Editor: Jim Elliot
Contributors: Alan Weinstein, Ginny Frost, and Julie Burba
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Congress returned from its month-long summer recess early this month.
The legislators already have a leg up on spending bills, having completed work on 13 bills for next year. The outlook for final approval of the measures was optimistic, according to most observers, primarily because there have been no major policy disputes of the nature that led to two government shutdowns two years ago.
To date, seven bills have been approved by both chambers and await House–Senate conferences to iron out differences. The House has approved an additional spending bill and the Senate three more.
Although there are stalemates such as disputes over abortion, B-2 bombers, Bosnia, and Native American tribal rights, none would appear to represent any serious problems to the budgets of NASA, NOAA, NSF, DOE, or EPA.
In the meantime, Senate and House conferees have been named for the VA/HUD/Independent Agencies bill, H.R. 5158. In the Senate, the conferees are Christopher Bond (MO), Ted Stevens (AK), Thad Cochran (MS), Conrad Burns (MT), Richard Shelby (AL), Ben Nighthorse Campbell (CO), and Larry Craig (ID), all Republicans; and Barbara Mikulski (MD), Robert Byrd (WV), Patrick Leahy (VT), Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Tom Harkin (IA), and Barbara Boxer (CA), Democrats. On the House side, the Republican conferees are Jerry Lewis (CA), Robert Livingston (LA), Tom DeLay (TX), James Walsh (NY), David Hobson (OH), Joe Knollenberg (MI), Rodney Frelinghuysen (NJ), Mark Neumann (WI), and Roger Wicker (MS). The Democrats on the committee are Louis Stokes (OH), David Obey (WI), Alan Mollohan (WV), Marcy Kaptur (OH), Carrie Meek (FL), and David Price (NC).
A number of items remain to be resolved in conference. For NSF, the House would provide $120 million more than the request, and the Senate would give only $10 million over the request. The House would increase research and related activities by $23 million over the request, the Senate by only $10 million more.
The House also would provide more than requested for education and human resources and major research equipment, while the Senate would fund these accounts at the level requested. The House would increase funding for NASA by $148 million over the request, increasing human space flight by $100 million while providing requested levels for space science and Mission to Planet Earth. The Senate would fund human space flight, space science, and Mission to Planet Earth at the requested levels. An amendment on the Senate floor to cut NASA's mission support by $100 million to increase HUD and FEMA programs makes the Senate recommendation for NASA to come in $100 million below the request, according to the American Institute of Physics Bulletin's Science Policy News.
Also, issues to be reconciled include full up-front funding for NSF's South Pole Station upgrade (the House would provide multiyear funding, the Senate would not), and the House's recommendation to give the NASA administrator authority to transfer up to $150 million from science, aeronautics, and technology and mission support to keep space station construction on schedule, on which the Senate was silent.
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A congressional commission composed of nongovernment science and management experts, separate from possible self-serving interests, and operating under the guidance of the National Academy of Sciences has been suggested to study the NWS by the National Emergency Management Council for Americans United to Maintain the Weather Service.
The recommendation was made 10 September at a press conference held on the Capitol grounds in Washington, D.C., by Rick W. McCoy, council president,and Billy Wagner, emergency manager in Key West, Florida.
The press conference followed a meeting McCoy and Wagner had with Gen. Jack Kelly, who is conducting a study of NWS for the Department of Commerce and NOAA. Kelly's report is due 29 September. However, indications are that he will not meet that deadline.
In his prepared statement, McCoy said, "The American people are at great risk today from inept downsizing of one of the most vital public safety agencies in the nation—the National Weather Service (NWS). The United States has more severe weather than any nation in the world, and our taxpayers have invested over $4 billion to produce the finest weather service in the world.
"Professional emergency managers—frontline troops protecting the public during disasters of every kind—have a long and close working relationship with NWS and are acutely aware of what it takes to maintain this vital agency's state of readiness.
"We have been studying the growing attempt to shrink the Weather Service for some time. This essential service agency was singled out this year in the Department of Commerce for a 10% cut in its 1997 operating budget.
"We have learned that the Senate Commerce Committee last June directed the Commerce Department to transfer already appropriated funds on hand to restore funds that had been withheld from the Weather Service by its immediate supervisory agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Instead, news reports show that the Commerce Department fired the highly professional head of the Weather Service and set up an investigation into the agency's management.
"Our investigation shows that this kind of budget juggling by its parent agency is nothing new to the Weather Service. A succession of temporary overseers has often second-guessed stated requirements from the Weather Service, and Congress has had to intervene to restore funds.
"To protect the public interest in this troublesome gridlock, we implore Congress to appoint a special commission on weather programs composed of nongovernment science and management experts, separate from any possible self-serving interests, under the guidance of the National Academy of Sciences. The Congressional commission should examine the entire scope of the $4 billion modernized Weather Service and study requirements for keeping it modern, including stability of funds, with the objective of maintaining what must at all times be the world's finest weather service."
During the press conference, McCoy said the two men had relayed their concerns to Gen. Kelly during their meeting. McCoy and Wagner visited with several senators and congresspeople and indicated that some of the legislators were concerned that they were not getting all the facts. He said he and Wagner were concerned that Weather Service officials were not being allowed "to give the full story."
On Dr. Joe Friday's reassignment in NOAA from his position as head of the Weather Service, McCoy said Friday had made his career with this agency. He said that for anyone to say the Weather Service had been mismanaged under Friday is "absurd."
Wagner outlined how emergency managers rely on the Weather Service and its forecasts, particularly the National Hurricane Center in making its landfall projections. He also voiced his opposition to the planned closure of NWS' southern regional office in Texas. He explained that the southern region is a critical element to support local forecasts throughout the entire region and complained that closing that office would mean the loss of 15 positions in Florida alone and 66 within the southern region. He said closing the office would be a catastrophe.
He argued that the NWS is being forced to speed up the modernization before the technology is in place, creating a dangerous situation for the entire country.
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The design process for the second and third generation of NASA's planned Earth Observing System satellites will be structured to make key decisions as late as possible in order to take best advantage of the latest science and most advanced technology available, according to a comprehensive review of the agency's Mission to Planet Earth enterprise.
The recently completed review also provided important guidance on how to phase in the deployment of the Earth Observing System (EOS) ground data system and validated the basic plan for the first EOS atmospheric chemistry mission.
The recommendations stem from the first Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE) Biennial Review, conducted internally and then assessed by an independent external panel in response to a NASA commitment to perform such a top-to-bottom review of the enterprise every two years.
"We were impressed with the amount of enthusiasm, effort, and hard thinking that went into the internal process," said Dr. Pamela Matson of the University of California, Berkeley, chair of the MTPE independent external review panel. "We believe the outcome will be an improved ability for the program to take advantage of new scientific insights, technological advances, and partnering opportunities."
The goal of the EOS program is to support the maturing discipline of earth system science by providing precise, comprehensive measurements of earth's land, oceans, atmosphere, and ice cover. Originally organized around three series of identical, large space-based platforms designed to address a wide range of scientific objectives, EOS has been evolving toward smaller, more evolutionary satellites tied to 24 specific measurements.
The results of the biennial review consolidate this evolution into a philosophy of flexible mission designs that will grow from progress in the five major MTPE science themes: land-cover and land-use change, seasonal climate variability, long-term climate change, atmospheric ozone, and natural hazards such as hurricanes and earthquakes.
"This is a major shift in the conduct of this enterprise," said William Townsend, acting associate administrator for the Mission to Planet Earth. "We are committed to meeting the measurement needs of our five science themes in the future through a combination of commercial off-the-shelf spacecraft and aggressive science instrument technology development. This will enable us to delay each post-2002 satellite procurement substantially, which allows us to learn more from ongoing missions and cut the time each mission stays in the development phase to three years or less."
In the footsteps of a February 1996 recommendation from the NASA Advisory Council to consider fundamental changes in the EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS), the biennial review process also produced a plan to phase in higher-level processing of measurements from the first EOS spacecraft, called AM-1, following its scheduled June 1998 launch.
Such processing, which adds extra parameters to the basic calibrated data, would be done on a selected 25% of the data to start and ramp up to 100% over the next three years. Decisions on which datasets to process will be made by a resources board composed of EOS users, chaired by the project scientist, in close coordination with the EOS science teams.
"We strongly support the need for a targeted reduction in processing requirements," Matson said. "If done well, it will almost surely not negatively affect the science program and will result in substantial savings that can be utilized in components of EOSDIS or the science program that turns the data into scientific understanding."
The EOS project office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, and its industrial partner Hughes Information Technology Company, Landover, Maryland, conducted a readiness demonstration of the initial EOSDIS Core System in late August to show critical system functions for acquiring, archiving, processing, and distributing test data from two instruments on the AM-1 spacecraft, and for archiving and distributing data from the upcoming Landsat-7 mission.
For nearly a year, NASA has researched multispacecraft alternatives to the plan to purchase the first EOS Chemistry satellite (Chem-1) from TRW Space and Technology Group, Redondo Beach, California, as part of a pair with the second EOS spacecraft, called PM-1. Due for launch in December 2002, Chem-1 carries four science instruments designed to study the transport and transformation of key atmospheric chemicals and particulates.
The NASA advisory council and the biennial review panel also agreed on the need for the MTPE enterprise to focus more effort on infusing new technology into the EOS missions to follow Chem-1. "There appears to be a commitment among MTPE managers to technology development based on science needs," Matson said. "We strongly support that requirement."
"There will be no technology development in the Mission To Planet Earth enterprise unless it is directly related to our science needs, which in many ways reverses our old way of doing business," Townsend said.
In its more general findings, the external biennial review panel expressed support for the principal investigator-driven approach to new small spacecraft missions under the NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder program, and it recommended an increase in MTPE research and analysis funding.
"With the biennial review completed and its results being incorporated into the program, this program is well positioned for the future," Townsend said. "We're looking forward to a very exciting 12 months of launches and data collection opportunities, including the start of operations for the SEAWIFS ocean color sensor and pending launches of the Lewis spacecraft, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and the first missions of the EOS era," Townsend said.
A summary of the MTPE biennial review results and the full letter report of the independent external review panel are available on the Internet at http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/mtpe/whats_news/bi_review.html
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Sea ice surrounding the Antarctic region may have shrunk as much as 25% between the mid-1950s and the early 1970s, according to an analysis by William K. de la Mare, of Australia's Department of the Environment, Sport, and Territories.
The analysis, published in the journal Nature, is based on whaling records dating back nearly 60 years. Since 1931, whalers have reported the location of each catch to the nearest degree of latitude and longitude to the Bureau of International Whaling in Norway, according to the report. That log comprises about 1.5 million entries.
Whalers usually made their catch within 6 to 22 miles of the ice edge, where krill and other food sources were high and whales were prone to congregate. As a result, de la Mare suggests that the Norwegian records constitute a surrogate measure of the sea ice extent.
Using computer software to track changes in those locations over time, de la Mare found that they crept gradually toward the pole year after year in all locations around the region.
"The Antarctic summer sea ice edge has moved southwards by 2.8 degrees of latitude between the mid-1950s and the early 1970s," he wrote, concluding that there was a decline of approximately 25% in total area covered.
"The conclusions are reasonable and defensible," according to Bernhard Lettau, Program Director for Ocean and Climate Systems in the Office of Polar Programs, National Science Foundation. De la Mare's study is considered provocative and raises the question of whether the phenomenon might be related somehow to global warming. A decline of the magnitude suggested by de la Mare could have a substantial effect on local ocean circulation and climate, including increased precipitation and wind velocity and perhaps even wider effects worldwide.
Researchers have only sketchy information of the sea ice extent in the Antarctic before 1973 when satellite monitoring of the area started. Since then, sea ice extent has fluctuated but remained fairly constant on average, according to scientists. As a result, determination of the scope of long-term changes in the region has been difficult.
Lettau explained that information from limited meteorological records and other sources indicate that temperatures in the Antarctic were much lower in the 1920s and 1930s. It also is known that "in the last 25 years or so," climate has not changed in that area and that the climate was somewhat warmer than it was before.
"The maximum sea ice extent is really tied to the location of the Antarctic circumpolar current, which basically separates cold water from warm water," according to Lettau. If northernmost maximum extent changed drastically, he continued, it could entail "a large climatic effect," warming the Antarctic region and possibly altering the circumpolar current.
In a companion commentary in Nature, Eugene Murphy and John King, of the British Antarctic Survey, suggest that sea ice reflects much more incoming sunlight than does water and also serves as "an insulating blanket, reducing the transfer of heat from underlying oceans to the cold polar atmosphere." An appreciable decline in ice extent therefore could be expected to warm the sea and surrounding air, or vice versa, they concluded.
Also, Claire L. Parkinson and colleagues at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center once devised models to calculate that relationship. They found that sea ice would retreat by 1.4° latitude for every 1° Celsius increase in air temperature. By that measure, the ice decline suggested by de la Mare would have been accompanied by a 2° rise.
However, there is no record that any atmospheric warming occurred in the period from the 1940s to the late 1960s, according to Parkinson. In fact, she said, that period is generally regarded as cooler than normal for the twentieth century.
The only known large-scale warming event in the region was a brief one in the mid-1970s just after the first satellite data became available. For a few years, the images showed that a huge hole of clear water called a polynya opened up in the ice of the Weddell Sea near South America. "But it basically rebounded back" within a couple of years, Parkinson explained.
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Unique weather patterns such as the extreme weather patterns created by El Niño, now occurring in the Pacific, combined with warm waters, are beginning to take a toll on the planet's coral reefs.
According to a news release from the International Year of the Reef, coral bleaching is being observed in a variety of coral species in the Florida Keys, across the Caribbean, and other parts of the world.
Currently, bleached coral is being observed in the Florida Keys from Key Largo to the Dry Tortugas, both offshore at the reef tract and inshore, the report indicated.
"In some spots, we have seen as much as 70% of an area affected," according to Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS) Superintendent Billy Causey. "Another indicator of the severity is that bleaching is occurring in the nearshore waters in species that generally are more adept at adjusting to temperature fluctuations."
Sea surface temperature data indicate that water temperatures in the Keys and the Caribbean are higher than normal, the report read. As temperatures increase, corals become increasingly stressed.
"Temperatures of 86°–87.8° Fahrenheit are common triggers," Causey said. "If these elevated temperatures continue for one or two months, the results can be lethal."
Data collected this summer from the Florida Institute of Oceanography's C-MAN buoys, located strategically along the reef, show summer water temperatures ranging from 86° F to the extraordinarily high 91.4° F, detected at the Long Key station.
This is not the first time that FKNMS waters have experienced the conditions that bring about coral bleaching. Warm waters also contributed to bleaching in the Florida waters in 1980, 1983, 1987, and 1990, according to the release.
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The National Weather Service has announced an improvement to its service of broadcasting severe weather warnings to the public through its network of NOAA Weather Radio transmitters. A new generation of weather radio receivers, using NWS-developed technology, will enable listeners to screen out weather alarms that do not apply to them.
"We want to reduce the 'boy who cried wolf' syndrome by targeting our alarms for specific segments of the listening area," said Louis J. Boezi, NWS deputy director for modernization. "This new warning procedure is a breakthrough because it lets NOAA Weather Radio listeners screen out the severe weather alarms they don't want to hear. If listeners are awakened at 3 A.M. for a severe weather warning 75 miles away, they may eventually tune out all together. We don't want that to happen."
NOAA Weather Radio, the "Voice of the National Weather Service," broadcasts official NWS warnings and hazard information and local forecasts 24 hours a day over a growing national network of more than 450 transmitters. Routine forecast information is updated every 1–3 hours, and NOAA Weather Radio broadcasts are repeated about every 5 minutes.
During an emergency, National Weather Service forecasters interrupt local NOAA Weather Radio programming and send out an alarm tone that activates NOAA Weather Radio receivers within the entire listening area. Since transmitters typically reach people within a range of hundreds of square miles, technical limitations have led to the appearance of "overwarning" for some severe weather events.
Boezi said a new generation of NOAA Weather Radio receivers have a specific area message encoding (SAME) feature that allows consumers to choose only the official NWS watches and warnings they want. Older NOAA Weather Radio receivers continue to work, but these older receivers do not allow listeners to screen out weather service alarms for individual counties.
Boezi praised the efforts of the consumer electronics industry to bring these new NOAA Weather Radio receivers to the marketplace.
"We hope that manufacturers will develop new car radios and citizen band radios capable of picking up SAME-coded alerts," said Boezi. "Since the SAME codes are fully compatible with the Federal Communications Commission's Emergency Alert System, we also hope someday soon to see new television sets, pagers, cellular phones and other electronic devices capable of receiving SAME-coded alerts. There's a huge market out there for devices that can be preset to receive locally broadcast hazard warnings and alert people any time of the day or night when they may only have minutes to react."
The first brand of the new SAME-capable receiver is sold by RadioShack, and other brands of receivers with the SAME feature are expected to be sold by electronics manufacturers later this year.
Following a tornado that killed more than 20 people in a rural Alabama church on Palm Sunday in 1994, Vice President Al Gore set a goal to make NOAA Weather Radio receivers as common as smoke detectors in American homes and to extend the coverage provided by the NOAA Weather Radio transmitter network to 95% of the United States.
Since the Gore NOAA Weather Radio initiative began, the National Weather Service and other members of the Gore task force have been actively promoting public/private sector partnerships to provide the needed resources. More than 50 new weather radio transmitters have been installed since 1994 through grass roots partnerships combining resources of private enterprises, associations, and local, state, and federal government agencies.
The Arkwright Mutual Insurance Company announced that it is investing $1.2 million to install 10 000 receivers into its customers' facilities for no charge. This will be the largest private investment in the NOAA Weather Radio network and will extend the service into a wide range of companies and organizations nationwide. (See story in August Newsletter.)
The Broadcast range from most weather radio transmitters is approximately 40 miles. The effective range depends on terrain, quality of the receiver, and indoor/outdoor antennas. Before buying any NOAA Weather Radio receiver, consumers should make sure their area is covered by one of the transmitters.
FIPS codes are needed to program the weather radio. A list is being set up on the NWS home page that will list the FIPS codes by state and county along with instructions. In October there will be a toll-free number set up at the Weather Service, (888) NWR-SAME, for those who do not have access to the Internet. The FIPS codes can also be found at the NIST Web site at http://www.itl.nist.gov/div897/pubs/index.htm.
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Hurricane forecasting took a big step forward recently with the successful testing of new and improved instruments that are dropped from a "hurricane hunter" aircraft to measure temperature, pressure, humidity, and wind speed and direction. The experiment, carried out in August during Hurricane Guillermo, produced the most complete and detailed portrait of a hurricane ever seen, said scientists from the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The successful test enabled scientists to deploy the instruments during September's Hurricane Erika from NOAA's new Gulfstream-IV jet in its first operational mission, and from the agency's two WP-3D Orion aircraft. The resulting data caused forecasters at NOAA's National Hurricane Center, who plotted the data in real time, to improve their hurricane track prediction.
During the Guillermo experiment, scientists from NOAA's Hurricane Research Division and NOAA Corps pilots and civilian technical crews from the Aircraft Operations Center flew two research WP-3D aircraft into the category 5 (most intense) hurricane, which was raging over the eastern Pacific Ocean. The aircraft carry Doppler radars that measure winds throughout the hurricane's domain, from the ocean surface to 10 km above.
Nearly a hundred newly developed instruments—called Global Positioning System dropwindsondes—were deployed from the aircraft with an outstanding success rate.
The NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown, one of the most advanced research ships in the world, was south of the storm's center and also released weather balloons periodically to supplement the dropwindsonde data. Weather balloon-borne instruments are similar to dropwindsondes, only they go up instead of down. Collaborating university scientists simultaneously acquired and analyzed NOAA satellite imagery over a larger area around the hurricane, helping put the dropwindsonde data into context.
"Hurricane Guillermo provided an ideal proving ground for the Vortex Motion and Evolution Experiment," said Hugh Willoughby, chief of the Hurricane Research Division. Together the radars, dropwindsondes, ship data, flight level instruments and satellites produced the most complete and detailed portrait of a hurricane to date. Observations of this kind enable tropical meteorologists to further improve forecasts of hurricane motion and address the problem of skillfully forecasting hurricane intensity.
The dropwindsondes were developed as the primary scientific payload of NOAA's new Gulfstream-IV jet, which flies up to 45 000 feet around hurricanes in the steering currents, and for the lower flying P-3 aircraft that penetrate the hurricanes for research purposes. The new dropwindsondes replace 1970s technology.
"We are extremely pleased with the performance of the dropwindsondes," said Capt. George Player, director of the Aircraft Operations Center in Tampa, Florida, which is part of the Office of NOAA Corps Operations.
"Engineers in AOC's Science and Engineering Division have extensively tested the instruments and corrected problems with the manufacturer's original design. Now we're getting the results we want."
The aircraft are equipped with computer systems that "talk" to the dropwindsondes and that create graphic images. This technology allows scientists to actually see the physical processes of hurricanes and measures wind, temperature, and humidity every 5 m as the dropwindsonde falls.
The hurricane vortex experiment was designed to look at how whirlpools and currents of wind cause a storm to move, or how the environment controls the motion and intensity of the storm. Though hurricane track forecasting has improved steadily over the years, the new dropwindsondes technology, coupled with other land-, ship-, aircraft-, and satellite-based technology, will help scientists better understand the physics that determine hurricane intensity. The ultimate payoff will be more precise intensity forecasts that will help prevent overwarning and the adverse economic impact (as much as $660,000 per mile) caused by unnecessary evacuations. The most destructive hurricanes form by the processes of rapid deepening that may convert a 90-mph hurricane into one with 150-mph winds in less than a day. Understanding how hurricanes work will help forecasters anticipate sudden changes in intensity and motion.
"The bottom line is that each time our ability to predict hurricanes improves, we can better protect American lives and property," Willoughby said.
The experiment, and the highly successful first operational flights in the environment of a major hurricane, Hurricane Erika, were the culmination of a multiyear effort that involved NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center, the Hurricane Research Division, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, the National Centers for Environmental Protection, and the National Hurricane Center; outside NOAA, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, was involved.
The Hurricane Research Division is part of NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, Florida. The Office of NOAA Corps Operations, which includes civilians and commissioned officers, manages and operates the agency's fleet of aircraft and ships. The NOAA Corps is the nation's smallest uniformed service.
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Good news and bad news marked the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Andrew's landfall in south Florida on 24 August 1992. The good news: forecasters using the National Weather Service's modernized technology are better able to monitor and warn about hurricanes. The bad news: there are more people and buildings in harm's way, said the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"Hurricane forecasting technology has made significant gains over the past five years," said Robert W. Burpee, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. "But there's also much more at risk as populations grow along our eastern and gulf coasts."
In the early 1990s, the National Weather Service, the Hurricane Center's parent organization, had just embarked on a 10-year, $4.5 billion modernization and restructuring program.
Even before Hurricane Andrew, the National Hurricane Center was among the weather service's top priorities. A new building specifically designed to withstand major hurricane (category 3, 4, and 5 Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale) winds and flooding was being planned in 1990.
"A hardened building was needed during Hurricane Andrew," said Burpee. During Andrew hurricane forecasters worked on the sixth floor of a commercial office building in Coral Gables heavily damaged by the storm. Forecasters kept vital operations going despite loss of radar and satellite antennas. "Wind gusts of 163 mph battered the center, making frisbees of our 15-foot satellite dishes and kicking a vintage 1957 radar dome from its 12-story perch like some huge soccer ball. Back-up generator power was barely adequate to the task."
Even with the loss of local Miami radar during Andrew, a new Doppler radar from the National Weather Service office in Melbourne, Florida, some 180 miles away, painted the hurricane's outline very high over south Florida and gave hurricane forecasters vital information as they tracked the path of the storm. In August 1997, the weather service completed installation of 164 Doppler weather radars around the nation as part of its modernization. Twenty-nine of these radars now serve hurricane-vulnerable areas of the Gulf and Atlantic coastal states. The radars allow forecasters to observe and calculate the speed and direction of severe weather elements such as tornadoes and violent thunderstorms associated with hurricanes.
Two state-of-the-art geostationary satellites (GOES-8 and -9) were launched in 1994 and 1995. Their high-resolution images and atmospheric soundings now give forecasters the continuous monitoring necessary for intensive analysis of the atmospheric triggers for severe weather conditions.
A new high-altitude jet, Gulfstream-IV (SP), was officially launched this hurricane season. The jet will probe the atmosphere below 45 000 feet collecting data on the midlevel steering currents never seen before and feed it to the newest computer model introduced in 1995 by NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, in Princeton, New Jersey. Over the last two decades, computer modeling has helped forecasters improve 24-hour storm track prediction by about 20%.
Preliminary studies show that data from the Gulfstream-IV aircraft, coupled with soundings from GOES satellites, should further reduce forecast errors significantly.
"Advances in forecasting technology are vital," said Jerry Jarrell, the hurricane center's deputy director. "For every mile we don't have to 'overwarn' and evacuate, we save up to $1 million."
Hurricanes represent a growing problem for our increasingly crowded coastlines. "There are just more people and construction in harm's way," Jarrell said. "More population and property at risk mean longer lead times are necessary to prepare a community. Without technological advances and ongoing research, longer lead times would not be possible."
Studies by Drs. Christopher Landsea of NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and Roger Pielke Jr. of the National Center for Atmospheric Research suggest that coastal populations and construction have grown from Texas to Maine. Florida's population alone nearly tripled between 1960 (5 million) to 1995 (14 million). From 1988 to 1993 the total value of insured property in coastal counties (Texas–Maine) grew from $13.0 to $21.4 trillion. On average over the past 71 years, hurricanes would have caused about $4.8 billion in damage annually (when adjusted for inflation to 1995 conditions). Hurricane Andrew's toll was about $30 billion.
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The Public, Private Partnership (PPP) 2000 program, a unique partnership of public and private organizations seeking to reduce vulnerability to and losses from natural hazards, has planned 14 forums in 1997 and 1998.
The first forum, dealing with insurance, was held at the White House on 10 September. (See related story below.)
The PPP 2000 program was started last April by the Subcommittee on Natural Disaster Reduction (SNDR), the Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS), and a number of other organizations.
Objectives of the program are to develop a framework for a public–private partnership for mitigating the effects of natural disasters; identify the broad public policy issue facing such a partnership; identify opportunities for interaction among stakeholders; define specific policies that can be addressed through actions by sponsors and participants to effect a paradigm shift in the way individuals, businesses, communities, and governments manage their risk from natural hazards; develop a common agenda to deploy technologies, products, and processes to improve disaster response, recovery, and mitigation; and identify the short- and long-term benefits of the forum and future uses of the ideas and information.
Other forums scheduled are the following.
All forums will be held in Washington, D.C.
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The need for collective cooperation and coordination of forces in both the public and private sectors served as the primary theme of the first Public, Private Partnership (PPP) 2000 forum, held at the White House on 10 September.
That point was stressed over and over by speakers and panelists during the day-long meeting, which focused on initiatives of the insurance industry. The meeting was sponsored by the Subcommittee on Natural Disaster Reduction (SNDR) and the Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS).
The spirit of the forum was underlined in opening remarks by Dr. John H. Gibbons, assistant to the president for Science and Technology; Secretary of Commerce William Daley; Dr. William Hooke, chair, SNDR; and General Wilson Cooney, chairman of the board, IBHS.
"Reducing losses from natural disasters is one of the administration's top priorities for science and technology," explained Gibbons. ". . . [T]he stakes are enormous: natural disasters (caused by hurricanes, floods, hail, tornadoes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions) threaten the physical safety of virtually all Americans, and, currently, the average total cost to our nation is about $1 billion a week. And the cost has been growing, having doubled or tripled each decade for the past 30 years.
"When we factor in climate change with natural disasters, the situation takes on a much more sobering aspect. Under conditions of global climate change in the coming decades, the earth's water cycle will intensify. Some areas will be threatened by increased flooding while others will suffer through an increased incidence of drought as continental interiors become warmer and drier.
"We are beginning to understand the influence of interannual climate variability on the hydrologic cycle. The Pacific Ocean is now apparently developing a 'Super El Niño,' possibly causing even more extreme floods and droughts than we have seen in the past.
"Of course, one of the truly intriguing questions in climate science right now is the relationship between short-term climate variability, associated with El Niño and La Niña events, and longer-term climate change and global warming. The recent pattern of El Niño events is quite anomalous when compared to the long-term record, and we don't know why."
"How do we respond?" he asked.
"I believe that appropriate responses will require cooperation and participation from many sectors of our society," Gibbons explained, and he identified the insurance industry; federal, state, and local government; and the scientific community as major contributors.
"If we take action together to strengthen the nation's infrastructure, improve our scientific understanding and forecasting abilities, undertake preventive action, and better serve states and local communities, we can greatly reduce the impacts of these unwanted events," he reasoned.
Commerce Secretary Daley described his department as "a strong but invisible player" in the natural disaster arena. He said the department was exploring the link between climate and natural disasters and cited the high costs involved in mitigating natural disasters.
"We must ensure," he explained, "that our efforts make good economic sense." The problem to be faced, explained Hooke, "is one of success, not failure," pointing out that the increases in population, the movement of people to urban areas, increased per capita wealth, social change, and scientific and technological advances underscore success and progress.
When the nation was rural and widely dispersed, disasters were not as disastrous in terms of death, injuries, and damage, he said. By urbanizing, he continued, we need a highly sophisticated infrastructure.
"When we have a 1% disruption of our roadways (because of a storm or disaster)," he explained, "we don't have a 1% effect on the community."
Very little of the money being spent for disasters is devoted to trying to find ways to lessen the impact of the disaster, he said. An effort is being made to correct that, he continued.
Cooney, also an executive with the USAA Insurance Company, suggested that a national will to do something about reducing natural disaster losses has to be generated. He compared the situation to seat belts. At first, he said, attracting people to them was difficult. Now, however, he said it would be difficult to find anyone who would purchase a vehicle without seat belts.
Referring to the floods in Grand Forks, he said that disaster could have been prevented "had we had a national will and focused on it. We can prevent a lot of this from happening."
He said 1.5 million homes will be built in the United States this year "that can't stand winds" of great force. He also said a lot of homes could have been rebuilt that "provide people with a means of escape" during a natural disaster.
One of the steps the insurance industry has taken, he explained, is a volunteer program designed to make some 92 000 day care centers resistant to natural disasters.
"We have to figure out how to make these disasters nonevents," he said, pointing out that because homes have been built or been rebuilt to resist the effects of major storms and hurricanes, people in Bermuda just close their shutters and go on about their business without tragic losses.
"Sometime, somewhere, and someplace," he said, "we have to take the bull by the horns. That time is now!"
He said a cooperative program involving the establishment of better building codes, better and faster claims processing, and improvements in the infrastructure that deny bureaucrats from preventing progress is needed.
He said the PPP 2000 program, a cooperative endeavor of 19 federal agencies comprising the SNDR, the IBHS, and other private sector organizations, might well be "the partnership that is the vehicle" that will accomplish those goals.
No individual stakeholder can handle the losses associated with natural disasters, John Mulady, director of Industry Relations with the USAA Insurance Company, told the audience of approximately 100 senior representatives from government and the private sector.
He pointed out that "different people in different sectors" have different vocabularies when discussing natural disasters. Words such as "peril," "vulnerability," "risk," "loss," and "catastrophe" mean different things to different people. Engineers have one definition, he said, homebuilders have another, for example, and the words don't mean the same.
Their meanings also change, he said. A catastrophe was anything with losses over $5 million in 1966, and now it is $25 million.
"We need a common vocabulary of commonly used terms," he suggested.
Mulady was a panelist on a panel on "Specific Opportunities to Create a Common Agenda to Work Together," moderated by Professor Henry Quarantelli of the University of Delaware. Other panel members were Bryan Freeman, assistant vice president, Underwriting, State Farm Fire and Casualty Company, and Eldon Ziegler, vice president, Industry Affairs, Nationwide Insurance Company.
An overview of the PPP 2000 forum was made by Dr. Walter Hays of the U.S. Geological Survey and a member of the PPP 2000 Forum Working Group.
During the morning session, keynote presentations were made by Kay Goss, associate director of Preparedness, Training and Exercises, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and by Harvey Ryland, president of IBHS.
Professor Dennis Mileti of the University of Colorado Natural Hazards Center was the luncheon speaker.
An afternoon panel concentrated on "Public Policy Driving an Insurance Market," moderated by Ronald Demerjian, president, Property Insurance Plans Services Office. Panelists were Dottie Harris, special assistant to the superintendent, New York State Insurance Department; James Sadler, assistant vice president, Unisun Insurance Company; and Henry Kelly, acting associate director for Technology, Office of Science and Technology Policy.
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From National Guard magazine, September 1997.
The Tennessee Army National Guard has received the first National Guard Meteorology Measuring Set (MMS), a system that represents a technological leap in technology and gives the guard the same modern equipment used by the active army.
The MMS was delivered to the "Hard as Hickory" 196th Field Artillery (FA) Brigade in Chattanooga, the first of 10 National Guard units to receive the equipment.
Field artillery meteorological information is crucial to range safety and to achieve the field artillery mission of firing to effect. Accurate artillery fire requires correction for variation in air density and wind speed and direction. The corrections can be dramatic.
A Fort Sill, Oklahoma, accuracy study indicated that meteorological data can represent up to 43% of the bias error for cannon-predicted fire and up to 94% for rocket-predicted fire.
The MMS currently is being upgraded to include the AN/TMQ-50 semiautomatic surface sensor and GPS radiosonde capability. The SMS reduces operator workload by automatically collecting and entering surface observation data. The GPS radiosonde upgrade provides improved accuracy and will allow the system to work in the NAVAID mode after the traditional NAVAID systems, such as LORAN, VLF, and OMEGA, are phased out.
The 196th FA is currently slated to go to Bosnia to provide ballistic meteorological information to support the field artillery.
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has awarded a contract of $3.75 million to BSB Electronic Charts, LLP, of Bangor, Maine, to provide digital versions of official NOAA navigation charts for use by U.S. government agencies.
Known as Araster nautical charts and displayed on computer monitors, these electronic navigation tools are exact replicas of the traditional paper nautical charts produced by NOAA. The computer-based charts can be used in conjunction with other navigation aids such as the global positioning system (GPS) to provide ships with instantaneous, accurate positions and navigation information.
BSB Electronic Charts produces raster nautical charts in CD-ROM format for sale to the public and shipping industry under an exclusive arrangement for the use of NOAA's original digital chart files. The new contract will be available for use by all U.S. federal agencies wishing to purchase raster charts.
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Robert W. Burpee, director of the National Weather Service's Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center in Miami, has requested reassignment from his director's duties, citing health concerns. To accommodate this request, Department of Commerce human resource officials report that Burpee will transfer to a senior scientist position within the Center, effective 31 August 1997. Burpee has been the center's director since July 1995.
Jerry Jarrell, currently the Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center deputy director, will serve as acting director in the interim. Department of Commerce human resource officials report that the search for a new Hurricane Center director was to begin 2 September 1997.
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