriented
research with active mechanisms to transfer knowledge from research to
useful products.
(3). Advanced information (including predictions) should be
provided on a variety of space and time scales, and in the context of
the historical record, in order to understand natural variability and
climate change. Predictions should be accompanied by analysis of
probabilities, limitations, and uncertainties. Causes and character of
natural variability should be described. Continuous, accurate, and
reliable historical climate observations are needed at diverse locales,
and products need to be provided for scales from local to global.
(4). The climate services knowledge base requires active
stewardship: observations must be reliable, freely exchanged, and
accessible. This requires open and free exchange of data, combining
observations into useful, multi-purpose records, and assuring synergism
between observations, theories, and models. All of this should be
driven by a ``robust and easily accessible delivery system.''
(5). Climate services require active and well-defined participation
by government, business, and academe. Each of these players has
important roles in providing climate services. The government should be
motivated by ``public goods and services,'' which they describe as non-
rival and non-exclusive. These are products that are of a general
nature, not for individuals or individual commercial operations.
Government should also take the lead role in maintaining the official
climate records. The private sector should use the data to meet basic
and applied research needs of its users. Academic research
organizations should focus on their central mission of research,
education, and outreach. Sometimes this may include research data and
analysis and product development in partnership with industry or
government towards meeting these goals.
The NRC recommendations were presented in three sections: (1)
promoting more effective use of the Nation's weather and climate
observation systems; (2) improving the capability to serve the climate
information needs of the Nation; and (3) interdisciplinary studies and
capabilities needed to address societal needs. Recommendations 1 and 2
of the NRC report focus primarily upon the infrastructure and provision
of routine services. While the RISAs contribute to these goals, their
most notable successes occur in Recommendation 3, which can be
elaborated as:
Develop regional enterprises designed to expand the
nature and scope of climate services;
Increase support for interdisciplinary climate
studies, applications, and education;
Foster climate policy education; and
Enhance the understanding of climate through public
education.
The report describes a service system that ``should strive to meet
the needs of a user community at least as diverse and complex as the
climate system itself, ranging from the international community to
individual users, and involving both the public and private sectors.
Central to the scope of a climate service is the need to embrace wide
ranges of time and space scales because decision-making occurs on all
scales from local to global and from weeks to centuries.''
Since 2001, several reports have highlighted the critical role that
RISAs provide through their research and service. A 2003 forum of the
American Meteorological Society focused on ``Improving Responses to
Climate Predictions,'' emphasized the need for more ``science
integrators'' (Greenfield and Fisher, 2003). Finding 5 of the forum
notes that ``climate information is most effectively developed and
applied through partnerships between climate information providers and
decision-makers.'' The report also notes the importance of evaluation
of risks and benefits as a factor encouraging use of climate forecasts.
Miles et al. (2006) provided a perspective on climate services
linking the international aspects of climate monitoring, research and
modeling to regional applications of climate information. Based in
large part on the success of the Climate Impacts Group (the Northwest
RISA), they stressed that regional organizations were a key component
in successful delivery of climate services within the context of an
NCS.
In a review of the Climate Change Science program, the National
Research Council (2007) noted that ``discovery science and
understanding of the climate system are proceeding well, but use of
that knowledge to support decision-making and to manage risks and
opportunities of climate change is proceeding slowly.'' The report
emphasized the smaller spatial scales at which decisions are made and
the need for improved understanding of the impact of climate changes on
human well-being and vulnerabilities. The review called for stronger
connections with social science researchers and a more comprehensive
and balanced research program, including human dimensions, economics,
adaptation, and mitigation. The report again highlights RISA as a
positive example: ``NOAA's Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments
program has been effective in communicating research results to
stakeholders in particular sectors . . . or regions, but this program
is small and has limited reach . . . Building and maintaining
relationships with stakeholders is not easy and requires more resources
in the CCSP Office and participating agencies than are currently
available. Yet a well-developed list of stakeholders, target audiences,
and their needs is essential for educating the public and informing
decision-making with scientifically-based CCSP products.''
In 2007, the Western Governors' Association and Western States
Water Council suggested that improving relationships between State
agencies, academia and federal climate science agencies was the most
critical action on improving State and regional response to climate
variability and change (CDWR, 2007). RISA was again highlighted as a
``successful step to a bridging effort between the research community
and practitioners'' and they recommended that the program be expanded.
The maturation and expansion of the RISA Program has contributed to
the body of knowledge about how climate information is conveyed,
received, and utilized by key stakeholder groups. These findings should
be used to construct improvements in the products and services provided
by federal agencies and State climate office services. Within the NOAA
Climate Program Office, programs such as Transition of Research
Applications to Climate Services and the Sector Applications Research
Program have supported research geared toward better understanding of
how stakeholders use climate information. These studies are often at a
regional, State or local level, allowing each study to capitalize upon
unique circumstances to the area. For example, the RISA-served areas of
the country with a strong response to El Nino-Southern Oscillation
(ENSO), namely the Pacific Islands, Northwest, California, Southwest,
and Southeast, can make use of seasonal predictions; whereas for the
parts of the country with lower seasonal predictability, the utility of
seasonal forecasts may be low.
A common theme in these reports is that rapid growth in demand for
climate services have converged with growth in knowledge of climate and
of human interactions, and with technological advances including
communication networks, to pave the way for a transformation of climate
services. They envision the emergence of a broader, organized, and
sustained climate service that addresses multiple environmental
challenges.
3. Essential elements of a National Climate Service
Drawing on collaboration and shared experiences, the RISA teams
have summarized our reflections on the essential elements of a National
Climate Service (Table 1). These include elements that are essential
when working with user groups, as well as implications for
institutional design.
3.1 A stakeholder-driven perspective
A national climate service must prioritize stakeholder needs and
support services based on their usefulness in addressing those needs.
Critical climate service needs vary among regions depending on
vulnerabilities and how planning and policy decisions consider local
climate conditions such as drought, wildfire, snowpack depth, ice
storms, storm frequency, the likelihood of heat waves, or the impact of
ocean temperatures on fisheries. The climate science enterprise
currently addresses these issues, but as the NRC report Decision-Making
for the Environment (2005:26) points out, approaches to framing
research questions and data analysis often mean that ``when science is
gathered to inform environmental decisions, it is often not the right
science.'' A user-centric approach, which is more likely to gather the
``right science,'' affects the design of research, models, and
observation systems to support fundamental use-inspired and applied
research, and extends to new communication and operations standards.
The timeliness of information availability is also critical to its
utility--decision calendars vary by region, and climate services will
need to be timed to provide the best information at most useful times.
3.2 Sustained, ongoing regional interactions with users
From El Nino events in the 1980s, to global climate change today,
stakeholder interest in climate science has grown rapidly. In order to
provide relevant information, RISAs have demonstrated that users and
scientists committed to innovation in this area must make a sustained
commitment to learning from each other about climate science and about
the equally complex sectoral decision needs--the processes,
vulnerabilities, goals, constraints, calendars, and capabilities--that
influence the value, utility, and availability of climate information.
Stakeholders are seeking trusted sources to help them understand a new
set of issues characterized by rapidly evolving science, uncertainties,
and highly politicized controversies. Ongoing engagement is necessary
to build and maintain the credibility required of a national climate
service, and to respond flexibly to rapidly evolving stakeholder needs
and capabilities.
Implicit in making climate services stakeholder-driven, and based
on sustained stakeholder partnerships, is the fact that the enterprise
must be inherently regional in nature. National entities cannot succeed
without strong regional presence and partnership. The RISA success has
been built on the regional strengths of universities and their well-
established ability to partner in a sustained way in their regions, and
to do so in a way that cuts across disciplinary, agency, and sectoral
boundaries.
3.3 Broad efforts to improve climate literacy
Many decision-makers are already hearing and heeding calls to use
climate information as part of accountability and disclosure from
regulators, constituents, or clients. For decision-makers to use
climate information in an effective manner, they often must have at
least a rudimentary understanding of the strengths, limits, and
availability of good climate information and services. For example,
seasonal forecasts are often expressed as shifts in probabilities,
whereas users often reduce these forecasts to the simpler notion of
``above average.'' Many users are in the early stages of learning about
general climate issues, whereas others are interested in more
sophisticated treatment of topics related to specific professional or
occasionally personal interests. RISA experiences indicate that both
sophisticated and casual users of climate information want to relate
general processes (e.g., global warming or El Nino) to local/regional
experience, expectations, and concerns, and vice versa. When users
understand the statistical and physical reasoning of climate sciences,
and how to evaluate the plausibility of an explanation or the validity
of a seasonal forecast, they can make better use of climate
information. They can also be a more active partner in driving the
needed science and services. One of the most effective ways to improve
society's resilience to climate variability and change is through
greater climate literacy.
3.4 Assessment as an multifaceted, ongoing, and iterative process
Several types of assessment are integral to a successful climate
services. At one end of the spectrum, climate services must assess--at
regular intervals--the state of the climate system, the state of
climate understanding, and the range of potential climate impacts,
risks and vulnerabilities that might occur. This is akin to the
assessment approach employed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. In addition, advances in climate science and the changing
dynamics of socioeconomic systems require that the needs of stakeholder
decision-makers also be assessed in an ongoing, iterative manner, just
as the effectiveness of all climate service methodologies and
activities must be routinely assessed and improved. These latter types
of assessment are best implemented via social science research.
Growing populations, shifting economic sectors, greater reliance on
new energy sources, changing demands on water and on other critical
resources, are but a few of the trends that will alter the character of
known vulnerabilities and stakeholder needs. Changing patterns of
threats and hazards, and emerging issues like re-engineering
California's San Francisco Bay and Delta system, ocean dead-zones and
acidification, will require regular investigation of patterns of risk
and vulnerability to inform decision-making (Healy, Dettinger and
Norgard, 2008; Dettinger and Culberson, 2008). For all of these
reasons, assessment must be addressed as an iterative process, and all
aspects of the climate service enterprise must learn from these
assessments. Ongoing assessments at regional scales will improve
conditions and decision-making at those scales while also, in
composite, providing a better grounding for decisions, adaptation and
mitigation by the Nation as a whole.
3.5 Stakeholder decisions need climate information and much more
Decisions that could benefit from climate information typically
also have inputs from other types of environmental and societal
information. A National Climate Service must address critical
interfaces of climate variability and change with societal decision-
making and adaptation across scales and sectors. For example, coastal
communities concerned about projections of sea level rise and
variability in frequency and intensity of storms, also need to worry
about municipal bond ratings, availability of insurance, and impacts of
local coastal erosion processes. Water utilities evaluating strategies
for dealing with projected changes in drought frequency, intensity, and
duration, must make their decisions in the context of aging
infrastructure, projections of population growth and demand, the
efficacy of water conservation strategies, future energy requirements,
ecological constraints and the flexibility of regulatory frameworks. To
meet these interdisciplinary needs, an NCS must provide services that
are useful in the context of socioeconomic and environmental decision-
making--e.g., decision support tools--that in turn requires developing
both (a) much closer interactions between climate science and other
intellectual disciplines and (b) closer coordination of climate
information with socioeconomic and environmental impact models.
3.6 Interagency partnership is essential
The capacity to address the broad scope of activities and goals
affected by climate is distributed across federal, State and local
agencies where experienced staff, tools, and skill sets as well as a
deep understanding of the policies, procedures, and regulations have
been developed over decades. In particular, a federal-level interagency
partnership is needed to ensure that climate services support the
integration of appropriate climate information with non-climatic
information, and also enable users to make decisions in cross-agency
jurisdictional frameworks. Specialized insights into sectoral capacity,
key institutional challenges, major regulatory issues, research needs,
critical uncertainties, and potential interactions among climate,
social, economic, and ecological systems is critical to successful
adaption involving multiple complex systems and avoiding maladaptive
choices and unexpected consequences.
3.7 Implementation must be national in scope, but regional in focus
Ultimately, NCS should be capable of providing both regionally
specialized products and equivalent quality services to all parts of
the country. Brief consideration of the contrasts among the Pacific
Islands, the small, highly variable New England States, the arid,
rapidly growing Southwest, and the climatically vast State of Alaska,
highlights the formidable scale of the task. The distinctive regional
character of environmental and climate processes and science
challenges, as well as regional-distinct vulnerabilities, decision-
making processes, adaptation issues, and the value of close engagement
with stakeholders, all indicate that many of those services will be
most effectively designed and delivered through a regional focus. To
achieve equity in coverage, many regional issues will require
regionally-explicit approaches to meet specific observation and
research needs, or to assess the complex interactions of human and
natural systems in a place.
Regional texture in dominant issues, climate-sensitive sectors,
policy context, and dominant climate processes require regionally
specific information, not just higher spatial resolution. National
implementation of a regionally focused climate service can ensure that
shared regional needs (e.g., large-scale observing systems, modeling
and basic research on continental to global-scale processes) are
addressed in an efficient manner, and that lessons learned in one
region can benefit another. A national scope also addresses the
interconnectedness of climate-sensitive sectors in which information
about drought, crop productivity, or snowfall in another region can be
as important as local information: for example, energy supply in
California is closely related to snowpack (and hence hydropower
production) in the Northwest. Agricultural production in one region can
often be optimized with information about trends throughout the
country. In order to meet demands for climate services for national-
scale needs, regional findings must be inter-comparable and amenable to
national-scale compilations, thus requiring national scale equivalency
of quality and (to some extent) methods.
3.8 Capability must span a range of space and time scales
Decision contexts often require information on a range of
timescales in one location, for example, water supply planning can
integrate timescales from one to forty years, or longer. The demand for
climate services will continue to come from nested spatial and temporal
scales in which each of the levels plays a role in increasing overall
societal resilience, so NCS must be able to span these scales. Notably,
RISAs have repeatedly identified decadal scale variability as an area
of unexpected and, to date, under-addressed importance to stakeholders
as they plan, scope and design long-term infrastructure investments and
adaptations to climate variations and change.
A successful climate service must also cover both climate
variability on seasonal to centennial timescales, as well as climate
change. Decision-makers often need information and support that
integrates across both near-term and long-term decision scales.
Ideally, climate services also integrate seamlessly with weather. In
the real world, all variations in the environment, whether natural or
human caused, have to be dealt with.
3.9 Program design should be flexible and evolutionary--universities
are key
Climate service is a relatively young endeavor that requires
greater capacity in new areas to address dynamic areas of knowledge and
rapidly expanding--and changing--user needs. In just the past decade,
stakeholder needs have grown much more sophisticated and have expanded
from a focus on seasonal forecasts to an integrated interest in climate
change projections, paleoclimate, and inter-decadal outlooks. Recent
droughts, wildfires, levee failures, and insect outbreaks have prompted
calls to understand the nature of these threats and to inform
strategies to increase social, economic, and ecological resilience.
Many such climate-related events have limited public issue-attention
cycles and ``windows of opportunity'' when constituents, victims, and
policy-makers are focused on addressing an event or issue. A NCS will
need to continually prepare, anticipate, evolve, and then be quick on
its feet to be judged successful in meeting those periods of intense,
focused demand. Successful climate services must maintain the ability
to translate and apply new science and to anticipate and fulfill
evolving research and information needs. Effective climate services
must be able to learn and change.
The RISA program has proven the merits of using innovative and
strong federal-university partnerships to develop and provide climate
services. Table 2 highlights some of the key capabilities that
universities provide, and the RISAs have demonstrated how universities
are uniquely able to understand regional issues, build and maintain
regional science and stakeholder partnerships, provide the needed
interdisciplinary contexts, rapidly shift foci in response to new
stakeholder need, educate, and work with private-sector partners. RISAs
have also shown how university teams are ideally configured for
interdisciplinary research, for developing prototype service
methodologies and products, and for working with operational
organizations (e.g., federal agencies) to transition these services
into operations. Universities also have a long tradition of working
with federal partners to develop national-scale observing, modeling and
research programs.
3.10 Climate services rely on a larger climate science enterprise
In designing and implementing a national climate service, there may
be an inclination to include all climate science activities under the
rubric of climate services. Certainly, climate services rely on quality
observations, modeling, and research, much of which requires vastly
more resources than any NCS effort can provide on its own. Regionally-
focused observation, research, and modeling efforts may be sensibly
included within climate services (and at universities), but where to
draw the line between NCS and national or global climate science that
supports NCS? Should global satellite observation programs be included?
The modernization of the Historical Climate Network? The USGS stream
gauge network? Global climate model inter-comparison efforts? The
importance of all of these examples goes beyond just regional climate
service, and design of a NCS needs to include mechanisms for
determining what is within or outside NCS institutionally and
financially. At the same time, it is critical that mechanisms be
developed that allow the climate service to influence other elements of
the national climate-science enterprise to ensure it is responsive to
stakeholders and useful to the Nation. Separating NCS from other
climate science activities recognizes the importance of these other
activities, and allows NCS champions to identify and advocate for the
whole breadth of climate science.
4. RISA Experiences in Climate Service
Some examples of climate services developed by RISAs illustrate the
ten essential elements just discussed. These examples are not intended
to be a comprehensive catalogue of each RISA's activities, nor do they
reflect the level of accomplishment of each RISA. Although the examples
below emphasize the work of the mature RISAs, it is worth highlighting
that the new RISAs also provide illustrations of the ten essential
elements. The examples cover some of the research topics that span
several of the RISAs--water, agriculture, and wildfire--that
collectively serve to illustrate the ten key elements enumerated in the
previous section.
4.1 Water
Most RISAs have a significant focus on water because of its deep
connections to other societal and environmental needs, like
agriculture, energy, aquatic ecosystems, wildfire, and human health.
Stakeholders with significant interest in water have been at the
forefront of adoption of new applications of climate science, owing in
part to their extensive computational and technical capacity.
Early successes resulted from applying seasonal forecasts to water
supply. As early as 1997 Seattle Public Utilities and several other
stakeholders began paying attention to seasonal forecasts, and even
applying them internally, in partnership with CIG (northwest RISA). CIG
also issues annual ENSO-based seasonal hydrologic forecasts (Hamlet et
al., 2002) that are now closely watched by public and private entities
alike. Likewise, Pacific island water resource managers used ENSO
forecasts to determine how to plan for water system conservation, with
assistance from the Pacific RISA.
Drought cuts across sectors in ways that no other natural
environmental hazard does, because water is fundamental to municipal
water supplies, public health, fire, agriculture and food production,
ecosystems, energy production, and more (Wilhite and Buchanan-Smith,
2005). Thanks in part to unusually prevalent western and southeastern
U.S. droughts since 1999, several RISAs have had the opportunity to
engage in drought planning, monitoring, and post-drought analysis.
CLIMAS (southwest RISA) worked with State agencies in Arizona to
construct the Arizona Drought Preparedness Plan. In the Carolinas, RISA
scientists developed a regional drought monitoring tool used to
determine and monitor low-flow triggers for Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission dam relicensing processes (Carbone et al., 2007). RISA
scientists and regional and municipal water managers in the West led to
infusion of NOAA paleoclimatology program analyses and data into water
resources planning and the adoption of new modeling methods for
evaluating the sensitivity of water supply to drought (Woodhouse and
Lukas, 2006). CIG researchers also found strikingly different
institutional responses in Oregon and Idaho to the 2001 drought. RISAs
worked over several years with Western Governors' Association to
develop the framework for the National Integrated Drought Information
System, and the newest RISA (SCIPP, the south-central RISA) has a major
focus on drought.
Vigorous efforts by RISA scientists to educate stakeholders about
the emerging science of climate change have convinced many public
agencies and businesses that climate change may pose significant
challenges to future water supply. Indeed, work by RISA scientists and
others show that many of the expected changes are already detectable
(e.g., Barnett et al., 2008). Using fine regional scale observations,
global climate model simulations, down-scaling technique, and a set of
hydrologic models, RISA scientists have projected future streamflows on
scales from the small watersheds supplying urban needs, to the large
basins of the Colorado and Columbia Rivers. Such projections are now
routinely being used in long-range planning and assessments by
municipal and State governments in partnership with RISAs as in
California, Colorado, and Washington. A multi-RISA project,
``Reconciling Projections of Future Colorado River Stream Flow,''
compares different modeling approaches to see how well these methods
can reproduce recent flows, as part of a larger cross-RISA effort to
help western U.S stakeholders deal with drought and climate change.
For water resources planning, western RISAs have worked for a
number of years with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and related
agencies to understand uses of climate information and respond to these
needs. Early efforts included studies of the Salt River Project in
Arizona, as well as the Aspinall Unit in Colorado (e.g., Ray, 2004).
When the Bureau of Reclamation began considering climate change, their
personnel were already well acquainted with RISA scientists and turned
to them for information. As a result of a process including WWA
(intermountain west RISA), CAP (California RISA), and CIG, long-term
climate variability, risk of extended drought, and climate change were
included in the National Environmental Policy Act process for
contending with shortage on the Colorado River.
4.2 Agriculture
The SECC (southeast RISA) has demonstrated a successful regional
approach for climate services for the agricultural and water sectors
with most of the Essential Elements of Climate Services presented in
this document. With multi-agency funding and input from farmers,
Extension Agents, and foresters, the SECC developed a climate risk
management decision support system (http://AgroClimate.org). This
system was transitioned to the Cooperative Extension Services, which
now operates this system and provides education programs and climate in
formation to all counties in four SE states. The success of this
research-to-operational program has also been demonstrated through
financial support provided by the USDA and by other states adapting
AgroClimate for their agricultural stakeholders. For example the most
recent support from USDA translated AgroClimate into Spanish to serve
farmers who would otherwise not be able to make use of this
information. Now that this system is in use, the RISA is developing
similar climate information and decision support systems for water
resources managers and coastal resource users. The SECC is focusing
much of its research to develop information to address needs expressed
by a wide range of stakeholders, working with Extension to reach county
and city managers, water managers, coastal resource managers, land
developers, public utilities, and other sectors. Many of the new
demands for local and regional climate services are for information
options for responding to climate change.
Using integrated climate and social science research, CLIMAS is
investigating the prospects for improved use of climate information by
ranchers in the Southwest. CIG is using a crop model to evaluate
impacts of climate change on key crops in Washington State.
4.3 Wildfire
Wildland fires cost the United States over $1 billion annually and
their severity is determined by several factors including climate,
vegetation and human behavior, on timescales from weeks to decades.
Successful climate services supporting wildland fire management and
prediction require multi-agency coordination and multi-disciplinary
perspectives. In anticipation of sustained dry conditions, CLIMAS, CAP,
and SECC convened a ground-breaking 2000 workshop to bring together
climate scientists and fire management stakeholders (Morehouse, 2000).
After first hearing that the fire management community did not see an
obvious need for climate information, a spirited discussion stimulated
interest in using historical ENSO information and climate forecasts in
pre-season fire prediction. Scientific knowledge was too new for
operational implementation at first, so the RISA program facilitated
sustained science-management exchanges, which led to identification of
early adopters, potential agency partners, and better understanding of
the insertion points for climate information in fire management
decision-making (Corringham et al., 2008).
In 2003, CLIMAS, the National Interagency Coordination Center's
Predictive Services Group, and the Program for Climate, Ecosystem, and
Fire Applications (a contributor to the CAP RISA) began developing pre-
season fire potential climate outlooks for the conterminous United
States and Alaska through a decision support process called the
National Seasonal Assessment Workshops (NSAW) (Garfin et al., 2003).
Over the years this process has improved understanding of climate
forecasts and forecast evaluation, and facilitated connections between
NOAA science and operational entities and the fire community. RISA
involvement and partnership has catalyzed change in (a) operational use
of climate forecasts by this stakeholder community, and (b) climate-
fire integrated research and prediction (Brown and Kolden, 2007).
The pre-season outlooks are used by the National Multi-Agency
Coordinating Group in firefighting resource allocation decisions,
including pre-positioning of resources, personnel planning, prescribed
and wildland fire use decision-making, and fire mitigation (park
closures and fire bans). Outlooks are now routinely used to brief the
Secretary of Agriculture and have been successfully transferred to
operations.
CAP, CIG, CLIMAS, and ACCAP (Alaska's RISA) have contributed
substantially to climate-fire research, particularly on the subject of
climate change. CIG research demonstrated that in most western states,
a substantial portion of the inter-annual variability and long-term
trends in area burned can be explained by considering summer climate
(McKenzie et al., 2004). Collaborative CAP and CLIMAS research
elaborated the mechanisms, focusing on spring snowpack and on fire
season length and other fire parameters (Westerling et al., 2006). CIG
research further distinguished climate-fire relationships for different
eco-regions (Littell et al., 2008). ACCAP researchers recently
developed a fire forecasting tool for use by agencies in firefighting
asset management. These results have been of great interest to forest
ecosystem managers, insurance companies, timber companies, and others.
4.4 Reflection on key elements
In the examples just given, a central theme is the focus on user
needs as the driving force, as well as on assessment and partnership as
mechanisms to identify and fulfill need. In many cases the scientists
took the lead in contacting stakeholders and educating them about
emerging climate science, and piqued the institutional curiosity of the
stakeholders. Two examples are the fire season outlooks and the use of
climate model projections by municipal utilities. Growing interaction
provides both the climate scientists and the stakeholders with insights
regarding new products, for example the fire season outlooks, that
could be developed and used. Social-science research also proved
essential in stakeholder needs assessment.
Another theme is the success of cross-institutional interagency
interactions. The wildfire example was explicitly multi-agency, and it
was a multi-agency institution that ultimately made climate an integral
part of their operational efforts. The fire season outlooks include
USFS; an array of NOAA entities, including CPC, ESRL, and NWS; IRI,
Scripps ECPC, Regional Climate Centers, and the CLIMAS, CAP, WWA,
ACCAP, and SECC RISAs.
Moreover, SECC has forged a successful partnership with USDA and
with the State climatologists of its three constituent states, Florida,
Georgia, and Alabama. CIG annual workshops on water resources outlooks
likewise involve USDA, NRCS, the NOAA River Forecast Center, and a
close partnership with Idaho Department of Water Resources. Operational
forecasts of coho salmon returns were developed in a collaboration
between CIG and NOAA fisheries scientists (Lawson et al., 2004), and
because the collaboration included agency scientists the result was
both usable and influential. These partnerships, and many others,
provide RISA teams with the broad expertise--and best practices--needed
to carry out their mission of meeting stakeholder needs.
Other partnerships extend internationally. The Pacific RISA emerged
as a demand for climate research and policy from stakeholders
established by the Pacific ENSO Applications Climate Center, which
serves the U.S. client jurisdictions of American Samoa, Federated
States of Micronesia, Guam, Hawaii, Northern Mariana Islands, Marshall
Islands, and Palau. Partnerships extend across the Pacific to the Fiji
Met Service, New Zealand's National Institute for Water and Atmospheric
Research, Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, and Pacific regional
environmental and disaster management organizations. These partnerships
ensure value and consistency of climate information, and the network
establishes the Pacific Climate Information System (PaCIS), a regional
climate services example.
CLIMAS in the southwest and CIG in the Northwest also have
partnerships in Mexico and Canada respectively. Climatic, hydrologic,
and ecological issues cross the border and cannot be solved without
recognizing that fact. CIG has partnered with Canadian organizations
like the Columbia Basin Trust as it grapples with climate change, and
helped train hydrologists at the University of Victoria's Pacific
Climate Information Consortium. One of CLIMAS' regular stakeholder
publications, the bilingual monthly ``Border Climate Summary/Resumen
del Clima de la Frontera'' is co-produced with colleagues in Mexico.
CAP, along with many other university, State, federal and NGO partners,
is centrally involved in an ongoing biennial assessment of California's
vulnerability and adaptive capacity to climate change. The California
experience has demonstrated that, when defined goals are set, the State
Government and research community is able to collaborate across
disciplinary lines to produce useful analyses and syntheses--this
effort that has produced scenarios-based climate evaluations in 2006
and in 2009 (Cayan et al., 2008; Franco et al., 2008; State of
California, 2009).
Placing climate information in the stakeholders' interdisciplinary
decision context is also critical. WWA is working with a number of
municipal and other large-scale water providers, who are trying to
understand the sensitivity of their systems and supply to climate
change, but the looming issue is how population growth and land use
change will affect the equation. Fluctuations in salmon populations in
the Northwest are best understood as climatically driven within the
context of along decline in salmon habitat extent and quality.
The examples given above are but a small subset of the climate
services developed by the RISAs that would not have been possible
without the inherently regional understanding, approach and presence of
the university-based RISAs. Education, training and literacy-building
was also integral, as was the production of a steady flow of graduate
students and post doctoral researchers trained to do stakeholder-
driven, interdisciplinary climate research--many now work in other
regions, have helped spawn new RISAs, or work in government agencies.
Clearly, both climate variability and change are needed foci, and for
example, many stakeholders originally focused on climate variability
and skeptical of climate change, are now actively working on climate-
change adaptation strategies.
Lastly, much of the regional RISA success in supporting
stakeholders would have been impossible with out federal agency
partners, particularly in NOAA, but in other agencies as well. The RISA
program has successfully transferred a number of programs to their
federal operational partners, and the national science enterprise
(e.g., the Climate Change Science Program and the U.S. Global Change
Research Program) is integral to RISA success at the regional level.
5. Implementation Advice
Implementing a vision for national climate services will require
careful deliberation including all major federal and non-federal
partners, and we can do no more here than offer some thoughts based on
the RISA experience. Primary issues to be addressed include governance
structure, funding, and defining roles for federal agencies and
nonfederal partners in a way that recognizes their respective missions,
strengths, and limitations.
Many RISAs were involved in the first U.S. National Assessment, a
large climate-focused interagency effort whose strengths and weaknesses
have been discussed elsewhere (Morgan et al., 2005). The National
Assessment included five sectorally focused activities, 17 regionally
focused activities, and one focused on native peoples and homelands.
Among the lessons are (1) each regionally or sectorally focused
activity had a lead federal agency as a partner and fonder, which
ensured an uncluttered reporting structure on the team level; (2)
perhaps the biggest strength was that regional teams almost all had
strong participation by stakeholders; (3) sustained funding is required
to sustain interactions with stakeholders; and (4) the Assessment
needed ``a budgeting mechanism which would allow greater freedom in
allocating resources across various assessment activities'' (Morgan et
al., 2005).
We note several other considerations of the federal context for
National Climate Services. Though still in its early stages, the
National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) provides a
working example of a multi-agency partnership intended to connect
climate science to decision-makers. Another federal context for the
development of climate services is the re-examination of the U.S.
Global Change Research Act of 1990 and the Climate Change Science
Program. The National Weather Service some years ago designated a
``climate focal point'' at each weather forecast office, someone to
discuss seasonal forecasts. These must be augmented by experts in
climate dynamics, global change, water resources, and so on, at other
federal and non-federal institutions, to build a climate service.
Clearly the governance structure and funding must be designed so
that participants particularly the regional decision-makers in
society--are the primary drivers of climate services enterprise, and so
that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This means
ensuring that each federal agency has sufficient new funding, working
authority, and intellectual motivation to engage in climate service
activities that relate to its central mission, and to collaborate with
other federal agencies and other partners. It also means that
mechanisms be established so that regional stakeholders have a real say
in setting funding priorities for all aspects of the climate services
enterprise.
The preeminence of NOAA in climate observations, research, and
prediction, and the differences between the role of a climate service
and the primary tasks of the other agencies, lend weight to the
argument that NOAA should play a lead role overall, although certainly
other agencies should appropriately play a lead role on specific topic
areas. For example, USFS should clearly take the lead on forest
management and planning in order to manage the massive land-cover
transformations that are sure to be a part of world that is undergoing
climate change.
Another RISA lesson is that longer-term funding mechanisms ensure
that regional partners, for example at universities, can entrain and
sustain the stakeholder partnerships that are needed for success. The
current NOAA model works well, with extended period grants (i.e., five-
year once a RISA is mature and proven) competed at five-year intervals
for each region.
Some RISAs are working examples of multi-agency partnerships as
well, with funding and participation by USGS, USFS, USDA and others.
University-based scientists, agency scientists, and agency managers
collaborate on researching and developing new climate knowledge with
clear applications in mind, and host frequent workshops to extend the
connections to other partners, as discussed in some of the examples
above. Some RISA participants have joint university--agency
appointments, formally bridging the two institutional environments and
ensuring better communication of research results to others within the
agency. In the province of Quebec, a RISA-like entity called Ouranos
takes such partnership one step further: personnel from several
universities, one federal agency, the provincial hydropower company,
and several provincial ministries interact daily because they all work
together in the Ouranos office. Another example of successful regional
multi-agency partnerships involves the co-location of NOAA Sacramento
Weather Forecast Office and California Nevada River Forecast Center
with the California Department of Water Resources' Hydrology, Flood
Operations Office, and the State Climatologist. Federal and State staff
work side-by-side to produce daily river forecasts, issue flood
bulletins, water supply forecasts, and to share and exchange data. The
added benefit to users comes from the regional integration of various
sources of observations, forecasts, and expertise to produce internally
consistent information.
Governance of a climate service should probably include a cabinet-
level council, led by the Secretary of Commerce, to ensure agency
cooperation and coordination at the highest level. A second, working-
level council involving all participating federal agencies and key non-
federal partners would oversee the climate services efforts in greater
detail. Participation by non-federal partners would be crucial, since
much of the on-the-ground connection to decision-makers happens in the
RISAs, the regional climate centers, State climatologists, and private
sector experts.
Finally, we note that the Climate Working Group of NOAA's Science
Advisory Board recommended considering four structural options for a
national climate service:
1. Create a national climate service federation that would
determine how to deliver climate services to the Nation;
2. Create a non-profit corporation with federal sponsorship;
3. Create a national climate service with NOAA as the lead
agency with specifically defined partners; and
4. Expand and improve weather services into weather and
climate services within NOAA.
An assessment of these four options is underway by NOAA and its
partners.
6. Conclusions and outlook
The RISA teams have successfully built knowledge-action networks to
provide useful climate information, connecting the climate research
enterprise with real-life situations where the outputs of that
enterprise can materially improve the lives of Americans. These
successes have required very modest investment and have had large
payback to the Nation.
The RISA teams also see huge gaps that a mature and well-designed
National Climate Service could fill. One obvious gap is purely
geographic: only about half the land area of the Nation is actually
served by RISAs. Another gap is the fact that when a product or
decision support tool is developed through RISA research, there is
generally no obvious mechanism to provide a transition to an
operational environment, as was done with the fire season outlooks.
Three emerging issues need the kind of effort that only an NCS
could provide. In all three of these cases, basic research can be
connected to stakeholder needs through RISA efforts and/or a national-
scale sectoral research program--that is, the stakeholder demand
already exists. The first is the need for vigorous research on decadal-
scale predictions with a goal of providing outlooks with skill
demonstrated from hindcasts and with uncertainties properly
characterized; such outlooks would help fill an oft-stated need of
stakeholders. These predictions would be useful for a variety of
decisions, but are not yet produced either by the seasonal forecasting
entities like NCEP nor by the climate change simulations of IPCC.
The second emerging issue concerns sea level rise, which is already
a great concern for coastal communities from Alaska to the Pacific
Islands to the Carolinas. Stakeholders want probabilistic guidance
about sea level rise on a very fine spatial scale, overlaid on planned
or existing infrastructure, beach slopes, inland estuaries, wetlands,
and river deltas. Meeting these demands will require a concerted effort
among ice sheet researchers, coastal oceanographers, wetlands
scientists, and social scientists, to name a few. As a stopgap, a few
RISAs have attempted to provide such guidance (e.g., Cayan et al.,
2007, Mote et al., 2008) but without the full complement of needed
expertise.
The third is a crosscutting issue, the issue of climate adaptation.
Vigorous research in social sciences including economics, policy, and
law, are needed in conjunction with climate and natural science
research to provide tools and processes for building adaptive capacity,
especially at the local to regional level. A significant step in this
direction was the creation of a Guidebook for local, regional, and
State governments (Snover et al., 2007), a joint effort of CIG and
staff from King County (which includes Seattle), Washington, and all
the RISAs are already in jeopardy of being overwhelmed by stakeholder
demand for help in adapting to climate change (in addition to climate
variability). Adaptation science and application must also be an
integral part of the decision-making currently underway on alternative
energy deployment and climate change mitigation--for example, regional
adaption needs for land and water resources should be factored in as
early as possible, and before costly mistakes are made.
The RISA experience also highlights the central role that
universities must play in NCS. Universities have a tradition of trusted
regional stakeholder partnerships, as well as the interdisciplinary
expertise--including social science, ecosystem science, law, and
economics--required to meet stakeholder climate-related needs.
Universities have a proven ability to build and sustain interagency
partnerships. Universities excel in most forms of education and
training. Universities also have proven innovation, entrepreneurship,
technology transfer and capability for partnership with the private
sector.
RISAs have become a resource in their respective regions for
dealing with climate variability and change in practical ways. When
drought or climate change or sea level rise became a central issue for
Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest
Service, and State governments in Alaska, Washington, Idaho,
California, Florida, and elsewhere, these stakeholders turned to RISAs
for technical, intellectual, and policy assistance.
A well-funded, carefully designed, and properly governed NCS will
meet the rapidly growing needs for applied climate information, drawing
together partners from federal agencies, academic partners, private
sector, State climatologists, and other experts. The experiences in the
RISA program offer many useful lessons in the design of an NCS.
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310.
This document was prepared by Cheryl Anderson (Pacific), Dan Cayan
(CAP), Mike Dettinger (CAP), Kirstin Dow (CISA), Holly Hartmann
(CLIMAS), Jim Jones (SECC), Ed Miles (CIG), Philip Mote (CIG), Jonathan
Overpeck (CLIMAS), Mark Shafer (SCIPP), Brad Udall (WWA), and Dan White
(ACCAP). For contact information, please go to the RISA web site at:
http://www.climate.noaa.gov/cpo-pa/risa/
Biography for Philip W. Mote
Prof. Mote serves as Director of the Oregon Climate Change Research
Institute and Oregon Climate Services at Oregon State University, and
is a Full Professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences.
Until July 2009 he also works at University of Washington (UW) as a
research scientist with the Climate Impacts Group, where since 1998 he
has built the group's public profile through hundreds of public
speaking events, over a thousand media interviews, deep engagement with
the region's stakeholders, and ground-breaking research in the impacts
of climate change on the West's mountain snow and on wildfire. He has
published over 70 scientific articles and edited a book on climate
modeling. He serves as State climatologist for Washington and, as
Director of Oregon Climate Services, serves in a similar role there. He
was a lead author of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report; the IPCC was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. In 2008 he received the UW
Distinguished Staff Award and was named one of the region's 25 most
influential people by Seattle Magazine. He earned a Ph.D. in
atmospheric sciences from UW and a BA in physics from Harvard.
Chair Baird. Thank you. Mr. Hirn.
STATEMENT OF MR. RICHARD J. HIRN, GENERAL COUNSEL AND
LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE EMPLOYEES
ORGANIZATION
Mr. Hirn. Chairman Baird, Ranking Member Inglis, and
Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for offering the
National Weather Service Employees Organization the opportunity
to present its views on options for developing a National
Climate Service.
It is our view that the creation of a National Climate
Service as a separate line office within NOAA is unnecessary,
because it would duplicate the historic and current mission,
program, and services of the National Weather Service, and will
inevitably result in a reduction of resources for the Weather
Service.
Today, nearly 1,000 employees of the Weather Service are
performing climate service work as a key element of their jobs.
The NWS already operates the surface and upper air observing
systems that are the basis of the Nation's climate record. It
conducts applied climate prediction research, and issues an
extensive array of climate forecasts and outlooks. Moreover,
the entire Weather Service has integrated climate into its
current weather forecast and warning activities. Therefore, the
new National Climate Service should be created as an entity
within the National Weather Service, or the National Weather
Service should be re-chartered as the National Weather and
Climate Service, which in fact, is a better descriptor of its
current mission.
Much of what a National Climate Service would do is already
being done by the Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center
in Camp Springs, Maryland. The CPC performs global climate
modeling, engages in applied climate research, issues
predictions of climate variability, and assessments of the
origins of major climatic anomalies.
Among its many climate products are the Atlantic and
Eastern Pacific Hurricane Outlooks, the Seasonal Drought
Outlooks disseminated by the National Integrated Drought
Information System, and El Nino and La Nina Climate Forecast.
The CPC even provides climate forecasts that assist the USAID
with famine relief in Africa, Southeast Asia, South and Latin
America, and Afghanistan.
Climate services are also fully integrated within the
National Weather Service field organization and forecasting
offices across the country, from acquiring national climatic
data to producing and disseminating climate predictions. There
is a Climate Service Program at each Weather Service regional
office. Each of the Weather Service's 122 forecast offices
issues a variety of climate products several times a day, and
manages the government's Climate Monitoring Network. The data
provided by this network is used for the management of water
resources, prediction of crop yields, and the study of climate
variability.
A number of the findings and recommendations contained in
the Science Advisory Board's recent report on options for a
climate service lead to the conclusion that a National Climate
Service should be embedded within the Weather Service. First
amongst the SAB's recommendations was that: ``An internal
reorganization of NOAA that enables greater connectivity of
weather and climate functions is a necessary step for
success.'' Therefore, rather than standing up the National
Climate Service as a separate new agency, NOAA should
consolidate the disparate climate programs in other NOAA line
offices with the climate service programs already provided by
the National Weather Service. The SAB also concluded that:
``From every practical standpoint, this option is the simplest
to implement.'' In other words, we already have a shovel-ready
National Climate Service.
The alternative, which has been proposed by NOAA, is to
sever weather from climate by some arbitrary temporal
distinction between the two, or worse yet, duplicating services
and programs already delivered by the Weather Service. Not only
would this be a waste of resources, but there would be no
authoritative voice in climate matters.
As the SAB noted in its findings: ``The greatest strength
of a combined Weather and Climate Service are an ability to
speak with an authoritative voice, build quickly from existing
components of a Climate Service, and an ability to ensure one
stop shopping if weather and climate functions are
integrated.''
Finally, it is not possible to transfer the ongoing climate
services performed by the NWS into another line agency, since
they are so functionally integrated with the day to day
operations of the Weather Service, and are widely dispersed
among over 150 NWS offices. Prediction of the climate cannot be
severed from prediction of the weather.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hirn follows:]
Prepared Statement of Richard J. Hirn
Chairman Baird, Ranking Member Inglis, and Members of the
Subcommittee. Thank you for offering the National Weather Service
Employees Organization the opportunity to present its views on the
options for developing a National Climate Service. As you may be aware,
NWSEO represents not only the forecasters and technicians at the
National Weather Service, but employees throughout NOAA, including
employees at OAR and NESDIS.
It is our view, and that of many in National Weather Service
management, that the creation of a National Climate Service as a
separate line office within NOAA would be an unnecessary expense
because it would duplicate the historic and current mission, programs
and services of the National Weather Service, and will inevitably
result in a reduction of resources for the NWS.
Today, nearly 1,000 employees of the National Weather Service are
performing Climate Service work as a key element of their jobs. The NWS
already operates surface and upper air observing systems, monitors
climate variability in real time over a broad range of time scales,
conducts applied climate prediction research, and issues an extensive
array of climate products and information, including climate forecasts
and outlooks. Moreover, the entire National Weather Service workforce
has climate integrated into its current weather forecast and warnings
activities. NWS Director Jack Hayes has said that the NWS is ``at the
forefront of climate service delivery to this nation'' and ``is
critical to . . . advancing NOAA's mission goal for a National Climate
Service.''
Therefore, the new National Climate Service should be created as an
entity within the National Weather Service, or the NWS should be re-
chartered as the ``National Weather and Climate Service,'' which is in
fact a better descriptor of its current mission.
The NWS is already the Nation's ``National Climate Service''
According to National Weather Service Policy Directive 10-10,
issued by NWS Director Jack Hayes on January 29, 2008:
Provision of climate services, in particular the monitoring of
variations in climate and climate forecasting, is essential to
mitigate the loss of life and property and to enhance the
national economy. The NWS is the federal agency charged with
delivering these services to the U.S., its territories, and, as
appropriate, its interests abroad.
http://www.weather.gov/directives/010/010.htm
Much of what a National Climate Service would do is already being
done by the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) in Camp Springs, Maryland
which is part of the National Weather Service. The CPC performs global
climate modeling, issues predictions of climate variability, and
assessments of the origins of major climate anomalies. Among its many
climate products are the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific hurricane
outlooks; the seasonal drought outlooks disseminated by the National
Integrated Drought Information System; and El Nino/La Nina climate
forecasts. In January alone, over 30 million visitors obtained climate
forecasts from the CPC's website.
The International Weather and Climate Monitoring Project at the CPC
provides climate forecasts that assist the USAID with famine relief in
Africa, Southeast Asia, South and Latin American and Afghanistan. The
CPC's Africa Desk works with the governments of over 30 countries in
sub-Sahara Africa by providing climate monitoring and predictions. The
CPC trains twelve meteorologists a year from Africa in climatology
during a four month residency program.
The CPC provides climate forecasts out to thirteen months, and with
modest additional resources, it could produce climate outlooks covering
decadal time frames. The CPC engages in applied climate research; makes
assessments of climate variability and climate anomalies; and provides
services to other federal agencies such as the Departments of
Agriculture and Energy, FEMA and the EPA, as well as foreign
governments, academia, and private sector agricultural, energy,
construction, insurance, and leisure industries.
Climate services are also fully integrated within the NWS' field
organization and forecasting offices across the Nation, from acquiring
national climatic data to producing and disseminating climate
predictions.
The NWS Organic Act of 1890 charges the NWS with the responsibility
for ``the taking of such meteorological observations as may be
necessary to establish and record the climatic conditions of the United
States.'' The Nation's official climate record is based largely on
observations from the NWS' Cooperative Observer Program. The COOP
program consists of 11,400 observation stations that report daily
minimum and maximum temperatures, precipitation, snowfall, snow depth
or hydrological data. This network, along with about 1,000 Automated
Surface Observation Stations, forms the Federal Government's weather
and climate monitoring network. The data provided by this network is
used for real time forecasting, management of water resources,
prediction of crop yields, and the study of climate variability.
There is a ``Climate Services Program'' at each NWS Regional
Office. For example, the NWS Alaska Region's Climate Services Program
centers around a number of indicators of climate change in Alaska and
the Arctic: sea ice melt and retreat; glacier melt; warming
temperatures; thawing permafrost with loss of infrastructure;
precipitation pattern shifts, coastal erosion and flooding; ecosystem
shifts; and potential health epidemics. The Alaska Region's Climate
Services Program is addressing observations, monitoring, and
assessments with its partners and collaborators to provide new climate
products for a changing climate and is making this information
available to local and regional decision-makers and the general public.
As part of this effort, the NWS Alaska Region has partnered with the
Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy to provide monthly
Alaska weather and climate highlights on a web site.
The NWS Central Region's Climate Services Program covers
agriculture, bio-energy, and drought impacts and planning. It
disseminates information, including climate change, weather/climate
data, water and drought planning information, through many entities,
including extension services, State climate offices, various academic
institutions, and other decision-makers.
Each of the 122 Weather Forecast Offices routinely issues climate
products, including the ``Supplementary Climate Data Report'' every six
hours, ``Daily Climate Report'' two or three times a day for several
locations, a ``Monthly Climatological Report'' and National Drought
Information Statements.
The Science Advisory Board's Report noted that the ``NWS field
offices are highly visible points-of-contact for a wide range of
[climate] information requests.'' The National Weather Service has
published a comprehensive plan or ``Operations Document'' for
``Regional and Local Climate Service Delivery'' (November 2007) which
charges the staff at the Forecast Offices and other local NWS offices
with the responsibility for outreach and education in each office's
area of responsibility on climate products, data and information.
http://www.weather.gov/om/csd/graphics/content/about/Ops2.pdf One of
the forecasters at each WFO serves as a ``Climate Services Focal
Point,'' but other Forecast Office staff members respond to public
climate information inquiries as well. Forecast Offices conduct
workshops targeted to local audiences (media, agriculture sector,
energy and weather risk management industries) to educate customers on
the potential uses and availability of climate resources and to gather
feedback on climate products and services. Local Forecast Offices are
also charged with establishing and maintaining partnerships with other
members of the climate community in the local area, including the
Regional Integrated Science and Assessments (RISAs), universities,
State Climate Offices and the Regional Climate Centers. Forecast Office
staff are also charged with conducting climate analyses at scales
important to local customers. Attached to this testimony is a sample
page from the Tampa Forecast Office's web site which illustrates some
of the kinds of climatic information disseminated by local Forecast
Offices.
In addition, the ``Observational Program Leader'' (OPL) and the
Hydrometeorological Technicians at each Forecast Office manage the
Cooperative Observer Program--a prime element in recording the Nation's
climate. The OPLs are charged with maintaining the climate
observational equipment while also recruiting and training the
thousands of observers who comprise the ``citizen corps'' of NWS
climate observers. Each office maintains the Automated Surface
Observation Systems in the WFO's area of responsibility. Twice a day,
specially trained and certified staff at 70 Forecast Offices launch
instrumented weather balloon packages to collect current atmospheric
data critical to atmospheric predictive modeling and to establish the
earth's climate profile up through the stratosphere.
The Anchorage Weather Forecast Office Sea Ice Desk performs Sea Ice
analysis, Sea Surface temperature analysis, and Sea Ice Forecasts for
the North Pacific/Bering Sea and portions of the Arctic Ocean. The
changes in Sea Ice coverage shown by these analyses are an important
indicator of climate change.
The 18 smaller Weather Service Offices in Alaska and Pacific
Regions also launch and collect data from instrumented weather balloons
and respond to public climate information inquiries. Some also daily
issue climate products such as the Supplementary Climate Data Report
and Daily Climate Report. Four WSOs in Alaska take sea-ice and sea
surface temperature observations. The duration of open waters is very
important to determining Arctic sea ice climate change.
The 13 NWS River Forecast Centers collect and archive hydrological,
snowfall, snowpack depth and rainfall data. Some offices have collected
over 100 years of historical data. The River Forecast Centers are also
responsible for Flood Climatology and Flood Frequency Program data
collection and archiving vital for FEMA and flood insurance. The Alaska
RFC collects and archives river and lake freeze-up dates and ice
thickness measurements, which are important indicators of climate
change in the region where climate change is now occurring the fastest.
The Climate Services Division at the NWS headquarters acts as the
portal for NOAA information on climate change and variability, oversees
the NWS's operational climate services programs, identifies user
requirements for climate data and products, and develops training on
climate services for NWS field staff.
Other federal agencies, such as the Department of Agriculture, use
the aforementioned NWS generated climate data, products and services to
administer and oversee nearly $1 billion in pasture, rangeland, and
forage insurance products. State and Federal Wildland Fire agencies use
NWS climate forecasts for wildland fire planning purposes.
NWSEO agrees with many of the Recommendations and Findings of the NOAA
Science Advisory Board
A number of the findings and recommendations contained in the NOAA
Science Advisory Board's report, ``Options for Developing A National
Climate Service'' (February 2009), lead to the conclusion that the
National Climate Service must be embedded in the National Weather
Service. In evaluating the question of whether the National Weather
Service should serve as the platform for a National Climate Service,
the NOAA Science Advisory Board concluded that, ``from every practical
standpoint, this option is the simplest to implement.'' Therefore,
rather than standing-up the National Climate Service as a separate line
office, NOAA should quickly consolidate the disparate climate programs
in other NOAA line offices with the climate service programs already
provided by the National Weather Service.
First among the SAB Report's recommendations is that an ``internal
reorganization of NOAA that enables greater connectivity of weather and
climate functions is a necessary step for success.'' Also among the
Report's findings is that ``the current NOAA organization is not well-
suited to the development of a unified climate services function.
Greater connectivity between weather and climate functions . . . is
required.'' The SAB ``tiger team'' that studied the National Weather
Service recommended that three NOAA data centers (the National Climate
Data Center, National Oceanographic Data Center and National
Geophysical Data Center) be transferred from NESDIS to the NWS as part
of a new ``National Weather and Climate Service'' to more fully
integrate climate services in one agency. Consolidation of these data
centers with the climate programs of the NWS would link the new Weather
and Climate Service to the Regional Climate Centers and State
Climatologists because of their existing ties to the NCDC. As the SAB
``Tiger Team'' explained, ``[t]his organization simplifies the seamless
distribution of information ranging from past history through present
conditions to weather forecasts and forecasts of inter-seasonal to
inter-annual.'' As noted earlier, with additional resources, the
Climate Prediction Center can extend it predictions and assessments to
the decadal time frame.
The SAB also concluded that ``greater connectivity between . . .
research, operations and users is required.'' Therefore, NWSEO suggests
that the Climate Program Office in NOAA's Office of Oceanic and
Atmospheric Research also be transferred to the NWS. The CPO is already
co-located with NWS headquarters in Silver Spring, MD. At a minimum,
consideration should also be given to transferring the Climate
Observations Division of OAR's Climate Program Office to the new
Weather and Climate Service. This Division has three operational
observing programs--Ocean Climate Observation, Arctic Research Program
and Atmospheric Climate Observations. This would link these real-time
weather and climate observation programs with the observation programs
now maintained by the NWS, as well as the new observation network (the
``Climate Reference Network'') being spun-up by the NCDC.
The alternative--which has been proposed by NOAA leadership--is to
sever weather from climate by some arbitrary temporal distinction
between the two; or, worse yet, to duplicate services and programs
already delivered by the National Weather Service. Not only would this
be a waste of resources, but there would be no authoritative voice on
climate matters. As the SAB noted in its findings, ``the greatest
strength of a . . . combined weather and climate service are an ability
to speak with an authoritative voice, build quickly from existing
components of a climate service . . . and an ability to ensure `one-
stop shopping' if weather and climate functions are integrated.''
Further, it is not possible to transfer the ongoing climate
services performed by the National Weather Service to another line
agency, since they are so functionally integrated with the day-to-day
operations of the National Weather Service and are widely dispersed
through among over 150 NWS offices. Moreover, prediction of the climate
cannot be severed from prediction of the weather. Today's climate
prediction will eventually become tomorrow's weather forecast; and come
tomorrow, today's weather will be part of our climate history.
The SAB ``Tiger Team'' that studied the option of creating a new,
not-for-profit National Climate Service noted that this option would
create ``potential competition with NWS offices'' and would not be able
to speak with an authoritative voice like the NWS. The Report failed to
address the question of what would become of the climate services
already performed by the National Weather Service--an issue which NOAA
has also ignored in the development of its proposal to create the
National Climate Service as a new line agency elsewhere in NOAA. We
have, however, heard from NWS management that there are already
proposals to transfer personnel and funding (specifically the personnel
and funding that relate to the Historical Climatology Network) from the
National Weather Service to NCDC as part of a plan to evolve NCDC into
the new National Climate Service.
In short, the Nation already has a ``shovel-ready'' Climate
Service. With some additional resources, the National Weather Service
can augment the panoply of climate services that it already provides in
order to meet the Nation's evolving needs for climate analysis and
prediction. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing us to share our views
with the Subcommittee on this important issue.
Biography for Richard J. Hirn
Richard J. Hirn is an attorney whose practice focuses on labor,
civil rights, constitutional and administrative law and litigation. Mr.
Hirn's cases have pioneered unique theories in constitutional law,
employment discrimination, labor relations and other legal matters
having public impact. For example, he litigated the first case of
Hawaiian national origin discrimination, Kahakua et al v. Friday. This
case was the subject of a special report on All Things Considered,
broadcast on National Public Radio, and was the subject of an article
in the centennial issue of The Yale Law Journal, ``Voices of America:
Anti-discrimination Law and the Jurisprudence for the Last
Reconstruction.'' Mr. Hirn has been responsible for significantly
expanding the collective bargaining rights of federal employees and
their unions. Mr. Hirn represented the Fort Stewart Association of
Educators before the Supreme Court, which ruled that Congress intended
for federal agencies to bargain over wages unless salaries were
specifically set by law. As a result of this unanimous Supreme Court
decision, Fort Stewart Schools v. FLRA, 495 U.S. 641 (1990), wage
negotiations became routine in a number of federal agencies.
Representative clients include national labor unions in both the
private and public sectors, including the Nation's two largest teacher
unions, federal employee unions, and those in the maritime and
transportation industries. As part of his Washington, D.C. based
practice, he has represented numerous labor organizations before
Congress and federal agencies.
Among the unions that Mr. Hirn represents is the National Weather
Service Employees Organization. He has served as General Counsel of
NWSEO since 1981 and has represented the organization in federal courts
throughout the country, in collective bargaining and in labor
arbitrations and has been quoted as its official spokesperson in New
York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and other major daily
newspapers; and interviewed on NBC's Dateline and on National Public
Radio. Over the years, Mr. Hirn has visited scores of NWS and NOAA
offices from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Lihue, Hawaii and Kodiak, Alaska.
Since 2004, Mr. Hirn has also served as NWSEO's Legislative Director,
and has testified before subcommittees of the House Science and
Appropriations Committees on NWSEO's behalf.
Mr. Hirn was a member of the Obama Campaign's Labor, Employment and
Worklife Policy Committee. He served as an elected Delegate to the 2004
Democratic National Convention as well as an Alternate Delegate to the
1972 Democratic National Convention.
Prior to entering private practice, Mr. Hirn was an attorney for
the National Labor Relations Board. He was awarded a Juris Doctor
degree by American University in 1979 and a B.A. in Political Science
by Haverford College in 1976.
Discussion
Chair Baird. Thank you, Mr. Hirn. Very interesting and
thought provoking testimony. I should mention we have also been
joined by Mr. Tonko. Thank you very much for joining us.
Successes of Climate Forecasting
I will recognize myself for five minutes. Let me start by
just getting a sense of what it is we have to offer here, in
terms of accuracy and benefits. When someone comes and says
okay, I need a climate forecast, and I thought Dr. Barron, your
testimony was very eloquent, you know, and you listed the
various reasons for doing it: human health, food security,
disaster preparedness, energy, basically every aspect of our
life is in some way going to be influenced by this, is
influenced by it. The question is how we are able to prepare
for that.
Give us some examples of where someone has, an entity has
come and said give us a climate forecast, and that climate
forecast has been given, and it has been beneficial
economically, or in human health, et cetera. Have we got some
success stories?
Dr. Mote. Well, the RISAs have a number, sorry, the RISAs
have a number of such success stories. One example was actually
a partnership among several of the Western RISAs to cooperate
with several federal agencies, to come up with a seasonal
wildfire outlook. There are climatic aspects to wildfire risk,
and this helps position resources, and this effort has been
going on for a number of years. I have mentioned water
resources. Energy is another one. There are linkages up and
down the West Coast on energy supply. With hydropower, we know
what the fuel availability is several months in advance, just
based on the snow on the ground, but using a seasonal forecast,
we can expect shifts in the probabilities of that fuel even
several months in advance of that.
I could give you many other examples.
Chair Baird. That is a good start. Dr. Barron.
Dr. Barron. I was going to add, for example, that major
cities in the United States, notably New York City and Chicago,
both have developed climate plans that are influencing their
decisions about infrastructure renewal, because that
infrastructure is required to exist for many, many decades,
as----
Chair Baird. If I built something that may one day be below
sea level, and you need it to be above sea level, that is----
Dr. Barron. Right, for which the water resource will
change, as another example.
Chair Baird. Excellent points.
Dr. DeGaetano. Mr. Chairman, can I----
Chair Baird. Please.
Dr. DeGaetano.--on that? In New York, we are also looking
at extreme rainfall, like Dr. Lubchenco mentioned earlier. We
are not looking at just the big rainfall events, but kind of
relating those to what we--from water or runoff in any of our
cities. It is that the stakeholders actually base their
decisions on, and providing them data based on the trends we
have seen in the past years.
Chair Baird. So, you are giving them predictions, this is
what we think is likely to happen the next 10, 20, 50 years.
Dr. DeGaetano. Correct. The Administrator also alluded to
that in her discussion, that the state-of-the-art, as far as
climate modeling, is not enough to make those projections
accurately out into the future. So, in that case, we do have to
rely upon the trend that we have seen, to give some uncertainty
in how to do it, if you are looking to build infrastructure
that has a lifetime of 50 years, you don't want to go into that
decision blindly, based on just some static record----
Chair Baird. Right.
Dr. DeGaetano.--that is assumed to be stationary.
More on Structuring the Climate Service
Chair Baird. Let us go into, then, this issue of, if we
acknowledge that there can be benefits from this, let us talk a
little bit about possible structures for this. We have heard
Mr. Hirn suggest that maybe, they would, he would assert, his
organization would assert that the Weather Service is basically
already providing this. It needs to be possibly given that
title and acknowledgment. Others have said there needs to be a
separate or coordinating entity, that coordinates the various
elements, perhaps Weather Service with the RISAs, et cetera.
What are the pros and cons of the different models, and I
am going to leave that somewhat open, and Dr. Barron, I thought
you were suggesting, you acknowledged a high level, possibly, I
don't know if you said OSTP, but it sort of came to my mind,
and Dr. Lubchenco had mentioned it. But then, it sounded like
you talked about a nonprofit third entity, and let us talk
about the pros and cons of that.
Dr. Barron, talk about that first, and then, if somebody
wants to respond to Mr. Hirn's suggestion, pros and cons of
that, and vice versa.
Dr. Barron. Okay. So, I really think that we need many
facets. No, one of the things that came out of the option
report is none of those options were perfect. So, for instance,
you may be able to stand up something quickly in NOAA, but how
does NOAA partner with all of those other federal agencies?
That requires something that is quite different, in order to
ensure that everybody is participating.
We have seen a lot of examples where we have created
something like a National Carbon Program, but then, if one
agency, because of other competing missions, doesn't involve
themselves in it, it starts to fall apart, and it is no longer
even close to what it is that you had set up. So, it cannot
just be adding climate to weather. I think that is a rather
different topic. So, that is one element of it there, to have
that integration at a federal level, and I think, as high up in
the structure as possible, and OSTP certainly makes sense.
But I think there is this other sense that we have a lot of
users that cross all these boundaries that we are talking
about. So, should every city have to redo the research
themselves? Or if you are sitting there looking at oil rigs
offshore, in many, many different states, can they all sit
there at the table and work together, and generate the research
that works on that? Or if you are looking at hurricane
forecasting, do you have that capability? You wouldn't want to
regionalize that.
And so, I think there was a sense among the options
committee that an entity, a nonprofit, a facility, a center
that promoted this, in terms of research and connecting to
users was something that is important. There are many users out
there that have a sense of what they want. And if you throw the
data over the transom, they will go grab it. There are many,
many other users who haven't realized the potential here yet.
They are beginning to think about something. It is in three or
four different places. They need some capability to integrate
that. So, my feeling is this isn't a single story here that we
have to facilitate.
Chair Baird. So, we are not necessarily one, the style that
we are asking for, what is the one climate prediction, but what
is the source one goes to to gather the multitude of
perspective?
Dr. Barron. And where do you go for help.
Chair Baird. Yeah. Mr. Hirn.
Mr. Hirn. Well, I have some concerns about this nonprofit
federation that is outside the government. I question, of how
much oversight that this committee and other Congressional
committees would be able to give to that. I fear that that is
just going to become a source of earmarking or maybe a source
of pet projects, as time goes by, and would rather see it being
done by a federal agency that is responsive to the public and
the Congress.
I note that in Dr. Lubchenco's written testimony, and
certain public statements she has made, she has talked about
making it, using the National Weather Service as a model of
private and public partnership for this National Climate
Service. NOAA has not yet answered to anyone, and nor to the
employees of the Weather Service, why would you use the
National Weather Service as a model for this, rather than just
continue to use the Weather Service for actually carrying it
out, much as they do today?
Chair Baird. I recognize Mr. Inglis for five minutes.
How Existing Climate Offices Coordinate
Mr. Inglis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am still wondering
about the, whether we are creating an overlap here, and
whether, how to make this most efficient.
And as I understand it, I really am sort of unclear, so
maybe you can help me understand the difference between what
the work of the RISAs and the Regional Climate Centers, and the
State climate offices. They work together, but they don't
provide the same services. So, I wonder, are all three needed,
or how much duplication is there between those three, the
RISAs, the Regional Climate Centers, and the State climate
offices?
Dr. DeGaetano. Can I respond, Mr. Inglis? I was actually
going to respond the same way to the previous question. What
are the problems with having a large federal entity, be it a
nonprofit or the Weather Service, kind of a place to go, is
that the other side of climate services is the other way
around. It has to be active. What we have seen in any number of
years, in a lot of cases, like Dr. Barron said, you can't just
throw the data over the transom and have people come to them.
But you actually have to actively go out and seek out these
people and talk to them. A good example is, I work with West
Nile virus. You know, it was us going out and speaking to the
people from New York City who control the mosquito population,
public health officials, where we got the understanding of what
were the climate issues in this problem.
It is very hard to do that from one place, be it regional,
be it national. When you get down to the State level, or even
the local-er levels than that, that is where those trust-based
relationships are. You can think of the Service as almost like
a funnel, where that information comes up, those ideas are
generated, but when the Service becomes operational, when data
go out, when models are developed, you have to make sure that
these are all being based on the same data, the same models,
the same ideas. That is where the regional comes into play.
You can think of it almost as the airline system, where
perhaps the regional area is the hubs, and the State
climatologists are the individual airports, and maybe the
National Weather Service or some federal entity is the
overarching company. The climate services work very much in the
same way.
Dr. Mote. If I could respond as well. The Western RISAs all
have very good relationships with the Western Regional Climate
Center, and I think we have sort of worked out a division of
labor, that there is very little overlap.
Mr. Inglis. And what is that division of labor? How does
that work?
Dr. Mote. I would say, and Dr. DeGaetano can correct me if
I am wrong, but I would say that the Regional Climate Centers
are best at understanding the climate data, the observations
for the region. They typically do not, at least the Western
Regional Climate Center doesn't do a lot of work, say, with
global climate model output scenarios of future climate. The
same is true of the Weather Service. Their climate focal points
are not trained in dealing with some of these longer timescale
issues.
The RISAs, based at universities, are focused on
innovation, publishing research papers, coming up with new
ideas, not so much operational. So, we have developed things
that we have handed off to, for example, the River Forecast
Centers within the Weather Service, or the Water and Climate
Center, within the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural
Resources Conservation Service.
Now, the State climatologists are best at having those
relationships with individual entities within their states, and
your State Climatologist, Hope Mizzell, is an excellent State
Climatologist. She has developed a lot of great products for
the State of South Carolina. Those are things that are
supported by the Southeast Regional Climate Center, and
informed by what is needed locally. So, the State
climatologists are really listening locally.
A lot of this is not about, as Dr. Barron said, we don't
just generate climate knowledge and throw it over the transom.
We are actively listening to what people need, and responding.
Mr. Inglis. Anybody else want--Dr. Barron.
Dr. Barron. Well, I just want to point out that despite all
these different components, it is still not good enough, and
one of the reasons why it is not good enough is because these
teams are small enough that they have to focus on particular
areas. And therefore, they can't address the broad range of
users. And it is very hard to cross from place to place.
So, what I see, as one of the really good examples is, in
the '50s, we discovered that with computers, we could predict
the weather, and we are getting pretty good at it, to the point
where we close schools and do things in advance of a particular
storm. If you take the human health community, they almost
always react to the number of cases that came in the door. It
is very rarely a forecaster prediction. Yet, so many different
parts of human health are now tied to environmental conditions.
But if you can predict environmental conditions, you can begin
to predict adverse human health outcomes, and save an enormous
amount of money.
Do I put that in a state? Do I put that in a region? It
requires something that is quite different from that particular
component, if we are all of the sudden going to realize the
fact that out 15 years, we will be doing human health forecasts
just like we do pollen alerts and air quality and weather
forecasts.
But we don't have anything in place that allows those
communities of users to intersect with this environmental
prediction, climate modeling, weather forecasting groups, just
as an example.
Mr. Inglis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chair Baird. Thank you. Ms. Woolsey.
Ms. Woolsey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chair Baird. I should mention we have been joined by Ms.
Edwards as well. Thank you for joining.
Ms. Woolsey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to leave
some time for the rest of the panel to respond to the
Chairman's question, but before I do that, I would like to make
a comment.
International Cooperation and Disseminating Real Time Climate
Information
Wouldn't it be something if climate change became news like
weather is now, because we actually, with the National Weather
Service, kind of conceive what is coming, and why it happened,
and when it is going to happen? I think it would be very good,
because then, the people of this country would see it as news,
and not just as something that happened to them, that they have
no control over.
And I just think this is all getting, leading us in the
right direction, and I know that Chairman Baird wanted, you
know, more, I thought that some of you wanted to answer,
respond to Chairman Baird's question, his open question about
why we need to do this, and what is a better way.
And as you are answering it, if you could, for me, talk
about if there is opportunity for international cooperation in
our get along here. So, I am doing part of your job for you. I
am yielding to finish your question.
Chair Baird. I appreciate that, actually. I would have
appreciated more time, but in deference to my colleagues, I
gave back some, but thank you, Ms. Woolsey.
Mr. Hirn. Ms. Woolsey, I recently had a visit to the
Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, I believe in
Congresswoman Edwards' district. I visited what they call the
Africa Desk there, which I was extraordinarily impressed. They
do climate forecasting for Africa and other Third World, areas
of the Third World, helping them with their drought
predictions. But what I thought was most remarkable was I met a
number of meteorologists from Malawi and elsewhere in Africa.
The Weather Service brings 12 meteorologists a year from Africa
for a four month residency at the Climate Prediction Center,
and teaches them, trains them in climatology, to go back and
work on drought prediction, things like that.
Ms. Woolsey. Well, that is very interesting, and that is,
and let us get up to the doctors here, who didn't get to answer
the Chairman, and maybe we will have time to talk some more
about those people, the Africans that came.
Dr. DeGaetano. I think there is tremendous opportunity for
that, and the thing that we need to look at is exactly getting
down to the regional scale, not looking at these broad global
problems, but actually bringing data in, and projections, or
even looking at data down to the regional levels, and starting
to interact with stakeholders.
It may not be that we can make a prediction or a forecast
on what the climate will be like in 2100, but to bring people
along to see the types of things that they have to start
concerning about. To make them more resilient to the types of
climate variations we see today will only make it stronger in
the future, when the modeling and capabilities are able to come
around to make those projections at regional levels.
Ms. Woolsey. Dr. Barron.
Dr. Barron. You know, I think the ground is so fertile, to
make, to do so many things that are beneficial, or to at least
have reasoned answers for particular actions. And you can look
at one example after another. We are watching the Rocky
Mountains being ravaged by the pine bark beetle, the first time
that I know of, you know, leave only a footprint, take only a
picture, we have used pesticides, insecticides in Rocky
Mountain National Park, as an example.
So, now, when we watch these trees go away, do you live it?
Do you plant the same tree again? Do you plant a different
species, a more resistant species? This is a decision we are
going to have to make one way or another. It would be nice to
be able to integrate climate in there.
If you look at hurricane forecasting, everybody is talking
about our hurricanes becoming more intense, or not intense.
Climate models actually don't simulate hurricanes. They don't
simulate hurricanes, because we don't have the power to get the
climate models down to a resolution to simulate them. It is so
important for so many coastal states. If we can embed weather
forecast models in climate models, as part of a regional
emphasis on climate, something we are not doing today, we will
actually be at the point where we are simulating hurricanes out
decades in a row.
Sea ice is melting around Alaska. We are watching native
village peoples have to be moved. How many times would you like
to move them? Do you sit there and decide in advance to move
them slowly? Do you do it in one particular lump, as the sea
ice is gone, and the waves start pounding the coast, and in the
buildings go? It seems to me it would be nice, and it is a
relatively small investment, when you consider the costs of
moving infrastructure, to sit there and try to do this in some
particular intelligent manner.
The Colorado River Compact was one that was negotiated
based on a time period of rather abundant rainfall. Will we
have to look at this again, and wouldn't we rather do that,
instead of looking at a limited record, with some larger
understanding of climate change?
So, I think it is just an enormous, enormous potential, if
we can start connecting climate to society.
Ms. Woolsey. Okay.
Chair Baird. Thank you, Ms. Woolsey. I appreciate you
following that line of questioning. Having grown up and studies
in the Colorado River basin, the entire basin ravaged for years
by political infighting that grew out of having, as I
understand it, divvied up the water in a fairly record high
water year, and so, promising water that didn't, then, later
exist, and it has been really years and years and years of
litigation and conflict and inadequate water supply.
I will recognize Mr. Tonko for five minutes.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Barron, you touched
upon this in your most recent response, but I represent a
District that has many communities along a historic waterway.
Responding to Climate Information
The advantages of a system that is optimum, as you would
define it, be it State, regional, and national in design, how
can we emphasize prevention, to avoid certain flooding, and
then, how can we respond in mitigation terms? What would you
envision to be the modeling out there that would enable
communities to better avoid floods, and then, to better respond
to floods? How would that infrastructure work? Because it seems
to be a repeated pattern, with the extremes of climate change,
that more and more communities are impacted by flooding of
rivers, and intracoastal waterways.
Dr. Barron. Yes. I gave the example in human health, to
think broadly and cross regions, but I think an example that
you have just selected, it points to how important it is to
have a community of scientists to interface with that are local
and regional, because so many of those examples are examples by
which the way you build infrastructure makes an enormous amount
of difference, in terms of your vulnerability. And I think that
this whole notion of building resilience into communities, by
understanding this, makes an enormous amount of difference.
So, this is where this system needs to couple that on a
global scale and a regional scale, and understanding how the
system might change through global models, and coupling those
with weather forecast models. But taking yourself right down to
that local and regional level, because all of these problems,
when you come right down to it, are local. But we are now being
affected by local decisions as well as global decisions.
Mr. Tonko. I was just going to ask if anyone else has a
response.
Dr. Mote. I would like to emphasize that in addition to
better modeling to characterize the physical system, which both
I and Dr. Barron emphasized earlier, we need vigorous social
science research to understand how decisions are made, the
decision context, how to provide information that is actually
useful, and will be used to make better decisions. And this is
a component of this whole enterprise, that is, and I say this
as a physical scientist, degree in physics. This is a part of
this that is greatly neglected in the current climate science
enterprise.
Dr. DeGaetano. If I may.
Mr. Tonko. Yes, please.
Dr. DeGaetano. Actually, your question was pretty timely,
because Monday, I'll be traveling to Norrie Point, which is
either in your District, or just south of your District, to
address that very issue.
We are working with DEC and a number of entities within New
York State, to look how sea level rise will manifest itself up
the Hudson River, to look at infrastructure along the river, to
look at different control mechanisms that might be put in place
between, up the river, a true interdisciplinary effort between
hydrologists, social scientists, through the Rising Waters
Program, which is out of the Hudson River Estuary Commission.
So, those types of things are things that you know, any of
our organizations are involved with, and are starting to work
with now.
The Model Coordinating Agency
Mr. Tonko. So, the model that best coordinates all of that
would look like what? Is there, who brings all the agencies,
obviously have to have input here together, and then, how is it
connected to the local planning or response effort?
Dr. DeGaetano. I am probably not the best one to say who
brings all the agencies together, but I think this is a good
example of how the system needs to work. For instance, you need
the local knowledge and expertise to know what is going on on
the Hudson. You need the local expertise to do the modeling of
what is going to happen in the Hudson River basin. The basin,
the hydrology is very different than other river basins, so you
can't just take some river model off the shelves. So, those are
the local components.
On the national scale, you know, do you use my sea level
rise projection, or do you use somebody else's? There, you need
the coordinating efforts to make sure the data, either the
observed data or the projections that go into these types of
things, are consistent, that those types of things that come
into play are there, that authoritative voice to say that this
sea level rise projection, or this suite of sea level rise
projects, manifest themselves his way on the Hudson River, and
has this implication.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
Chair Baird. Thank you, Mr. Tonko. Dr. Mote, I appreciate
your observation about social science. As my colleagues know, I
am a social scientist. And I was down at AOML a couple years
ago, and they were talking about the need for more
supercomputing to predict hurricanes, but someone pointed out
that even if we, the basic, we looked pretty good at Katrina,
but you know, magnitude, timing, location, pretty accurate. But
even if we had to the date, the moment, the magnitude, 50
percent of the people still wouldn't evacuate, and that is a
social science problem, so I appreciate your raising it.
Ms. Edwards is recognized for five minutes.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you to the panelists. I am sorry I actually missed Dr.
Lubchenco, because I had a chance to spend some time with her
out at NOAA, to learn in a lot more detail about the work that
is going on there, both in weather forecasting, but also, the
range of work that the Agency already does in climate, and was
really impressed by the work going on at that facility and the
others around the country.
Suggestions for Changes at NOAA
My question, really, for Dr. Barron is to ask you, given
what may be deficiencies or inadequacies in, you know, the
current wide range of climate activity going on across the
spectrum of the Federal Government and the private and academic
sector, if NOAA were to retain the role of, or gain the role
of, essentially the federal kind of coordinator of Climate
Service activities, what do you think would be the essential
thing that needs to change within NOAA, to be able to take on
this activity? And I am also curious to know what you think
NOAA's strengths are, in being able to gain that
responsibility?
Dr. Barron. Okay. In many ways, I think NOAA is the natural
lead, as I said, because of both their current effort in
providing services, and because they have pieces here that they
fund, National Climate Data Center, the RISAs, and those
activities.
The reason why our group said it is not enough is because,
I will give you just one example, and that is that if you go
around the table, and I had a meeting with OSTP, in which 40
people representing 15 agencies were there, resource managers,
they were asked the question what do you need first? And they
all said regional climate predictions. Those become essential,
because they get closer to the decisions.
Now, we don't have the computer power to do a very high
resolution global climate model, but we have the capability to
imbed weather models within climate models, and then provide,
with that global model input, a weather forecast 30 years out,
40 years out, not stating the day, but those conditions would
yield this type of weather. And we could simulate things like
hurricanes.
So, we know we are going to have to couple those
capabilities, and within NOAA, these are quite separate. So, we
have to find a way to have the conversation occur within NOAA
that helps promote synergism between the modeling components.
That is one example.
The other example I think we see is that that connection to
users is now being done through a RISA, or providing data that
is sitting out there, that a private company can grab, and we
are going to move into a climate mode where private companies
are going to want to grab that data, but there is also an
enormous number of things by which that whole community hasn't
had decades of weather forecasts to be able to say, oh, I am
interested in that. That will affect what I want to do in this
particular----
Ms. Edwards. Let me just interrupt you, because I think
those things may be true, but it seems to me and others, you
know, have an opportunity to comment on this, that some of that
is also a resource question, and a need to coordinate
information and data, and so, it is not so much about where the
house is, but what the pieces need to be, you know, what is the
structure.
And I look at, for example, on Weather Service, and
thinking only in my lifetime, the evolution of how we have come
on Weather Service, where we have been able to get down to that
regional level, where people, if you talk to them in
communities, I mean, maybe it is not such a bad idea that they
think that their local weatherperson is the weather predictor.
That is just because the information has been made usable and
accessible, and so, I don't know that there is anything that is
an institutional barrier within NOAA, that would not enable us
to thoughtfully figure out a way to bring that under a house,
so that our weather and our climate predictions and forecasts
are connected.
And I wonder, in my limited time left, if there are others
on the panel who have a response to that?
Dr. Mote. Well, if I might, it really needs to be all about
the users, so it is not just about providing information, and
there are many other agencies that are responsive to the users.
And so, it really goes beyond the NOAA. I agree with Dr.
Barron. There needs to be a really high level, a multi-agency
partnership.
Ms. Edwards. Mr. Chairman, I will yield, and I will just
say, just in closing, that it does seem to me that as we go
forward, for this Congress to provide the kind of oversight
that we need to, it will be very complicated, I think, for us,
reaching over several different stretches of the Federal
Government, to figure out who is on first.
Chair Baird. I appreciate that, and I think, gentlemen, you
are probably getting a sense from the Committee, we recognize
fully, and I think your testimony, and that of Dr. Lubchenco,
has really illustrated the need and the value for this
information. I think there is an appreciation on the part of
the Committee Members that, based on your testimony, that it
needs to be better integrated, better distributed, better
coordinated, et cetera, that there are multiple different
entities within the government that are now doing parts of
this.
I think, though, what we are all struggling with a little
bit, I think, this is in line with Ms. Woolsey's question, Ms.
Edwards' as well, is how does it all fit together? If you, and
the bottom line for us is, if we write a bill, which we intend
to, to create some form of climate service, what should that
look like? Where do the pieces fit together? How is it
coordinated?
And we have another panel. I think you are, Dr. Mote and
others have talked about the importance of users. We will move
very shortly to the next panel, but I would invite you to do
this. So often in these Committee hearings, and it is true
throughout the Congress, what happens is we ask you for your
testimony. We ask questions, and then, we don't see you again
for a really long time, if ever. And you don't necessarily
always get to follow up with input about what the other, what
other panelists suggested. So, I would invite you to give us
followup testimony, if you will, based on, if you feel the need
to further elucidate the questions we asked you, or to respond
to what a colleague on the panel may have said. Say, here is,
you know, so-and-so said this. This is where I agree, this is
where I disagree, here is an alternative synthesis or
divergence.
Please do that for us, and if you can do it in a very
timely manner, that would be most appreciated, because my hunch
is you have all spent a lifetime working on this. We have read
the testimony. We have had this discussion. We want to do
something right. We want to follow the dictum of do no harm. We
believe something needs to be done.
So, if you can follow up in that fashion, it would be most
appreciated. And unless anyone has any burning issues for this
panel, and we may submit to you, it is customary at the end of
these hearings to say the record will be open for two weeks, we
may also follow up and say some more honing in points on, ideas
on this.
[The information submitted by Dr. DeGaetano follows:]
Chair Baird. With that, I want to thank our witnesses for a
very informative and thought provoking discussion, and for your
many years of service, all of you, in your respective roles, on
an ongoing basis, that have helped serve the country and this
Congress and constituents.
We will adjourn this, recess, not recess, we will excuse
this panel, and invite the next panel up. Take a very, very
brief break while the names are switched around by our capable
staff.
Panel III
Thank you again. Be seated, and we will begin very, very
shortly with our third panel. I appreciate your patience. I
think it is a very constructive structure we have here, I hope,
with the folks who provide some of the information, and some of
the recipients and utilizers, and people who apply that. And
that is the main focus of panel three, and let me introduce
that panel.
Dr. Michael Strobel is the Director of the National Water
and Climate Center for the United States Department of
Agriculture. Mr. Paul Fleming, the Manager of the Climate and
Sustainability Group for the Seattle Public Utilities. Dr.
Nolan Doesken, or Mr. Nolan Doesken. Did I say the last name
right?
Dr. Doesken. Doesken.
Chair Baird. Doesken. Thank you, Dr. Doesken, the State
Climatologist for Colorado, and a Senior Research Associate at
Colorado State University, the alma mater of my father, by the
way. Spent some time in Fort Collins.
And I would now like to recognize my friend from
California, Representative Lynn Woolsey, to introduce Mr.
Behar.
Ms. Woolsey. Well, Mr. Chairman, I am going to take a lot
more time on Mr. Behar than you did on all these together. Is
that all right?
Chair Baird. Well, that is sort of the custom here.
Ms. Woolsey. All right.
Chair Baird. We introduce them, and the local folks get a
little extra time.
Ms. Woolsey. My guy, I work for him, so I will take better
care of him.
Mr. Chairman, it is my pleasure to introduce one of my
constituents, someone I work with, work for in my District. He
is here today to testify before our committee. His name is Mr.
David Behar. David's career spans over 20 years in
environmental policy and water utility management. He currently
serves as Deputy to the Assistant General Manager, Water
Enterprise, at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission,
the SFPUC.
Mr. Behar developed the SFPUC-sponsored Water Utility
Climate Change Summit, held in San Francisco in early 2007, and
he currently serves as Staff Chairman of the Water Utility
Climate Alliance. From 1991 to 1997, he served as the Executive
Director of the Bay Institute of San Francisco, and from 1989
to '91, he served on the staff of U.S. Senator Alan Cranston, a
Democrat from California. In November of 2006, David was
elected to the Board of Directors of the Marin Municipal Water
District, a district with 200,000 customers, just north of San
Francisco, in my District, in Marin County.
David lives with his two children in Marin County, and I am
pleased to welcome him here today in Washington, D.C.
Chair Baird. Thank you, Ms. Woolsey. I appreciate that. We
all serve all these people, whether or not we are----
Ms. Woolsey. Oh, well.
Chair Baird.--privileged to have you in our District, we
are honored to have you here today.
We will proceed in questioning, witness statements from Dr.
Strobel and across, through the panel. With that, I will begin
with Dr. Strobel. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL L. STROBEL, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL WATER
AND CLIMATE CENTER, NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE,
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Dr. Strobel. Good morning, Chairman Baird, Ranking Member
Inglis, and other Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for
the opportunity to testify today about the climate data
collection and analysis activities of USDA's Natural Resources
Conservation Service. My name is Michael Strobel. I am the
Director of NRCS' National Water and Climate Center in
Portland, Oregon.
NRCS has been a leader in climate services to assist
agricultural activities and natural resource conservation since
1935. In that year, the Soil Conservation Service, which NRCS
was then known as, established a formal, cooperative snow
survey and water supply forecasting program. The Snow Survey
Program has grown in scope and in number and diversity of users
that rely on the water supply forecast developed by NRCS.
In addition to the Snow Survey Program, the National Water
and Climate Center also manages the Soil Climate Analysis
Network, or SCAN, a soil moisture and climate information
system designed to provide data to support natural resource
assessments and conservation activities. I will briefly discuss
SCAN later, but I will spend the majority of my time discussing
the Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecasting Program, how it
works, why it is important, and who uses that information.
Depending on the geographic location, 50 to 80 percent of
the annual water supply in the West arrives in the form of
snow. The NRCS' Snow Survey Program is a main source of data on
high elevation snowpack in the West. Data on the depth and
density of the snowpack provide critical information to
decision-makers and water managers throughout the West. NRCS
works hard to ensure that consistent and reliable water
forecasts are available for a wide variety of uses throughout
the year.
Since 1935, the Snow Survey Program has grown into a
network of almost 2,000 snowpack monitoring sites in 13 Western
states, including Alaska. More than 1,200 of these sites are
manually measured snow courses. Either an NRCS employee or an
employee of a partner organization must visit each manual snow
course site once a month during the snow season, and take
snowpack measurements manually. The remaining 760 sites are
automated snowpack telemetry, or SNOTEL, climate stations,
which do not require monthly visits, but provide real-time
snowpack information via Meteor Burst technology.
In the future, we will continue to increase the percentages
of snow survey sites that are automated. This would result in
more accurate water supply forecasts and snowpack reports, as
well as a decrease in the safety risks for NRCS employees and
partners who monitor remote sites in what can be sometimes
challenging winter conditions.
NRCS employees use the manual snow course and automated
SNOTEL data, as well as modeled water supply and streamflow
volume data to develop streamflow forecasts for over 740
locations in the West. These forecasts help reduce the
uncertainty for users making everything from long-term
strategic decisions regarding multi-year water supplies to
immediate emergency response decisions in times of high
streamflows.
Let me give you a few concrete examples of how our
customers use our water supply forecasts. Agricultural
producers use our forecasts to manage drought risk, make
cropping decisions, and determine irrigation allotments.
Wildlife conservationists use streamflow forecasts to help
manage habitat for threatened and endangered species. Climate
researchers use snowpack data to develop climate change risk
assessments for long-term water availability. Municipal
officials use snow survey data and analysis to manage reservoir
levels in Western towns and cities. The National Weather
Service's River Forecast Centers depend on Snow Survey data for
the snowpack component of their data analysis and forecasting
systems. And recreation is a key industry in the West. Ski
resorts, river rafting companies, and others use our data and
forecasts to operate and manage their facilities. I hope I have
given you a sense of the number and diversity of end users that
rely on our Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecasting
information.
The National Water and Climate Center also manages SCAN,
the Soil Climate Analysis Network, which was started as a pilot
program in 1991. SCAN has evolved into a cooperative system
that monitors soil moisture and other climate parameters, and
makes the data available to users on a real-time basis. The
system is used primarily for monitoring and mitigating the
effects of drought and flooding. The current SCAN system
consists of 150 stations located in 39 states across the U.S.
In summary, NRCS' climate services produce critical data,
forecasts, and analysis for a wide variety of public and
private uses. Users rely on NRCS' near real-time data and
unbiased forecasts to plan and execute short and long-term
decisions, ranging from individual farmers planting dates to
basin-wide water management planning.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to
appear before you today, and I would be happy to respond to any
questions.
[The prepareed statement of Dr. Strobel follows:]
Prepared Statement of Michael L. Strobel
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify today about
the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service's climate data and
analysis activities. My name is Michael Strobel and I am the Director
of NRCS's National Water and Climate Center in Portland, Oregon. The
Center directs NRCS's climate services.
Our understanding of a climate service is an activity to inform the
public through the production and delivery of authoritative, reliable,
timely, and useful information about climate to enable the management
of climate-related risks and opportunities related to impacts. Resource
management agencies and departments, including USDA, have
responsibilities in preparing the Nation to adapt to climate change and
will be important clients of improved information about the climate and
expected climate changes.
NRCS has been a leader in climate services to assist decision-
making associated with agricultural activities and natural resource
conservation since 1935. In that year, the Soil Conservation Service
(as NRCS was then known) established a formal cooperative Snow Survey
and Water Supply Forecasting (SS-WSF) Program. Since that time, the SS-
WSF has grown in scope and in the number and diversity of users that
rely on the water supply forecasts developed by NRCS. In addition to
the Snow Survey program, in 1991 the National Water and Climate Center
began a pilot program that later turned into the Soil Climate Analysis
Network (SCAN), a soil moisture and climate information system designed
to provide data to support natural resource assessments and
conservation activities.
I will now discuss the Snow Survey Program and SCAN in more
detail--how they work, why they are important, and who uses the
information.
SNOW SURVEY and WATER SUPPLY FORECASTING
From its beginnings in 1935, the SS-WSF Program has grown into a
network of more than 1,200 manually-measured snow courses and over 750
automated Snowpack Telemetry (SNOTEL) weather stations in 13 Western
states, including Alaska. The SS-WSF Program provides water supply
data; modeled water supply and streamflow volume data; and streamflow
forecasts for over 760 locations in the West. SNOTEL is a reliable and
cost effective means of collecting snowpack and other weather data
needed to produce water supply forecasts used by water managers in the
west from irrigators to municipalities. The data and information is
also important in achieving the objectives of the Western Governors
Association as noted in their report, Water Needs and Strategies for a
Sustainable Future.
With 50-80 percent of the water supply in the West arriving in the
form of snow, data on the snow pack provide critical information to
decision-makers and water managers throughout the West. The basic data
becomes even more valuable when used in concert with partner
organizations to provide water supply forecasting tailored to meet end-
user needs.
Reliable information helps reduce the uncertainty in making
critical environmental, agricultural, industrial, and municipal
management decision regarding annual and multi-year water supplies and
streamflows within specific watersheds and sub-basins in the western
United States. These decisions may be long-term strategic-planning
decisions; logistical, tactical, and operations planning decisions;
short-term planning decisions; or immediate, emergency decisions.
Below are examples of how customers use SS-WSF data and analyses:
Reservoir management
Irrigation water management
Cropping decisions
Crop futures forecasting
Risk management related to agriculture in general and
agricultural finance in particular
Planning and scheduling of water-related business or
government activities
Flood damage reduction
Drought risk reduction
Climate change risk assessments for long-term water
availability
Emergency response and emergency preparedness
Protection of threatened and endangered species
Power generation and other energy contracting and
management
Recreation management and other recreation-related
decision-making
Municipal and industrial water supply management
CASE STUDIES OF NRCS CLIMATE SERVICES USERS
SS-WSF data and related reports and forecasts are made available-in
near real time for the automated SNOTEL sites-to private industry; to
Federal, State, and local government entities; and to private citizens
through an extensive Internet delivery system and other distribution
channels. Following are some examples of how these data and reports are
used by NRCS customers.
Case Study--Agricultural Producers
Despite the great variety of agricultural operations in the Western
U. S., a common denominator is some degree of dependence on a diverted
or stored water supply. In some areas, snowpack is the only significant
water storage available. In other areas, reservoirs provide a means of
stretching water storage into the summer and sometimes into the fall
growing and harvesting seasons.
In southern Idaho, producers in the Salmon Falls and Twin Falls
irrigation tracts rely on SNOTEL data and stream forecast information
as input in making decisions about what, when, and how much to plant.
Irrigation district managers within this region use SS-WSF data and
forecasts early in the season to inform their water users on the
percentage of their full irrigation allotment they should expect to
receive in the upcoming growing season. These irrigation allotment
predictions are based on SS-WSF data that show (1) the probability of
varying levels of water supply given existing snowpack, soil moisture,
and water content; and (2) historic probabilities for additional
snowpack and water content accumulations.
These reports are crucial to producers who use them to make
cropping and operation decisions well in advance of the growing season.
Based on modeling of the typical cropping patterns in the area for a
160-acre farm, the value of the SS-WSF data to producers in this region
is estimated as ranging from $27 per acre in a normal year to $111 per
acre in a water short year. Based on irrigated acres in those areas,
the total value to producers is estimated to be as much as $21.8
million in a water short year.
Case Study--National Weather Service River Forecast Centers
The National Weather Service (NWS) operates River Forecast Centers
(RFCs) covering all of the landmass of the U.S. In the mountain
regions, the RFCs produce river flow, flood prediction, and other
hydrologic and weather-related data products for the Western regions of
the U.S. and part of lower British Columbia. They depend on NRCS SS-WSF
data for the snowpack component of their data analysis and forecasting
systems.
The river forecasts, along with NWS flood warnings, help save lives
and give communities time to take appropriate actions to lessen flood
damage. SNOTEL data is used to validate and adjust the amount of snow
and snowmelt simulated in a hydrologic model which produces more
accurate forecasts of river flows. These daily river forecasts are also
used during non-flood periods for recreational purposes (rafting,
kayaking, fishing, etc.).
Case Study--Recreation Industry
Recreation is an important industry in Western States and many
categories of tourism and recreation are--in one way or another--
dependent on or affected by either snowpack levels, water supply
volumes, or both. Potential commercial and private users of SS-WSF data
include recreation associations, hunters, fishermen, boaters, skiers,
snowmobilers, campers, tourists, and others whose recreational
activities or travel plans might be affected by snow depths or
streamflows.
An outfitter operating a river rafting business in the
Intermountain West reported that SNOTEL data had indicated that river
conditions would render their traditional rafting equipment inoperable
in the 2002 season--ultimately the worst season on record for rafting
in the area. Based largely on SS-WSF information, the firm purchased
smaller craft that would be operable in the environmental conditions
predicted by the data. Without the advantage of streamflow projections
prior to the beginning of the rafting season, the low water levels
would have resulted in a year with little to no revenue. Instead, the
decision to purchase the smaller craft resulted in a $600,000 revenue
year.
Case Study--Denver Water Board
Power, utility, and water companies use the SS-WSF data in their
daily operations and long-range planning decisions. They can also use
the data in forward contracting for purchasing and selling power in the
wholesale market.
The Denver Water Board uses SNOTEL real-time snowpack and water
supply forecast information as input for their reservoir management
decisions. If decisions were based only on the historic water supply
averages, the Board could lose as much as $5.5 million annually in
potential revenue due to sub-optimal transfers of water between the
various storage reservoirs within their collection and distribution
system.
SOIL CLIMATE ANALYSIS NETWORK
Started as a pilot program in 1991, the Soil Climate Analysis
Network (SCAN) has evolved into a system supported in part by NRCS and
by various federal, State, local, tribal and university groups that
assist in funding and field operations. SCAN monitors soil moisture and
other climate parameters and makes the data available to users on a
real time basis. The system is used primarily for monitoring and
mitigating the affects of drought and flooding. The current SCAN system
consists of 150 stations located in 39 states.
National resource management issues for which long-term soil-
climate information is needed include:
Monitoring drought development and triggering plans
and policies for mitigation.
Predicting changes in runoff that affect flooding and
flood control structures.
Here are a few examples of how SCAN data are used across the
Nation:
The Newby Farm SCAN station in Alabama helps poultry
farmers monitor local conditions so they can mitigate odor
issues when managing poultry waste.
Data from 15 SCAN sites in Mississippi are used by
local farming communities near each site to determine when soil
temperature and soil moisture are optimal for planting.
NRCS's National Water and Climate Center works closely with the
NOAA/USDA Joint Agricultural Weather Facility (JAWF), located in USDA's
Office of the Chief Economist. JAWF meteorologists monitor weather
conditions and crop developments on a daily and seasonal basis, and
prepare agricultural assessments for USDA commodity analysts and the
Office of the Secretary of Agriculture. JAWF relies heavily on SCAN
data for U.S. soil temperature maps which are published in the Weekly
Weather and Crop Bulletin; temperature and precipitation data used in
the U.S. Drought Monitor which is also released every week and followed
closely by decision-makers; and weekly agricultural weather information
disseminated by the USDA Stoneville Data Center to the agricultural
community.
The National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), an
interagency, multi-partner approach to drought monitoring, forecasting,
and early warning led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), builds on existing systems infrastructure, data,
and operational products from various agencies. For example, it
incorporates data from the SNOTEL (SNOw TELemetry) network of USDA's
NRCS.
SUMMARY
NRCS climate services produce critical data, forecasts and analyses
for a wide variety of public and private users. Users rely on NRCS's
near-real time data and unbiased forecasts to plan and execute short-
and long-term decisions ranging from individual farmers' planting dates
to basin-wide water management planning. In the future, we hope to
increase the percentage of Snow Survey sites that are automated. This
would result in more accurate water supply forecasts and snow pack
reports, as well as decrease the safety risks for NRCS employees who
monitor remote sites in challenging weather conditions. Thank you
again, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to appear before you today,
and I would be happy to respond to any questions.
Biography for Michael L. Strobel
Dr. Strobel received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Geology and
Mineralogy from the Ohio State University in 1985 and 1990 and a Ph.D.
in Geology, specializing in hydrology, from the University of North
Dakota in 1996. From 1983 to 1988 he worked in the field of glaciology
for the Byrd Polar Research Center and conducted field work in
Antarctica, Greenland, Peru, and Alaska. He joined the U.S. Geological
Survey in 1988 and served as a hydrologist in Ohio, North Dakota, South
Dakota, North Carolina, and Nevada. He was Deputy State Director for
the Nevada Water Science Center for almost six years. Dr. Strobel
authored the book Water in Nevada which provides non-scientists a
primer on basic hydrology. He served on the Board of Directors for the
Nevada Water Resources Association and was Chief Editor of the Journal
of the Nevada Water Resources Association. Since June, 2007, he has
served as the Director of the National Water and Climate Center, NRCS,
in Portland, Oregon. The Center oversees the Snow Survey and Water
Supply Forecasting Program, which operates over 750 automated snow
telemetry (SNOTEL) sites and 1,200 manual snow courses in 13 Western
States, including Alaska. The Center also operates the Soil Climate
Analysis Network (SCAN) that has stations in 39 States and U.S.
territories. SCAN provides data at a national scale for climate
assessment and drought mitigation.
Chair Baird. Thank you, Dr. Strobel. I envy your work. I
would love to spend some days up looking at snow sites from
time to time.
Dr. Strobel. It is a great job.
Chair Baird. And you do great work for the Northwest. I am
grateful for it. Thank you.
Mr. Behar.
STATEMENT OF MR. DAVID BEHAR, DEPUTY TO THE ASSISTANT GENERAL
MANAGER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION
Mr. Behar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Ranking
Member Inglis, Members of the Committee, and of course,
Congresswoman Woolsey. Thank you very much for that
introduction. I will go back and report to our constituents,
who know and love and respect your work very much that you are
on top of climate change issues, as you are, and that matter so
much to all of us in Marin.
I appreciate the opportunity, Mr. Chairman, to come and
speak from a stakeholder perspective about the need for a
National Climate Service. I have been introduced, SFPUC has 2.5
million water customers in the Bay Area. We are the sixth
largest municipal district in the country, and as Ms. Woolsey
mentioned, we are also a founding member and coordinate the
Water Utility Climate Alliance, which is a consortium of eight
large water utilities from around the Nation, serving more than
36 million customers. It is focused exclusively on adaptation,
the adaptation challenges we face in the water industry.
According to two recent EPA reports to Congress, water and
wastewater utilities together will need to spend about $480
billion over the next 20 years or so upgrading our systems to
keep them in a state of good repair. The figure does not
include responding to climate change challenges, but we know
that all of those investments in new assets will be made as our
climate is changing. However, as has been mentioned, many of
today's climate change projections are so uncertain as to be
difficult to use in planning how we purchase those assets, and
planning how we spend those funds on our systems.
And that is why, when it comes to climate change science,
water utilities are looking for what WUCA members have begun to
call actionable science. We define actionable science to mean
``data analysis and forecasts that are sufficiently predictive,
accepted, and understandable to support decision-making,
including capital investment decision-making.''
The term is intended to convey our understanding that
perfect information on climate change is neither available
today, nor likely to be available in the near future, but that
over time, as the threats climate change pose to our systems
grow more real, predicting those effects with greater certainty
is a nondiscretionary choice that we need to make.
Now, if actionable science is one need, accessible science
is another need. A National Climate Service, we believe, can
provide access to science to those of us who are assessing our
vulnerability, in an accessible fashion. I want to agree
strongly with Dr. Barron, who said that from a stakeholder
perspective, it can be difficult, at times, to get the kind of
climate information that we need to plug into our operations
models, and begin to think about what our adaptation challenges
actually are. I have seen from my experience at both the PUC,
and as a Director at MMWD, how difficult it can be to access
sound science, and to know what it is you are actually
accessing. Even relatively sophisticated water agencies are
having a difficult time answering the most basic questions
related to what climate challenges we actually face in the
long-term, which is the asset investment strategy that we have
to think about.
I want to also commend Dr. Barron and the Science Advisory
Board that NOAA asked to put together its options for
developing a National Climate Service report. The report
identified key attributes of a National Climate Service that I
think are worth citing for a moment.
It said: ``The Service will achieve its mission by
promoting active interaction among users, researchers, and
information providers. The Service will be user-centric, by
ensuring that scientifically based information is accessible
and commensurate with users' needs and limitations.'' This has
been echoed in some of the testimony so far you have heard
today, and I want to agree wholeheartedly with that.
In our view, a powerful and responsive National Climate
Service should be like a wheel, with a hub, which is our
headquarters, and spokes, which are regional centers. Like a
wheel, without the hub, the wheels come off. At the end of the
spokes is where we think the rubber is going to hit the road.
At the center, we need a federal family to come together, and
create a cohesive federal structure that supports the NCS
mission. We want to see lessons learned from the example of the
U.S. Climate Change Science Program, which has produced a
tremendous amount of important research, but has, at times,
been criticized for failing to achieve a consistent and
transparent vision for that research, and also, for struggling,
at times, to effectively engage the stakeholder community.
At the spokes of the wheel, stakeholders and researchers
alike strongly believe that the success of an NCS mission, as
others have said today already, depends on creating a robust
and geographically distributed regional presence. Such a
presence would feature engaged, multi-disciplinary teams of
physical scientists, social scientists, communication
specialists, and modelers, that are located in the communities
that are facing adaptation challenges. Those boots on the
ground experts understand their region and its unique
conditions, and are active participants in ongoing
conversations with climate information users, folks like
ourselves. And they aren't paratroopers, just to stretch the
military analogy to its breaking point. They are actually part
of the communities that they serve.
This decentralized, user-centric approach is far from
unprecedented in the Federal Government. Many have talked about
the RISA program. We agree that it is a model that can be
expanded upon, improved, even made broader, with a more
consistent mission across the United States, and perhaps
provide a model for that geographically distributed approach
that we think is so essential to reflect user concerns over
adaptation, and bringing climate science out to our
communities.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Behar follows:]
Prepared Statement of David Behar
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for this
opportunity to appear and present a stakeholder perspective regarding
formation of a National Climate Service. My name is David Behar. I am
the Deputy to the Assistant General Manager at the San Francisco Public
Utilities Commission (SFPUC). The SFPUC is the sixth largest municipal
water provider in the U.S. and manages water and power facilities that
serve 2.5 million Bay Area residents, as well as wastewater and
stormwater facilities in San Francisco. For the City and County of San
Francisco, I also am helping develop a City-wide Climate Adaptation
Plan encompassing all City departments facing climate change-related
vulnerabilities, similar to programs underway in New York City,
Chicago, and other cities across the U.S.
I also serve as Staff Chairman of the Water Utility Climate
Alliance (WUCA), a consortium of eight water utilities dedicated to
providing leadership and collaboration on climate change issues
affecting drinking water utilities by improving research, developing
adaptation strategies, and creating mitigation approaches to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. WUCA is chaired by SFPUC General Manager Ed
Harrington and includes some of the largest water providers in the
Nation serving 36 million Americans. WUCA members include Denver Water,
the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, New York City
Department of Environmental Protection, Portland Water Bureau, San
Diego County Water Authority, Seattle Public Utilities and the Southern
Nevada Water Authority. In my spare time, I serve on the Board of
Directors of the oldest municipal water agency in California, Marin
Municipal Water District (MMWD), a position to which I was elected in
2006.
The Stakes for Water and Wastewater Utilities
According to two recent EPA reports to Congress, water and
wastewater utilities in the U.S. will need to invest some
$480,000,000,000 over the next twenty years to keep our systems in a
state of good repair.\1\ This figure does not include climate change
response, but we know those investments will be made as our climate is
changing, and the life cycle of those assets--including transmission
lines, treatment plants, outfalls, urban drainage systems, dams--is
measured in periods from several decades to over a century. This is the
same timeframe for climate change projections that are commonly
presented in the scientific literature. But many of today's climate
projections are so uncertain as to be unusable as we weigh how best to
spend that $480 billion. We need information on a host of climate
parameters for which past hydrology is no longer an indication of
future conditions. These include temperature, precipitation, changes in
the mix of precipitation falling as rain and snow, changes in runoff
timing, changes in demand, drought duration and frequency, extreme
events including storms and heat waves, and sea level rise. The models
often don't simulate important aspects of climate successfully and
don't agree with one another in terms of the scale of expected change
and in some cases even the direction of change. A key issue is that the
global climate models don't produce data at the temporal and spatial
scale that we need to make decisions--that is, at the watershed and the
sewershed levels. Of course, compounding the difficulty is the fact
that, in the absence of national and international agreements on
curbing greenhouse gas emissions, we face a multitude of emissions
scenarios as well.
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\1\ ``Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey and Assessment:
Third Report to Congress.'' USEPA Office of Water, 2005. ``Clean
Watersheds Needs Survey 2004: Report to Congress.'' USEPA, January
2008.
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Water utilities, and others planning a response to climate change,
are handcuffed by uncertainty--but we're not paralyzed. The challenge
lies in taking steps today that make sense before factoring in the
effects of climate change, but that also create resiliency to climate
change in whatever form that change takes in the future. These we refer
to as ``no regrets'' strategies. For many utilities but particularly in
the growing but arid west, aggressive water conservation strategies
have taken center stage, as are projects that diversify supply to
include drought-resistant sources such as recycled water and
conjunctive use groundwater programs. In San Francisco, for example,
due to a combination of these programs, since the 1970's we have
reduced our consumption of Hetch Hetchy water by 27 percent while
population increased 13 percent. In Southern California, the
Metropolitan Water District, a WUCA member and the largest municipal
water agency in the Nation, has developed over the past 20 years
600,000 acre feet of conservation, 250,000 acre feet of water
recycling, and over 100,000 acre feet of groundwater recovery and
augmentation, while increasing local storage capacity by a factor of
fourteen. Even as population has grown by 3.5 million, total water use
in MWD's service area has actually declined.
But we know such strategies alone may not allow us to escape the
projected effects of climate change on our water systems. And because
it can take decades to plan, fund, design, permit, and construct new or
renewed projects, we are thinking today about our infrastructure needs
of 2030, 2050, and beyond.
``Actionable Science''
When it comes to climate science, water utilities are looking for
what WUCA utilities call ``actionable science.'' We define actionable
science as
Data, analysis, and forecasts that are sufficiently
predictive, accepted, and understandable to support decision-
making, including capital investment decision-making.
We've come up with this term to convey our understanding that
perfect information on climate change is neither available today nor
likely to be available in the future, but that over time, as the
threats climate change poses to our systems grow more real, predicting
those effects with greater certainty is non-discretionary. We're not
yet at a level at which climate change projections can drive climate
change adaptation. This makes us nervous--and it's not terribly
comforting for our ratepayers either.
At least two things must happen from our perspective in the short-
term to provide society with some reassurance at this early but ominous
phase of climate change adaptation planning. First, we need increased
investment in climate science that will, as swiftly as possible,
provide local entities of all stripes with intelligence about the
future that is of a quality and scale that meets the definition of
``actionable.'' Second, partnerships must be built between local and
regional entities whose systems are vulnerable to the effects of
climate change and the research community (including social scientists,
economists, and legal researchers), policy-makers, and others to assist
those entities in understanding the range of futures they face and
provide decision support in the face of less than perfect information.
Accessible Science: The National Climate Service
Today's hearing, on the subject of a National Climate Service, lies
along the path, we hope, to providing ``accessible science'' to those
who are assessing their vulnerability to climate change--and planning
their adaptation response. These science ``users'' include water
utilities, local governments, public health officials, parks and
wildlife managers, coastal zone agencies, urban planners, farmers,
homeowners, NGOs and other public and private sector interests.
I've seen from my own personal experience both at the SFPUC and as
a board member at MMWD how difficult it can be to access sound climate
information. Even a sophisticated water agency has difficulty finding
answers to the most basic questions and accessing data compatible with
their systems models. University researchers are busy teaching and
publishing, agency staff in Washington, D.C. are unknown to us, and
those who we call ``users'' of climate information are often left to
scramble haphazardly to collect tidbits of information from a
multiplicity of sources as we seek to create resilient communities
ready to adapt to the effects of climate change.
We commend the Climate Working Group of NOAA's Science Advisory
Board for its thoughtful and focused report ``Options for Developing a
National Climate Service'' (February 26, 2009). The report identified
``Key Attributes'' of a National Climate Service worth citing here:
The Service will achieve its mission by promoting active
interaction among users, researchers, and information
providers. The Service will be user-centric, by ensuring that
scientifically-based information is accessible and commensurate
with users' needs and limitations. (p. 5)
We agree.
Several organizational options were outlined in this report and we
concur with those who have suggested that each option contains elements
of what a future NCS should look like.
In our view, a powerful and responsive NCS should be like a wheel,
with a hub (headquarters) and spokes (regional centers). To leverage
the metaphor a bit further: without the hub, the wheels come off. And
at the end of the spokes is where the rubber hits the road.
An NCS, we believe, requires the support of a lead federal agency
with budgetary authority and responsibility for critically important
science and data management functions. It seems clear that NOAA, with
its broad and deep expertise and responsibilities in these areas, is
well positioned to assume this role. In addition, oversight, as well as
coordination and cooperation between the lead and other federal
agencies such as EPA, USGS, NASA, USDA, and others is critically
important. We need the federal family to come together to create a
cohesive federal structure that supports the NCS mission. Hopefully,
lessons have been learned from the example of the U.S. Climate Change
Science Program, which has been widely criticized for failing to
achieve a consistent and transparent vision across the federal
enterprise and for doing a poor job of engaging with stakeholders.
Stakeholders and researchers alike strongly believe that the
success of an NCS mission depends substantially on creating a robust
and geographically distributed regional presence. Such a presence would
feature engaged, multi-disciplinary teams of physical scientists,
social scientists, communications specialists, and modelers in the
communities facing adaptation challenges. These ``boots on the ground''
experts understand their region and its unique conditions and are
active participants in an ongoing and iterative conversation with
climate information users that builds a familiarity that informs both
sides. They aren't paratroopers, either--they are a part of the
communities they serve.
For the user, we need an accessible go-to entity we can count on to
help us sift through the ever-changing science, gather the raw data,
benchmark against the experience of others, educate our publics, and
work with us in assessing our vulnerabilities. In addition, all these
players together will organically develop research partnerships with a
responsive university community, bringing a ``grass-roots science''
approach that can complement the ``Big Science'' pursuits in the area
of climate modeling and atmospheric and oceans science that underpin
our understanding of global climate change. All this work should be
part of a set of ongoing relationships, born of a shared mission that
is at the heart of the term ``service,'' between climate scientists and
engineers, economists and rate administrators, oceanographers and urban
planners, elected officials and agency managers.
These conversations are far from easy. I have attended workshop
after workshop with climate scientists and decision-makers that are
intended, like an arranged marriage, to create an advantageous union.
Usually the climate scientists present their research. Then comes an
uncomfortable silence. Usually one of the climate scientists who did
not present makes a comment. Then we move on to the next presentation.
At one recent workshop track I forced myself to announce that I didn't
understand the last speaker's presentation, but it seemed important
that at some point I do. It was like a great weight had been lifted
from my fellow non-scientists in the room.
The greatest advances in multi-disciplinary understanding on the
subject of climate change simply don't happen in one-off workshops.
They take practice. They happen over time and are based on sustained
relationships.
This decentralized, user-centric approach is far from unprecedented
in the Federal Government. Closest to home, the NOAA-funded Regional
Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) program offers a notable
demonstration model. These university-based partnerships, with very
small but essential core funding from NOAA, have done outstanding work
in the Southwest, Colorado Basin, Pacific Northwest, California, and
elsewhere. They have benefited many stakeholders that have had the good
fortune to work with them and they are today at the heart of both
general public and stakeholder education about climate change
adaptation effects for water utilities and others. They bring the
multi-disciplinary conversations and a science-meets-policy-meets-
decision-making focus that we need. They are already the most useful
spokes of our wheel.
A project Denver Water, another of WUCA's member utilities, is
helping lead illustrates the power of the RISA model and how its
expansion could pay dividends across the United States. To understand
climate science and determine potential impacts to local hydrology, the
water providers of the Front Range urban area of Colorado are
collaborating on a cooperative regional study in partnership with the
local RISA, the Western Water Assessment, led by the estimable Brad
Udall, along with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Water
Research Foundation and the State of Colorado. The participating water
providers supply water to nearly two-thirds of the population of the
State of Colorado. Working with local researchers and climate change
experts, the local RISA helped provide educational sessions,
documentation, direction, and access to experts to help the water users
understand climate change science and modeling, understand and obtain
down-scaled global climate model projections, convert the projections
into sets of planning scenarios, and assist with setting up local
hydrology models to convert the global climate model projections into
projected impacts on local streamflow. Being a regional entity, the
local RISA was familiar with the regional climate projections,
researchers, water systems, and water utilities. A federal climate
agency without that regional connection and approach probably would not
have been able or available to support a regional effort like this,
making it much more difficult for water utilities to make use of
climate science. The Front Range cooperative effort is today leveraging
local cooperation with local service provided by a locally-based
federal climate science boundary organization, the RISA.
The RISA program is not perfect, however, and expanding it
exponentially will have to be done with care. For example, each RISA
today has a different mission (and even a different name). Greater
uniformity and clarity of mission within the program would make sense
if the program model were to be expanded--while maintaining the
flexibility of each office to respond to differing local and regional
conditions.
In addition, expansion of the RISA program alone won't be
sufficient. Data management, storage, and access depend significantly
on centralized facilities that regional adaptation programs must have
the ability to access. In addition, local relationships with regional
arms of federal regulatory, land management, and operational agencies
such as USGS, EPA, Bureau of Reclamation, USDA, the Fish and Wildlife
Service, and the Army Corps will continue, and adaptation efforts must
account for the need to work with these agencies both in Washington and
in the field and regional offices.
Nonetheless, with an annual budget of the nine RISA programs at a
mere $5 million total, their track record argues for inclusion of the
model they have field tested in any NCS program. Add a zero (or two) to
that budget figure, expand the geographic scope, broaden and
rationalize the mission, and you have the basis of a vigorous regional
element of a National Climate Service.
Conclusion
To conclude and emphasize my most important points:
Drinking water utilities will invest hundreds of
billions of dollars in the near-term in our assets--and those
investments must be informed by climate change science and
services delivered by an NCS;
An NCS should have a user-centric mission that
emphasizes providing actionable, accessible science to
stakeholders;
An NCS requires sufficient federal funding provided
by a lead federal entity with active participation and
coordination across the federal enterprise, but its most
important work should take place through establishment of a
multi-disciplinary, geographically distributed presence in the
communities in which adaptation must take place;
The RISA program provides a model to build upon for
successful service delivery.
Thank you again for the opportunity to appear today, Mr. Chairman
and Members of the Committee, and I would be happy to answer any
questions you may have.
APPENDIX
CLIMATE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
In response to specific questions from the Chairman regarding
various products and services utilized by the SFPUC in our operations,
the following was prepared by Dr. Bruce McGurk, Operations Manager,
Hetch Hetchy Water and Power, San Francisco Public Utilities
Commission.
Please discuss the climate services and products the San Francisco
Public Utilities Commission utilizes; how this service is delivered;
and if there is a price associated with this service. Please also
discuss and provide examples of how these climate services and products
affect operations and management decisions (and) is there a need for a
better organization for how these services are delivered.
The SFPUC's Hetch Hetchy Water and Power division, our up-country
system that provides 85 percent of total water supply, depends on real-
time streamflow and reservoir elevation/storage data from USGS to
monitor and operate our project and monitor other river systems around
us. We pay 100 percent for 16 USGS gages (at an annual cost of
$320,000) because cooperator co-funding at USGS has been cut
drastically. We have re-occupied gages that USGS has cut out (Middle
and South Forks Tuolumne River) because we need the data for current
operations and future climate change research. The cutbacks that cause
these and other high-elevation gages to be discontinued make it much
more difficult to monitor runoff timing shifts and quantity, the exact
issues that we need to know about to manage our water supply and detect
the rate of global warming. An additional five to eight real-time
stream and reservoir gages are operated in the Bay Area and funded
exclusively by the SFPUC. They are used for release compliance and
system monitoring.
We also use a variety of products from NOAA and the National
Weather Service. We routinely use the Climate Prediction Center's six-
to ten- and eight- to fourteen-day forecasts, as well as the one month
and three-month forecasts. NWS forecasters provide valuable advice with
the Area Forecast Discussions and Zone forecasts. The NWS California-
Nevada River Forecast Center provides invaluable information with their
Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Services and their daily modeling of
flows into our reservoirs and others across the state. They combine
historical and weather forecast data to show likely runoff from our
basins for the next week to 10 days, and this is very important for
reservoir operations. We cooperate with the CNRFC and supply them with
climate and flow data that we collect so that they can do the best job
possible with their models.
We use a wide array of other climate and snowpack information
presented by the California Data Exchange Center (CDEC) and collected
by cooperators all across California. We depend on snow courses, snow
sensors, and other climate data that are hosted by CDEC. Data from the
USDA/NRCS SNOTEL sites are also included in our runoff forecast models.
We compare our runoff forecasts with NRCS and State-generated
forecasts.
We have routine interaction with the NOAA Western Regional Climate
Center in Reno, and they operate one of the sites that produces
critical data for our runoff forecast system.
The current branches of NOAA/NWS are not focused on providing data
to help with climate change inquiries. They are focused on their
monitoring and short-term forecasting missions, and as a result it can
be hard to find appropriate information that has long enough record,
has the necessary metadata, and is searchable. An NCS that worked with
NWS in regional centers and provided the data and a focus for climate
change analysis would be a big improvement. This new function would
address the current difficulty in partitioning the routine monitoring
and forecasting from the effort to provide climate scientists and
adaptation planners with the specialized products that are needed to
build models using the past data and also produce data that are
representative of the climate in the future.
Biography for David Behar
David Behar career spans over twenty years in environmental policy
and water utility management. David currently serves as Deputy to the
Assistant General Manager, Water Enterprise, at the San Francisco
Public Utilities Commission. The SFPUC is the sixth largest municipal
water provider in the U.S. and manages water and power facilities and
operations at Hetch Hetchy, the regional system that delivers water 160
miles to 2.5 million Bay Area residents, and water, wastewater, and
stormwater facilities in San Francisco. He led development of the
SFPUC-sponsored Water Utility Climate Change Summit held in San
Francisco in early 2007 and currently serves as Staff Chairman of the
Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA). Established in early 2008, WUCA
is a coalition of eight water utilities dedicated to providing
leadership and collaboration on climate change issues affecting
drinking water utilities by improving research, developing adaptation
strategies and creating mitigation approaches to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. WUCA is chaired by SFPUC General Manager Ed Harrington and
includes Denver Water, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California, New York City Department of Environmental Protection,
Portland Water Bureau, San Diego County Water Authority, Seattle Public
Utilities and the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Prior to joining the
SFPUC, David was an environmental policy consultant whose clients
included the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pacific Rivers
Council. From 1991-97 he served as Executive Director of The Bay
Institute of San Francisco, and from 1989-91 he served on the staff of
U.S. Senator Alan Cranston (DCA). In November 2006 he was elected to
the Board of Directors of the Marin Municipal Water District, a
200,000-customer water district just north of San Francisco in Marin
County, where he lives with his two children.
Chair Baird. Thank you, Mr. Behar. Mr. Fleming.
STATEMENT OF MR. PAUL FLEMING, MANAGER, CLIMATE AND
SUSTAINABILITY GROUP, SEATTLE PUBLIC UTILITIES
Mr. Fleming. Good morning, Chairman Baird, Ranking Member
Inglis, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for this
opportunity to testify before your committee today. My name is
Paul Fleming, and I am the Manager of the Climate and
Sustainability Group at Seattle Public Utilities.
Seattle provides reliable drinking water to 1.3 million
people in the Greater Seattle area, and provides sewer,
drainage, and solid waste services to Seattle residents. The
City of Seattle has made addressing climate change a top
priority. Our mayor, Greg Nickels, has been the leader in an
effort to engage other mayors across the political spectrum on
the issue of climate change, and the need to take local action.
In addition, the City's municipally owned electric utility,
Seattle City Light, will likely see significant impacts to the
hydropower-based operations, as climate change affects our
region. They both support my testimony here today.
Seattle uses, relies on, and supports financially several
monitoring and forecasting services provided by federal
agencies, such as NOAA, U.S. Geological Survey, and the Natural
Resources Conservation Service's, to inform our real-time
decision-making and short-term planning. As Dr. Mote noted,
Seattle has also engaged with NOAA's Regional Integrated
Sciences and Assessment program, RISA, to assess the projected
long-term impacts of climate change on our water supply, and we
have used this research to develop initial adaptation options.
Our operational and institutional capacity have benefited from
this engagement.
As an active user of several federal services, and as a
partner and collaborator with numerous federal agencies,
Seattle believes there are potentially great benefits
associated with the creation of a National Climate Service. We
view NOAA's RISA program as a potential model, particularly
given its distributed geographic structure. If it were to serve
as a potential framework for a National Climate Service, the
RISA model, however, would need to be strengthened and expanded
along the following lines.
One, it would need to involve multiple federal agencies in
the provision of services. The water sector uses the services
of, interacts with, and is regulated by many federal agencies.
Our interaction with the federal family would be facilitated by
having the relevant agencies coordinating their climate change
programs and research through a National Climate Service, and
by viewing it as an authoritative source of climate
information.
Two, the National Climate Service should involve multiple
sectors in the development and implementation of programs and
services provided by the Service. The water sector is engaged
on the issue of climate change. A National Climate Service
should recognize this capacity, and view the water sector not
just as an end user, but as a partner, as well. For example,
industry research groups, such as the Water Research
Foundation, should play a critical role in conducting applied
research for the water sector.
Three, ensure there is consistency across the distributed
structure. A National Climate Service should have a common set
of goals and objectives, so that the distributed branches are
coordinated and emanate from the common trunk.
Four, increase overall funding for a National Climate
Service, while maintaining and expanding, if necessary,
existing monitoring networks and forecasting services.
Five, build upon existing partnerships that are effective
in delivering services. For example, Seattle has partnerships
with the U.S. Geological Survey and the Natural Resources
Conservation Service to support the ongoing operations and
maintenance of streamflow and snowpack monitoring
infrastructure. This infrastructure should be expanded, and a
National Climate Service should build off of what currently
works.
In addition, I would encourage a National Climate Service
to be established in such a way that allows for an option to
scale the services beyond the U.S. As the Federal Government
continues to engage internationally on climate change, there is
great potential for the U.S. to assist other countries in
identifying the projected impacts of climate change, and
enhance their adaptive capacity. In so doing, we may also
address potential national security issues.
In closing, I want to reiterate a few points. Large
utilities in the water sector are engaged, to varying degrees,
in furthering their capacity to understand and prepare for
climate change. Given the operational knowledge and
institutional capacity of the water sector, a National Climate
Service should involve the water sector, not just as an end-
user, but as a partner.
A National Climate Service should serve as a vehicle to
coordinate the climate change programs of the numerous federal
agencies that are involved in this issue.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify this
morning, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Fleming follows:]
Prepared Statement of Paul Fleming
Introduction
Good morning Chairman Baird, Ranking Member Inglis and Members of
the Subcommittee. Thank for this opportunity to testify before your
committee today. My name is Paul Fleming, I am the Manager of the
Climate and Sustainability Group at Seattle Public Utilities (SPU). SPU
provides reliable drinking water to 1.3 million people in the greater
Seattle area, and provides sewer, drainage and solid waste services to
Seattle residents. My position at SPU is responsible for developing
SPU's climate adaptation and mitigation strategies, and establishing
partnerships with other utilities and research organizations in the
U.S. and abroad.
SPU, like many water utilities in the US, is an active participant
in numerous water sector climate change initiatives related to the
management, policy and technical challenges and research needs that
arise from the projected impacts of climate change. We are one of the
founding members of the Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA), a group
of eight urban water suppliers that collectively provide drinking water
services to nearly 36 million people. WUCA is currently funding two
projects: one on decision support systems for the water sector and
another on an assessment of climate modeling. SPU is also active in the
climate change initiatives of the Association of Metropolitan Water
Agencies, the American Water Works Association and the International
Water Association. SPU is currently advising both the Water Research
Foundation and the Water Environment Research Foundation as they
develop their climate change research agendas for the drinking water
and clean water sectors respectively and continue their leadership
roles in supporting emerging research. We are also reaching out to
utilities and researchers in an effort to glean best practices from
other parts of the world. This engagement with multiple entities
reflects SPU's belief in the importance of climate change for the water
sector and our commitment to continually enhance our institutional
capacity to prepare for the implications of climate change. This depth
of engagement, understanding and commitment is common to varying
degrees amongst numerous large water utilities in the U.S.
The City of Seattle has made addressing climate change a top
priority. Our mayor, Greg Nickels, has been the leader in an effort to
engage other mayors across the political spectrum on the issue of
climate change and the need to take local actions. In addition, the
City's municipally-owned electric utility, Seattle City Light, will
likely see significant impacts to its hydropower-based operations as
climate change affect our region. They support my testimony here today.
Today, I will highlight some of the existing federal monitoring and
forecasting services Seattle relies on for water supply system
operations and planning, describe how we use these services to help
ensure that we meet our responsibilities and policy objectives and
describe attributes that we would like to see in a National Climate
Service.
Seattle's use of Federal Monitoring and Forecasting Services
Seattle's water supply is derived from two watersheds located in
the Central Cascade Mountains in Washington State: the Cedar River and
Tolt River Watersheds. These watersheds receive precipitation in the
form of rain and snow. Seattle manages these watersheds, the Cedar and
Tolt Rivers, and our mountain-based reservoirs, to achieve the
following objectives:
Water supply for people
Instreamflows for aquatic species
Flood management
Dam safety
Water quality
Given the dynamic nature of managing our water supply system, with
our multiple objectives, capricious weather and the need to balance
immediate and short-term issues with longer-term planning horizons, it
is critical that we have access to real-time monitoring and forecasting
information. Seattle relies on several federal agency monitoring and
forecasting services to help inform our decision-making. These services
include, but are not limited to:
U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) stream gages
Natural Resources Conservation Service's (NRCS)
SnoTel sites
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's
(NOAA) National Weather Service's weather observations and
daily and mid-range weather forecasts,
NOAA's Climate Prediction Center's 30-90 day and
multi-seasonal climate outlooks
NOAA's Remote Sensing of Snowcover
Seattle uses these services and others for operational planning at
multiple time scales, from day-to-day to several months out, to manage
our rivers and reservoirs in order to meet our objectives. USGS gages
are used to help us comply with our landmark Cedar River Habitat
Conservation Plan and to protect salmon habitat and salmon redds on the
Cedar River. The National Weather Service's general weather forecasts
inform our reservoir operations and help us time releases of water.
NRCS's SnoTel sites provide us with estimates of snowpack which we can
use to project how much water is embedded in the snow blanketing the
hills in our watersheds. These services are our eyes and ears on the
ground as well as the binoculars peering over the horizon.
These services also serve as an authoritative and credible source
of information, which is critical for the type of collaborative
resource management decision-making that we engage in on a regular
basis.
In addition to using these services, Seattle provides financial and
in-kind support for some of them. The Tolt and Cedar River Basins are
extensively gauged and networked, partially as a result of a
cooperative funding arrangement between SPU, Seattle City Light and
USGS. In 2009, SPU will contribute roughly $125,000 towards this
arrangement. We greatly appreciate this arrangement and the excellent
work of the Tacoma, Washington Office of the USGS. For the NRCS's
SnoTel program, we provide in-kind surveying of the land where their
equipment is located. We have invested in these systems and appreciate
and depend on continued federal support for them.
Another federal service we have used is NOAA's Regional Integrated
Sciences and Assessment (RISA) program. In the Pacific Northwest, the
RISA program is represented by the University of Washington Climate
Impacts Group (UW-CIG). UW-CIG has been instrumental in helping to
elevate the issue of climate change in the central Puget Sound region
and Washington State. The research UW-CIG has conducted has greatly
advanced the region's ability to understand how climate change is
projected to affect different sectors of the region and state. Seattle
benefited directly from engaging with the UW-CIG to conduct two studies
within the past five years on how climate change is projected to affect
the hydrology of the watersheds where we operate.
The most recent study we completed involved the creation of three
climate scenarios that were based on three Global Climate Models (GCMs)
coupled with two emission scenarios and down-scaled to the central
Puget Sound region. The three scenarios projected decreases in our
water supply ranging from six percent to twenty-one percent by 2050 due
to climate change. Given this projected range of impacts, we then
developed initial adaptation strategies and evaluated their
effectiveness in offsetting the reductions in supply. The first
strategies we've evaluated were ``no-regrets'' strategies: operational
adjustments that are low to no-cost, enhance our operational
flexibility and which could be implemented quickly. By deploying this
initial portfolio of strategies we estimated we could offset the
impacts of climate change in two out of the three climate scenarios.
This assessment also reinforced the role of water conservation as
an essential component of our climate change strategy. Since 1984, our
total water consumption has declined by 28 percent while population has
grown by 26 percent. As a result, water consumption per capita is 43
percent less than it was a year ago. This has been due to the combined
effects of higher water rates (and a seasonal and inclining block rate
structure), the Washington State plumbing code, over two decades of
aggressive conservation programs, and improved system operations. We
are also committed to saving an additional fifteen million gallons a
day (mgd) through conservation programs over the next 20 years. By
2030, we project that water demand will still be less than it was in
1965 even though we'll be serving 80 percent more people.
This engagement with the research community has strengthened
Seattle's knowledge of the implications of climate change, stimulated
our development of initial adaptation strategies and enhanced our
institutional capacity. We look forward to continued interaction with
UW-CIG, federal agencies and the research community as a whole in the
co-production of knowledge.
A National Climate Service
It is often noted that water utilities are on the ``front lines''
of, or ``first responders'' in, the battle against climate change.
While this characterization is apt, it doesn't fully capture the
breadth of activities the water sector pursues in operating and
managing our systems and in identifying and preparing for the impacts
of climate change. To continue with the martial metaphor, we're not
just on the front lines, but we're also in the war room gleaning
intelligence data from original research and reconnaissance we have
conducted; we're often using satellite data to determine how much
resources (e.g., water) we have to utilize; we're assessing threat
levels through vulnerability assessments, developing new tools to
counter those threats, and building alliances to share information and
resources. The broad spectrum of strategic and tactical activities that
the water sector is engaged in illustrate that we take the issue of
climate change seriously and that we have the capability to do a lot of
work. We need, however, the support of, and continued collaboration
with, the Federal Government and welcome an integrated and user-driven
National Climate Service that hastens our ability to identify and
prepare for the impacts of climate change.
As an active user of several federal services and as a partner and
collaborator with numerous federal programs, Seattle believes there are
potentially great benefits associated with the creation of a National
Climate Service. Having extensive experience with NOAA's RISA program,
we view that as a potential model, particularly given its distributed
geographic structure. Such a structure has the potential of
establishing strong linkages between the research community and the
relevant sectors in a given region and creating tailored research and
services that help to address a region's needs. If it were to serve as
a potential framework for a NCS, the RISA model, however, would need to
be strengthened and expanded along the following lines:
Involve multiple federal agencies in the provision of
services. The water sector uses the services of, interacts with
and is regulated by several agencies. Having multiple agencies
involved in the NCS and viewing it as an authoritative source
of climate information would facilitate our interactions with
these agencies.
Involve multiple sectors in the development and
implementation of programs and services provided by the NCS. As
I have noted before, the water sector is engaged on the issue
of climate change and is enhancing its capacity to understand
and prepare for the impacts. The NCS should recognize this
capacity and view the water sector not just as an end-user but
as a collaborator as well. This is particularly salient with
respect to vulnerability assessments, where a utility's tacit
knowledge of its system operations can ``ground truth'' the
assessment and identify and evaluate the effectiveness of
operational adjustments. Such an emphasis could also help to
complement the current university context for RISA program
delivery.
Ensure there is consistency across the distributed
structure by establishing a common set of goals, objectives,
and tenets across the country so that the NCS is responsive to
the water sector's need for ``actionable science'' and that the
distributed ``branches'' of the NCS are well coordinated.
Increase overall funding for an NCS while maintaining
and expanding, if necessary, existing monitoring networks and
forecasting services. These services are essential for
operations and planning today and will be even more critical in
the future.
Build upon existing partnerships that are effective
in delivering services. As noted previously Seattle has
established relationships with USGS and NRCS to support the
ongoing operations and maintenance of streamflow and snowpack
monitoring infrastructure.
Establish a structure that allows for an option to
scale the services beyond the U.S. As the Federal Government
continues to engage internationally on climate change, there is
great potential for the U.S. to assist other countries in
enhancing their adaptive capacity as well as learning from them
while also addressing potential national security issues.
Through appropriate agreements or perhaps as part of foreign
aid programs, the National Climate Service potentially could
provide essential monitoring services and research for areas of
the world that don't have access to such information.
Conclusion
In closing, I want to reiterate a few points:
Large utilities in the water sector are engaged to
varying degrees in furthering our understanding of the
implications of climate change and in preparing for the
challenges it creates;
We welcome additional federal collaboration that
builds off of and expands existing monitoring and forecasting
services and collaborative partnerships;
Given the operational knowledge and institutional
capacity of the water sector, a National Climate Service should
be based on a geographically distributed but nationally
coordinated structure that involves and complements the water
sector's tacit knowledge and experience.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify this morning Mr.
Chairman and Members of the Committee.
Biography for Paul Fleming
Paul Fleming is the Manager of the Climate and Sustainability Group
for the Seattle Public Utilities (SPU). SPU provides a reliable
drinking water supply to 1.3 million people in the Seattle metropolitan
area and provides essential sewer, drainage and solid waste services to
City of Seattle customers. Paul leads SPU's climate change initiatives
and is responsible for developing and directing SPU's climate
adaptation and mitigation strategies and research agenda as well as
establishing collaborative partnerships with other utilities and
research organizations in the U.S. and abroad. Paul also supervises
SPU's green building program and is involved in SPU's sustainable
stormwater infrastructure initiatives.
Paul is an active participant in several national and international
efforts focused on water and climate change. He is active in the Water
Utility Climate Alliance, an alliance of eight U.S. urban water
suppliers focused on adaptation, GHG mitigation and climate research,
where he chairs the Science and Research Committee. He serves on the
Water Research Foundation's Climate Change Strategic Initiative Expert
Panel, where advises the Foundation on the development of a climate
change research agenda for the drinking water sector. He is also
advising the Water Environment Research Foundation on their development
of a climate change research agenda for the drainage and wastewater
sector. Paul develops and leads SPU's international collaborative
efforts, including work with Dutch researchers on urban drainage
climate adaptation. He is also participating in a U.S. State
Department-funded project that is examining security, energy, water and
climate change issues in Central Asia.
Paul has been an invited speaker on climate change and water at
water industry conferences and workshops in Washington State,
Amsterdam, Atlanta, Baltimore, Colorado, Edinburgh, Toronto and Tokyo.
Prior to his current position Paul managed SPU's State legislative
agenda and worked on State and regional water supply and environmental
policy issues.
Paul is a board member of Worldchanging.com, which is a media
organization that covers tools, models and ideas for creating a better
future. He is also a delegate to the U.S.-Japan Leadership Program.
Paul has a BA in Economics from Duke University and an MBA from the
University of Washington and lives in Seattle with his wife and
daughter.
Chair Baird. Thank you, Mr. Fleming. Dr. Doesken.
STATEMENT OF DR. NOLAN J. DOESKEN, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN
ASSOCIATION OF STATE CLIMATOLOGISTS; COLORADO STATE
CLIMATOLOGIST, DEPARTMENT OF ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE, COLORADO
STATE UNIVERSITY
Dr. Doesken. I am used to extemporaneous stuff, so wish me
luck.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Inglis, Committee Members. I
appreciate this opportunity to represent a State perspective on
climate services. I am the State Climatologist for Colorado,
the current President of the American Association of State
Climatologists, and here is a little description of what we do.
We are experts on the climate of our own states, whether it
is just basic temperature and precipitation patterns,
seasonality, geographic variations, year to year variations,
which are a really big deal, drought and other extremes, which
are a really big deal, and historic trends, which are very
interesting.
Perhaps more importantly, we see how the climate affects
the citizens of our states, their lives and their livelihoods.
We rely on data, quality, representative observations of our
climate system, whether it is temperature networks, humidity,
wind, precipitation, or very important, solar energy, all of
the elements of our climate system. And our ability to provide
useful information to our states really relies on the presence
of quality data.
Whenever I travel, I see climate services in action. The
infrastructure that we drive on, our bridges, our culverts, our
energy distribution systems, our buildings consuming energy to
keep comfortable inside, regardless of the variations outside,
and how we utilize what we know about our climate to better
adapt our infrastructure.
We have traditionally relied on federal sources for the
data that we use in what we do. National Weather Service
Cooperative Observer Network, very important. Airport weather
observations through many decades. U.S. Geological Survey
streamflow data, NRCS, which we have heard of here today. Soil
moisture measurements, mountain snowpack data, streamflow
predictions. We are long-time users of NOAA data resources in
so many ways.
We basically believe the climate monitoring activities are
predominantly a federal responsibility, but more so, we keep
seeing our fellow states doing more data collection on their
own to address their own, State-specific needs. At least half
of us, as State climatologists, are involved in some way in our
own data collection systems. Often, for agricultural purposes;
also for energy, water resources, et cetera.
Let me talk briefly about collaborations, because if you
knew what our State budgets were, and you probably do, we can't
function well without collaborations, rich collaborations with
federal partners. Many of us work closely with our Regional
Climate Centers. We know them as friends. These groups have
helped us stream out data access and management, so we can
focus on interpretation of information, and the delivery of
that information.
A few of us have the benefit of working with RISAs. I am
one of them, in Colorado. Not all states have RISAs. Many of
our, my fellow State climatologists, have no experience working
with RISAs, just because they are limited in geographic extent.
Unlike RISAs, who get to focus on specific sectors and
decision-makers, we get to work with the whole gamut, anywhere
from State government down to small business and individuals.
Private companies are pretty good friends with State
climatologists. We provide information that really helps them
make their business decisions, and we are not viewed as
competition.
National Weather Service, long partners, data collection,
and more recently, in data services. And our organizational
structure that facilitates working with the Federal Government
is our association, the American Association of State
Climatologists, just as a vehicle for two way communications.
It is a little more efficient.
In summary, we are local experts. We work at the grassroots
level. We are an essential branch of climate services as they
are occurring today. We track the pulse of our climate at the
local level, and we do so on very, with very few resources, in
so many ways. We are trusted advisors to State and local
government, business, individuals, and communicators of
information to our local media. We are flexible, and we are
responsive.
We are largely educators; 80 percent of us are at public
universities. Many of us teach students, mentor grad students,
as well as aid in decision-makers. More than 60 percent of us
are at land grant universities, and utilize the infrastructure
and wisdom of our traditional system of extension to reach
broad audiences.
So, we favor the concept of a National Climate Service. We
are ready to help.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Doesken follows:]
Prepared Statement of Nolan J. Doesken
Thank you very much for this opportunity to share a State
perspective on climate services.
Background
Prior to 1973, each state had a State climatologist as a part of a
long-standing climate program within the Department of Commerce, U.S.
Weather Bureau. When that program was abolished in the early 1970s,
states--as they were able over a period of years--established their own
offices to carry on the functions of State-specific climate monitoring,
research, education and service. NOAA's National Climatic Data Center
(NCDC) was an early partner in fostering State-based climate
activities. NOAA data, particularly temperature and precipitation data
from the National Weather Service Cooperative Observer Network and more
detailed Surface Airways observations, were the primary data sources at
that time for almost all U.S. ground-based climate monitoring, research
and service. NCDC still remains a strong partner supporting State
efforts, facilitating access to data, and enlisting our expertise in a
variety of ways.
The American Association of State Climatologists (AASC) was
established in the mid 1970s to professionally link the efforts of
these emerging State programs, and to offer a forum for federal
partners to more easily communicate and work with states on climate-
related issues. AASC is an effective organization for communicating
federal-level climate services, through State Climatologists, to the
citizens and local stakeholders that we serve, within our states. It
has also been an appropriate forum to communicate State-level data and
information needs back to federal agencies. While there is so much
climate diversity across our country, and the challenges faced by
individual states vary greatly, we share many common interests and
concerns that are best addressed together. For example, access to
reliable long-term climate data, best practices in data analysis,
applied research strategies, means of identifying and assessing State
and local climate variability and change, effective means of outreach,
and means of engaging stakeholders and assessing the impact of our
efforts.
Recognizing the important role of State Climatologists, the
National Climate Program Act of 1978 included language that requested
federal funding for State Climate Offices to improve the consistent
delivery of critical climate information to the citizens of the United
States. Funds for individual State activities were never appropriated
then. Still, State climate offices independently developed. The
National Climate Program Act of 1978 did not directly help State
climate service efforts, but it did lead to the eventual formation of
Regional Climate Centers (RCCs) which have been excellent partners and
assets to State climate services ever since.
Currently 48 states have State Climate Offices. Some are housed
within State agencies, but most are affiliated with State universities.
The majority, such as my host institution, are at Land Grant
universities. Most State Climatologists are actively involved in
research and teaching--collectively mentoring hundreds of future
scientists and educators each year. Many of us are well connected or
directly a part of our State Extension programs adding further to our
outreach effectiveness.
Activities of State Climate Offices
State Climatologists (SCs) are experts on the climate of our
respective states--seasonal cycles, geographic variations and year-to-
year variability. We are familiar with the climate data resources of
our states over the period of instrumental record--typically back to
the 1880s. Some of us have expertise in paleoclimatology which helps
provide longer perspectives about climate variability. Nearly all SCs
have additional areas of expertise ranging from observation systems,
agriculture, and remote sensing, to hydrology, climate modeling and
climate change. We enjoy helping others find the data and information
they need to address their challenges and opportunities. We often
operate on a ``grass roots'' level, providing personalized and
localized climate information to a wide range of businesses,
individuals, and organizations. We don't often have the luxury of
focusing our efforts on the needs and climate-affected decisions of
specific user groups. Instead, we work with diverse groups--State and
local government, utilities, large and small businesses, engineers,
architects, builders, consultants, attorneys, researchers, educators,
media and many others--and we do so with a local understanding of the
climate and an appreciation for the needs and applications of the
customers. Rather than just providing requested data, it is customary
to ask ``How will you be using this information?'' That simple question
so often results in better service, greater trust, frequent
opportunities for applied research, and better information about the
types of data, models and other decision-making tools, monitoring
systems, forecasts and projections needed to answer important
questions.
A typical day in the life of a State Climatologist may go something
like this. We may brief State agencies in the morning, do a media
interview at lunch, teach a class and answer a variety of climate
information requests during the afternoon, and then give an invited
talk to a community organization during the evening. We are typically
passionate about our work and love sharing information with others. Our
products, services and approach to outreach vary somewhat from state to
state, and are customized to meet specific local needs. Products
typically include addressing weekly or monthly climate monitoring and
reporting (to State and federal agencies, media, etc.), drought and
water supply monitoring, agricultural decision support, historic
climate trend analysis, information sources and tools for engineering,
architecture, design and related consultants, and consultation to
emergency management and law enforcement officials and to the legal
profession. Some State offices have actively provided climate data and
information supporting renewable energy planning for over 30 years.
Here are a few examples of specific State activities, showing the
breadth of our services.
http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/
http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/ndsu/ndsco/
http://climate.rutgers.edu/stateclim/
The AASC website provides quick-click access to all State Climate
Office web sites
http://www.stateclimate.org/
State Climate Offices are both users of existing federal climate
data sources and providers of unique local data. State climate offices
continue to rely on the National Weather Service Cooperative Network
data because it is the best source for high-quality nationwide
temperature and precipitation data, the only source for nationwide
snowfall data, and the only source of relatively consistent century-
long nationwide data on the scale of individual counties. But we are
interested in any well documented, verifiable data source to help us
track specific elements of the climate within our states. We are
currently partnering with NOAA to improve State-level data
accessibility and information products for the new modernized
Historical Climate Network (HCN-M) and the recently deployed Climate
Reference Network (CRN).
Driven by ever-growing demands for instantaneous weather data at a
high-spatial density, many SCOs manage and maintain specialized
observing networks. Best known is the Oklahoma Mesonet http://
climate.ok.gov/mesonet/ But many other State climate offices are also
involved in aggressive data collection efforts to meet a variety of
decision support functions. Even low tech approaches like the volunteer
``Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow network'' http://
www.cocorahs.org are helping gather important data while helping
educate the general public about climate. The potential exists to
integrate public and private data sources to achieve a national
``mesonet'' to serve both instantaneous weather and longer-term climate
service and research needs.
Real time weather data for forecasting and operations have great
value but are not always suitable for climate analysis and research.
The exact location of weather stations and how well they are maintained
make a big difference to climatologists. Therefore, State Climate
Offices give much attention to data quality and the development of
quality control procedures and tools. We inform NOAA regarding our
standards and expectations for climate data and information products.
We also work with other federal agencies involved in climate monitoring
and research. Stream flow measurements by the USGS, mountain snow
accumulation, snow water content and soil moisture measured by the
USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service, and fire weather
conditions monitored by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land
Management all feed in to effective climate monitoring at the State and
local level.
State Climatologists receive frequent requests for statewide or
more localized information and interpretation of seasonal climate
forecasts and climate change projections and potential impacts. Because
of the huge scale and magnitude of these efforts, most states rely on
the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center for seasonal
forecast information. For climate change projections and impacts, we
typically turn to the resources of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) and the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) as
well as other State and regional assessments by public and private
entities. We then communicate this information to our more localized
audiences adding our knowledge and local perspective.
State Climate Office relationships with existing NOAA climate service
programs
As stated earlier, the AASC has worked with NOAA's National
Climatic Data Center from our very beginning and appreciate the support
that has been provided to our members. We also enjoy close working
relationships with Regional Climate Centers. Some State Climate Offices
are co-located with RCCs. Some RCC staff have previously worked in
State Climate Office settings and understand our needs. RCCs have
helped State Climate Offices by reducing the need for each of our
states to maintain our own independent climate databases for NOAA and
other agency climate data resources. The wide variety of information
available from the Western Regional Climate Center web site is a good
example. http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/
Our concerns regarding access to climate data and analysis are
usually heard and often addressed. For example, the RCCs are currently
developing a climate data access system specifically for State Climate
Office needs based directly on specifications developed by our
organization.
National Weather Service climate service activities have, in recent
years, become much more active and visible ranging from drought
monitoring, to dissemination of seasonal forecasts to timely web-
accessible local climate information. Because of their public
visibility and accessibility, the NWS is often the first stop on first-
time users' quests for climate information. Traditionally, the NWS
major field-level role in climate service was climate data collection
including the operation of their nationwide Cooperative Observer
Network and airport weather data collection. This has been essential
for basic climate monitoring and research. With data analysis support
provided through the RCCs, NWS Forecast Offices have greatly improved
their own local climate service potential in recent years. This has
beneficially taken some of the load off SCOs in terms of routine
individual climate information requests.
AASC collaboration with Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessment
teams (RISA) is a work in progress but with much potential for further
enhancement. Up to this point, most states have not had RISA teams with
which to partner. RISAs have benefited from the ability to focus on
particular environmental applications and selected decision-makers.
This is in marked contrast to State Climatologists who must address the
diverse needs of all stakeholders and citizens within their states.
Nevertheless, where RISAs have been active for several years, including
where I work in Colorado, we are finding many and effective ways to
partner to improve climate services, including customized climate
education, and focused research and data product development needed to
address the questions of specific decision-makers. A 2008 report
sponsored by the Colorado Water Conservation Board, ``Climate Change in
Colorado--A Synthesis to Support Water Resources Management and
Adaptation,'' is an example example of RISA-enabled State partnerships.
The presence and activities of the National Climate Program Office
(NCPO), while well known at the national level, are not routinely
evident at the individual State level. The NCPO has reached out to the
AASC and invited our participation in several national-level planning
and evaluation meetings (e.g., climate services; drought). We are
represented on NOAA's Climate Working Group, their lead external
advisory body, which evaluates and recommends future directions for all
NOAA observing, research and outreach endeavors related to the climate
system. Indirectly, we also benefit from the NCPO's support of RISAs
and their sponsorship of other applied research endeavors.
The National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) is a
relatively new program but one that may have a large impact on State
Climate Office activities. Drought-related efforts at the State level
are often the most time consuming and important of all of our multi-
faceted endeavors. AASC collaborations with NIDIS may have substantial
mutual benefits. Here in Colorado, NIDIS is offering our office a lead
role in shaping a portion of the Upper Colorado River Basin NIDIS pilot
project with a focus on the drought early warning needs of several
specific user groups.
The American Association of State Climatologists and the National
Climate Service
In 2008, the AASC prepared a statement expressing our interest and
identifying our potential role in a developing and evolving National
Climate Service. http://www.stateclimate.org/publications/
Our Association looks favorably on the establishment of the
National Climate Service. A well-organized National Climate Service has
considerable potential to focus federal resources on global, national,
State and local climate challenges. We see NOAA as a logical agency to
lead this effort and we look forward to doing our part. We have much to
offer and much to gain. Because we work most effectively on the State
and local level, and have a finger on the pulse of what many decision-
makers require, the AASC can add a credible local presence and voice to
complete an effective National Climate Service. We are counting on
NOAA, and other federal partners needed to construct an effective
service, to work well together and to recognize the essential and
foundational nature of systematic climate monitoring--maintaining and
enhancing climate observing networks that simultaneously meet many
needs (energy, water, agriculture, transportation, commerce, public
safety, etc.).
A concluding story
In conclusion, I would like to tell a short personal story. Over 20
years ago when ``Global Warming'' was first appearing regularly in the
national press, I was invited to speak to a meeting of the ``Colorado
Young Farmers'' organization. These farmers were mostly in their 40s at
that time and well educated. They politely listened to the presentation
where we showed upward trends in greenhouse gases and discussed the
possible implications and some early climate model projections of
warming. Then we showed graphs of 100 years of observed data over
eastern Colorado. As dryland farmers on the Great Plains, they were
intimately familiar with climate variability and its impacts on their
lives and livelihoods. After the formal presentation ended and as we
sipped hot coffee, one of the leaders of the organization came up to me
(and I will never forget this). ``I guess we should take climate change
seriously. When I look back at my grandpa and how he farmed I think we
can change--we will change. We've already changed our farming practices
so much. But this darn year-to-year variability . . . that's what kills
us. We appreciate what you scientists are learning about climate
change, but if you can do anything to help us deal with the big changes
we see from year to year, we'll be very grateful.''
With that in mind, we (the AASC) appeal to you to seriously
consider the full range of potential benefits of a National Climate
Service across a variety of time scales. With growing concern regarding
climate variability and change in a vulnerable society, the needs for
both generalized and customized climate data and information will only
continue to grow and become more acute. Take the necessary time to
develop the appropriate leadership structure that can incorporate the
extensive expertise and service capabilities of other federal agencies
and make full use of expertise and flexibility of State and university
partners. Together, we can accomplish much.
Thank you very much for this opportunity to share my views and
those of many of my colleagues.
Biography for Nolan J. Doesken
Nolan Doesken grew up in rural central Illinois with an early
fascination with weather and climate that has stuck with him his entire
life. He attended the University of Michigan receiving a Bachelors
Degree in Meteorology and Oceanography in 1974. He returned to Illinois
for graduate work at the University of Illinois. There he conducted
climate research at the Illinois State Water Survey while completing a
MS in Atmospheric Science in 1976. Nolan moved to Colorado in 1977 to
become Assistant State Climatologist at Colorado State University. Over
the past 32 years he has been involved in a wide variety of climate
research and educational activities with a special focus on drought,
precipitation measurement and analysis, and the effects of climate on
agricultural and natural resources. He has worked with the National
Weather Service on several projects evaluating climate data from new
observing systems. Mr. Doesken is currently assisting the National
Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) in the Upper Colorado
River Basin pilot project. He has published many climate-related
articles and reports including a popular book on snow: ``The Snow
Booklet : Guide to the Science, Climatology and Measurement of Snow in
the United States'' (1997). Nolan is just the fourth Director of the
historic Fort Collins Weather Station with a record of continuous
climate monitoring dating back over 120 years. He also manages the
Colorado Agricultural Meteorological Network (CoAgMet).
Nolan became Colorado State Climatologist in 2006. He is a long-
time member of the American Association of State Climatologists (AASC)
and became President of that organization in 2008. Nolan was honored as
a ``NOAA Environmental Hero'' in 2007 for his work in starting a
nationwide volunteer program (CoCoRaHS--Community Collaborative Rain,
Hail and Snow network) which provides climate education opportunities
for the public while also producing an exceptional research-quality
data set for climate monitoring and to aid weather forecasters.
Nolan and his wife, Kathy, have a small farm near Fort Collins,
Colorado. Nolan serves on the Board of Directors of an irrigation
company there.
Discussion
Chair Baird. Thank you, Dr. Doesken, and thanks to all the
panel, again, for your insightful testimony today, but also,
your service.
More on Structuring a National Climate Service
So, I am trying to envision the organizational chart in my
head, which is maybe some of what we have been dealing with on
the panel. And it is evident to me that you represent users,
but also producers of information. It is clearly a two way
system, where you can say our experiential data feeds back into
the loop and vice versa.
Does it make sense to come up with, if you had a National
Climate entity, Service, does it make sense that you would look
at some of the various agencies that you have described
already, like NRCS, like USGS, like the Weather Service, like
the RISAs, and others, doubtless, and say okay, so the National
Climate Service, maybe those entities continue pretty much as
they are, but the National Climate Service is the coordinating
entity that brings their data together, and to some extent, the
sub-agencies maybe have people with dual assignments or
dedicated missions, so you know, they answer, sort of both
chains.
What about that idea? Bad idea, good idea, does it make
sense, what is already being done, but there is the lack of a
national coordination? What are your thoughts on that?
Mr. Behar. I will start. I think from a stakeholder
perspective, having that kind of one stop shopping approach
that leverages the data and information, leverages the
expertise that exists, and leverages the regulatory and
operational relationships that we already have with entities
like GS and Bureau of Reclamation, if we are in reclamation
basin, is really important.
It really will help to translate the climate change
challenges to the user level. We need, ideally, a single or a
few places that we know we can go to get the data, the
analysis, the research assistance, and all the other inputs
that go into, in the case of the water utility, in most cases,
our systems operations models, so that we can then think about
what it is we face, in terms of our water supply.
Then, down the chain, we also probably could use some help
from social scientists and others who are evaluating decision
support methods that can be used in an atmosphere of
uncertainty, which we know we'll obtain for many, many, many
years in the future, no matter how much more money we put into
the climate models, which we do think we should put more money
into the climate models.
And so from, you know, from end to end, as simple a
structure as possible will be beneficial. It is very hard for
users to really understand all of the different entities that
are out there, and streamlining that would be very beneficial.
Chair Baird. Mr. Fleming.
Mr. Fleming. I would add that you seem to describe almost a
matrix management approach, which I don't know if the Federal
Government does that very well. I don't know if anyone does
that very well, but I think fundamentally maintaining----
Chair Baird. We won't get into credit default swaps, and we
will be all right.
Mr. Fleming. Ensuring that systems that are working now are
not disrupted. So, I think, to varying degrees, you know, we
are able to access pretty good information, really good
information from USGS and NRCS, at least in Seattle, and I
think Dr. Strobel would probably echo that, that that is the
case across the Northwest and other parts of the country.
So, National Climate Service should not disrupt those
services that are working really well, but I believe there are
information gaps that a National Climate Service could step
into. So, it seems to me that you would want to have some
service that does, provides some integrated function to it, and
that doesn't replicate what is working now. And that is, we
would definitely welcome coming back to you per your invitation
to the previous panel, because I think you have an
organizational challenge and opportunity ahead of you in
crafting this bill.
Chair Baird. Dr. Doesken.
Dr. Doesken. Well, we feel very much like, I guess you
would call us middlemen. We need a national perspective, a
national modeling activities, national prediction skills that
we will never have the capacity at the State level to do.
And some customers want to be able to go right to that
level. Other customers much prefer coming to a local level or a
regional level. So, it seems like there is very good reasons to
have a three tiered system, where users can enter at the level
that they work. Exactly how all the pieces come together, I am
not yet totally clear on, either, but leveraging the skills and
capabilities and activities that are already involved, you got
to start there.
Chair Baird. And the notion we have heard, a great deal of
today, also is that if you were, let us say you are an
industry, or you are newly appointed to run some municipality,
where do you go? It takes a while just to get up to steam, and
there are places where you would like to go, and they don't
exist yet. We don't have the datasets or, but it just takes you
a while to figure out who you have got to talk to.
Interagency Coordination
And in your experience, is the coordination across the
various agencies sufficient, or do you find that well, I have
to go to these folks for this, and then these folks for this,
and get a little bit here, and then I piece it together with
more or less degree of accuracy and certitude. How does that
work?
Dr. Strobel. Well, I guess I could just say that it is
getting better. The fact, with the availability of the
Internet, and the way that we can link on to other people's
information and share that information, and the accessibility
that folks have to access that information, not always just
through our sites, but through other people's sites, and
linking into it, has really greatly improved the collaboration
and sharing of information, and the accessibility of that
information.
So, is it perfect? No. But is it getting better? Yes. I see
very positive things happening with that.
Chair Baird. Do you feel like a climate service entity
within the, at the federal level would help facilitate that, or
create new problems?
Dr. Strobel. Our Department hasn't come out with a
statement on this yet. I will just say that there are always
benefits to more collaboration and more accessibility to the
information. I mean, the more we get it out to the users, the
better it benefits everybody.
Chair Baird. Mr. Fleming, and then, I will recognize----
Mr. Fleming. Seattle relies on the Internet to a large
degree to get some of this data, particularly for the
operational decisions, where we are looking at weather
forecasts, to understand whether we need to make releases to
provide flood management, or to ensure that we don't scour
salmon rights in the rivers that we manage.
I will also add that, you know, we have benefited immensely
from having a RISA program in Seattle. The University of
Washington Climate Impacts Group is a couple miles north of our
offices, and we have been able to rely on them and work with
them to enhance our understanding of what the implications of
climate change mean for our water supply.
So, to some degree, we definitely see the benefits of a
National Climate Service, but we are operating from the
position of having tremendous resources in our backyard.
Chair Baird. Okay. The final thing, I would just comment
before I yield to Mr. Inglis is that if you look historically
at some of the great trends and changes in human history, the
big dislocations, conflicts, it is so often climate-related,
and that ties to demographics. And one of the things that I
struggle with is, census data tells us we are looking at 139
million more people in this country in the next 40 years. Very
rarely do we make informed decisions about where people can
live. We don't say gee, you know, if you all move to the
desert, you might just have a water problem. And people tend to
move there, and then expect somebody else to fix it, and
somewhere, we have got to integrate the kind of data that you
folks are experts in, with those kind of decisions, and we are
miserable at doing that, actually.
Mr. Inglis.
State Climate Offices
Mr. Inglis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Dr. Doesken, how
are State climate offices typically funded? Is that by State
appropriations, or are you getting federal money?
Dr. Doesken. It is highly variable. And in some cases, it
is on a State line item budget, but in many cases, it is within
university settings. Only about six of us, I think, are in
State government, of which South Carolina is one of those
examples.
So, we are all fighting our own battles in various ways,
but again, we are typically affiliated with universities, and
universities have found us to be great assets to the research
efforts and the educational efforts that go on there. So, it
makes some sense.
Mr. Inglis. So, what we are talking about here, in creating
a new office that would consolidate some of these things, or I
am not sure consolidate is the right word, create new
information. Is it, what do you see as the future of climate
offices, the State climate offices, in that?
Dr. Doesken. Well, trying to find the right place for us
is, without asking for way more State or federal money, is a
real challenge. We would like to see the service that we are
providing funded to the level that our states need, and whether
that is through State support, or whether it is through federal
support, we are open either way.
But we have a lot of flexibility when we are not a line of
a federal agency. It gives us a lot more nimbleness on the
local level, so we like to stay independent as much as we can,
but would like to see additional support come to us, so we have
more uniformity in what we are able to do nationally.
Mr. Inglis. Do you, do climate offices, State climate
offices ever charge for their data, or how does that work? Do
you get fees from somebody?
Dr. Doesken. We charge in a way that may vary from state to
state. We definitely collect revenue when we are able to, to
help offset some of our local expenses, and we work, utilizing
graduate students and undergraduate students helping in our
services, which is great training for them for the future, as
well.
Mr. Inglis. And you are the folks that set drought levels
and things like that. Is that right? I mean, in South Carolina,
for example, the State Climate Office there declares when we
are, what level of drought, and that sort of thing.
Dr. Doesken. We participate greatly in that process. State
climatologists probably spend more time dealing with drought-
related issues than most any of the other factors that we get
to work with.
Mr. Inglis. And I guess I am maybe asking a question you
don't know, because it is South Carolina, but does that, is
that a call by that office, or do they work with somebody else
to make the call about restrictions, for example, on water
usage?
Dr. Doesken. It is a function of State drought response
plans, how they have been written. Usually, we are advisors to
the process. In only some states does the State climatologist
actually make that call.
Mr. Inglis. That is helpful. So, do you feel that the State
climate office's standards and expectations for climate data
are met by NOAA and other federal entities involved in
producing those, that data?
Dr. Doesken. We think they are doing a pretty good job
monitoring for federal response, and a regional response. For
State-based responses, higher resolution information, both in
time and in space, are often required, and the measurement of
variables that federal programs haven't always monitored. For
example, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, things that help us
with the water balance a little bit more. That is why a lot of
states have gotten into data collection, to fill in those gaps.
Mitigating a Duplication of Services
Mr. Inglis. So, that is all very helpful. I think the thing
that I might ask, just a final question. Has anybody got any
additional thoughts about how to make sure that we don't create
a duplicative kind of situation here in any, I mean, it has
been sort of the common thread of questions emanating up here.
I don't know if anybody has any further observations about
that.
Mr. Behar. That is one of the tough questions, and we want
to neither duplicate what is out there, nor create or
institutionalize a dispersed structure at the climate level, as
distinguished from the weather or the monitoring or data level,
where obviously, we have got dispersed data sources, and need
to collect those, and they are collected well, by GS, although
we pay for our GS gauges now in San Francisco, because they
have been discontinued by GS. And National Climate Data Center,
and other places where that data exists.
In terms of the policy-making, the decision-making, the
climate, decadal scale information that we are starting to
think about needing to plan around, as are many stakeholder
entities, the challenge is to exactly do what you posed as the
challenge, which is to have as much of a centralized, but at
the regional level, place for stakeholders, by the way, of
varying sophistication, to go to.
It is worth noting that Seattle Public Utilities is
probably at one end of the sophistication scale, at the high
end, in terms of tracking this information. And there are many
others who are really struggling with where to get the climate
information, and how to think about it, as I think Dr. Barron
alluded to as well.
And we really need to meet all of those needs, across the
spectrum, and provide, as much as possible, the kind of
research institution and planning assistance that Seattle has
in its backyard with the SIG program that not everybody has.
That is starting to happen. We are starting to learn from
examples like the RISA model, which is not duplicating what is
going on anywhere else, in our view, and that is obviously one
of the key questions in forming an NCS that is successful.
Mr. Inglis. Well, I would like to add this, Mr. Chairman.
You know, it is interesting that last night, we were having our
dinner conversation at our house, about Wikipedia, and whether
our girls should cite it, you know, and I think that they are
more accurate. Isn't there some story about how they are more
accurate than Encyclopaedia Britannica or something, fewer
mistakes or something. And it really does show the change that
information technology has brought, and the way the government
has to figure out a way to harness the abilities we have now,
because it used to be that you had this office doing this, and
that one doing that, and this other one doing that, and they
were all funded different ways, and they all had their jobs,
and they didn't step on each other's toes. It doesn't deliver
what people need, and what people expect, and it is a good
expectation, that they get from private vendors, is you can go
to the website, and you can drill down to exactly what you
want.
And so, you know, get down to my farm, tell me what is the
rainfall at my farm. It is really what we in government have to
figure out how to deliver, if we are going to remain relevant,
and make, put it another way, deliver the kind of quality
services that people expect, and that they are paying for. So,
it really is, it is a big challenge here, is to figure out how
to get this delivered in the most cost effective, powerful way.
It is very important work, and we thank you.
Chair Baird. Fascinating line of questions, as always, Mr.
Inglis. As you thought, mentioned that, I was thinking one of
the questions, really, is so what does it look like ten years
from now? I mean, the sort of, just as we are talking about
predicting climate, let us predict the organizational
structure, and what does it look like ten years from now?
And, you know, is it an integrated body that creates the
Google Earth, that we can scan out, so I could zoom in on a
computerized image of any area of our country, and ultimately,
maybe, the planet, and then, time project that out on a host of
variables, whether it is water supply, temperature, moisture,
ground moisture, vegetation cover.
Now, I am guessing that somewhere, that may happen, and it
would be incredibly convenient, and maybe with some depth of
confidence parameters around that, but how we get there is
really sort of the question, and I think you are onto something
there, in terms of what will that look like.
Any final comments, we are about to conclude, but I can see
Dr. Doesken has got something he wants to say.
Dr. Doesken. But even if you are there, and I can envision
that, too, because we are so close to that in many ways, still,
converting that information to appropriate and wise decisions
is a whole other ballgame, and we see that all the time, where
people say I am smothered with data. This is fantastic. What do
I do with it?
Chair Baird. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Doesken. And that is where a service provides that, as
well.
Chair Baird. Mr. Fleming.
Mr. Fleming. Just to add to that. I think that issue of
what to do with the information is one where it needs to rely,
or reside with the local jurisdiction responsible for making
those decisions.
So, in the case of Seattle, we certainly look for and look
towards having access to that type of information, but the
tacit knowledge that we have, for instance, of our water supply
system, is critical for making decisions, long-term decisions
about what is the best course of action for that system. So, I
just wanted to kind of echo that, at least in our situation,
having local involvement in the development of adaptation
options and decision-making is essential.
Chair Baird. Great. I thank our panelists, and we will just
conclude with the observation I made for the prior panelists.
If there are things, thoughts or ideas or suggestions that have
been stimulated by this interaction, or issues that you feel we
could use some further insights into, please feel free to, and
ask to provide that information.
As is customary, the record will stay open for two weeks
for additional comments from Members. We are grateful for the
Committee's, or the panelists' participation, and with that,
this hearing stands adjourned.
Thank you very much.
[Whereupon, at 12:27 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]