Hearing on "How the Mission and Related Research of NOAA Contribute to The National Science Program"
Dr. Susan K. Avery, President and Director
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Good morning, Chairman Mollohan and members of the
Subcommittee. Thank you for the
opportunity to speak with you today about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
and its important contributions to the social and economic well-being of our
nation. My name is Susan Avery, and I am President and Director of
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. We are the world’s largest private non-profit
marine research and higher education organization. We are scientists, engineers, mariners and
students dedicated to understanding the ocean and its interaction with the
Earth system, and to communicating this understanding for the benefit of
society. My own research background
includes studies of atmospheric circulation and precipitation, climate
variability and water resources, and the development of new radar techniques
and instruments for remote sensing. I am
author or co-author of more than 80 peer-reviewed articles. I also have a keen interest in scientific
literacy and the role of science in public policy.
My primary
message today is that NOAA is critical to our nation’s research effort to understand
our planet as an integrated
system in which the oceanic, atmospheric, and terrestrial environments interact
in a highly complex fashion. I also wish
to stress that these are not arcane scientific problems. They are areas of inquiry that have both
immediate and global implications for long-term social and economic well-being
of all peoples and nations. As such,
they require integrated intellectual approaches and close collaboration among
researchers across disciplines, agencies throughout our government, and
governments around the world.
You are doubtless all familiar with
the National Academies 2007 report, Rising
Above the Gathering Storm, which eloquently detailed the central importance
of science and engineering to the U.S. economy, and which called on our
government to support and enhance the national science and technology
enterprise. I wish to press the case
that NOAA is integral to that enterprise, not only for our country but for all
nations. Both the ocean and the
atmosphere are shared globally, and we must have global cooperation to address
such issues as ocean acidification, collapsing fisheries, and adaptation to and
mitigation of global climate change.
NOAA has proven its willingness and ability to pursue such cooperation
in numerous ways over many decades.
Especially notable in recent years was its key role in providing
scientific expertise and data to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. NOAA’s climate modeling capability is
considered one of the best in the world, and its models formed the basis for the
IPCC reports.
In many ways, NOAA is unusual among
our government’s science agencies. It is
a mission agency responsible for monitoring both the atmosphere and the ocean,
from predicting hurricanes to protecting fisheries. It works to conserve and manage coastal
resources and environments, where 14 of our country’s 20 largest urban areas
are located and where more than half of our population lives. And it operates our National Weather
Service. Additionally, however, NOAA
funds scientific research in use-defined areas.
It not only predicts weather, it seeks to understand and predict
climate. In effect, it makes a
science investment in order to understand connectivity in our whole-Earth
system. It conducts and funds research
to develop unified modeling, understanding, and prediction across atmospheric,
fresh water, and ocean ecosystems. Put
another way, it touches all of our lives.
One example
is so obvious that we tend more and more to take it for granted—the National
Weather Service. We plan our daily
commutes and our annual vacations with an ear always tuned to the weather. Farmers sow and reap according to NOAA
weather predictions. Commercial
transportation and shipping, both on land and at sea, depend on accurate
weather forecasting to get products to market in the most cost-efficient way
possible. NOAA warns us of approaching
hurricanes and blizzards and alerts us to levels of fire danger in our state
and national parks and forests.
With
respect to forecasting the impacts of short to long-term climate variability,
NOAA has long been a leader in detecting, predicting, and understanding the
effects of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.
ENSO, as it’s known, occurs every three to seven years, when Pacific
trade winds either weaken or reverse, blowing east instead of west, causing
surface water in the eastern tropical Pacific to be warmer than usual and altering
atmospheric circulation patterns with near-global impacts on climate. As one of the key partners in the decade-long
Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere (TOGA) research program ending in 1994, in
which many WHOI scientists and engineers participated, NOAA helped to
design—and today continues to maintain—the major components of the ENSO
Observing System, which provides accurate wintertime forecasts up to a year in
advance based on knowledge of El Niño and La Niña events. The often severe results of such events are
well known—based on the region, they can include drought or floods, colder or
warmer than usual winters, more or fewer hurricanes and typhoons. In the U.S., coastal storms alone cause
more than 70%, or $7 billion, of natural disaster losses every year.
An El Niño
event in 1997-98 is estimated to have caused an overall U.S. economic impact of approximately
$25 billion. That was about $1.2 billion
better than the impact of an event in 1981-82, attributed in part to better
forecasts and the actions people took in response to mitigate damage. The annual economic return to the U.S.
economy of the ENSO Observing System is between 13 and 26 percent, more than
double OMB’s specified minimum rate-of-return for Federal projects. The economic bottom line is truly eye-opening:
best estimates are that nearly a third of our Gross Domestic Product, or $3 trillion,
is either directly or indirectly affected by weather and climate. That is a simple but startling measure of
NOAA’s importance.
Yet,
consider: the ENSO Observing System,
spread out across the vast reaches of the southern Pacific
Ocean, is anchored by only 70 moored ocean buoys, supplemented by
free-drifting ARGO floats and ship-based observations. By contrast, in Maryland
and Virginia
alone, there are 84 land-based weather stations. Together with the Environmental Protection
Agency, NOAA is playing a key role in the U.S.-led international effort to
develop a Global Earth Observation System of Systems that would link together many
thousands of weather stations, hundreds of ocean buoys and floats, and dozens
of environmental satellites in order to provide the integrated data and
research approach necessary for a great leap forward in forecasting
accuracy. In short, a greater investment
in NOAA’s research, operations, and services, including its many academic and
industrial research partners, could bring a commensurate increase in return on
that investment. Again, broad
collaboration is essential.
An example of how NOAA
encourages collaboration to tackle issues of enormous socioeconomic importance is
the agency’s promotion of Regional Integrated Science and Assessment (RISA)
programs, which reach out to stakeholders to incorporate more science into
resources management in order to improve how communities, planners, managers, and
end-users such as farmers and public utilities prepare for and adapt to a
changing climate. By funding extramural
research teams while requiring effective partnerships with other federal
agencies, state and local governments, and the private sector, NOAA is helping
our nation to deal with potentially devastating issues like the growing demand
for and conflict over water resources in the West, the impacts of prolonged
droughts, and coastal erosion. Here too,
NOAA’s influence is international—knowledge gained and improved forecasting
models are freely shared with international colleagues. That intellectual generosity is serving to
generate momentum in other countries to incorporate RISA-type activities in
their own resource management efforts.
In fact, NOAA
plays a key role in resource management, not only along our coasts but
throughout the nation. An example is the
National Integrated Drought Information System, which will provide a drought
monitoring and forecasting system at federal, state, and local levels. When complete, this will be an interactive
system that not only collects data and serves as a forum for stakeholders and
policy-makers, but also provides tangibles like early warnings of impending
drought, comparative information about risk and impact, and support for policy planning
necessary to manage impacts, all based on scientific research either conducted
by or funded by NOAA.
A robust
scientific understanding is equally important to management of the nation’s
fisheries. Looking again at economic
impacts, in 2006, the commercial fishing industry in the U.S. generated
$103 billion in sales and $44 billion of income, and supported 1.5 million jobs.
Recreational fishing generated $82
billion in sales, $25 billion of income and supported 534,000 jobs. In addition to its contribution to the
nation’s economy and food supply, both commercial and recreational fishing are
strong elements of the traditional culture and social values of many coastal
states and communities.
NOAA’s
National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) has responsibility for the management
of fishing activity between the 3-mile and 200-mile limits of U.S. waters,
and manages 230 commercial stocks via 47 different management plans
administered by 8 regional Fishery Management Councils. Of these, 89 stocks are considered overfished
or subject to overfishing. An additional
33 fish and 32 non-fish species are protected by NOAA Fisheries under the
Endangered Species Act.
NOAA has the
primary responsibility for sustaining these fishery ecosystems and the economies
and cultures they support. Significant
declines in fishery production over the last several decades have in most cases
been linked to excess fishing pressure, often a symptom of inadequate
management plans that are based on single stock assessments and rely on
limitation of gear or effort to restrict catches. In recent years, the fishery science community
has recognized the importance of understanding and managing coastal fisheries
at the ecosystem level. This type of
Ecosystem Based Management (EBM), increasingly embraced in principle by NOAA,
considers multiple components of a fishery ecosystem, including major physical
and biological factors that affect recruitment and survival of commercial
species and sustainability of their populations. EBM allows development of management principles
based on the reality of ecosystem function, and at the same time provides
protection for habitats and the biodiversity they support.
Unlike
previous management schemes that could be based on landings data and routine
surveys, however, EBM rests on understanding a much more complex ecosystem
structure, requiring a broader set of observations and more sophisticated
interpretation and modeling. Achieving this will require significant
participation by the academic research community working with NMFS and other
NOAA scientists. Current solicitations
for NOAA Cooperative Institutes recognize this need, and timely progress in
ensuring the future sustainability of our fishery resources will only be
possible through more extramural research support, whether for Cooperative
Institutes or by other mechanisms. This
is another powerful example of the value of NOAA’s research partnership with
the larger academic community.
An even
broader partnership is seen in NOAA’s Integrated Ocean Observing System. IOOS binds together a distributed network of open
ocean and coastal observing capabilities with a comprehensive data management
and distribution system that will provide immediate, relevant information about
ocean conditions to a wide range of users. The system, organized through 11 regional
associations that can tailor observational assets and products to local needs,
provides the marine equivalent of short- and long-range weather forecasts to
fishermen, shipping, recreational boaters, Coast Guard, state and city planners
and coastal residents. The development
of the IOOS involves NOAA with academic, commercial and government groups to
design, build and maintain an observing network that meets real scientific,
economic and public safety needs.
All of these
examples illustrate the scope of NOAA’s responsibilities to the nation,
encompassing ocean, land, and atmosphere, and their connections and collective effect
on our planetary environment and global society. We in the earth science community greatly
value NOAA’s important role in all these areas, and the productive research
collaborations that we have developed over the years, and which we hope to
expand in the future. I
want to emphasize that the extramural research conducted by NOAA and its partners
is critical to the agency’s own success.
Research leads to understanding that refines the models that
improve prediction that informs policy and therefore helps determine the
ultimate economic benefit. In short, it
is essential that all of NOAA’s operations and services be based on science.
In summary,
my recommendation is simple. They echo
those of the Rising Above the Gathering
Storm report. Given the breadth of
its mission portfolio, the wide range of science needed to support that mission,
and the ever-increasing demand for its products and services, I believe a
doubling of NOAA’s research budget can only increase the remarkable return on
investment cited above. Given those
clearly defined economic benefits, we were all pleased to see recognition for
NOAA in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Included in that legislation is $111 billion for
infrastructure and science—a good investment.
But to design and construct billions of dollars of infrastructure informed
by 20th century weather forecasts rather than 21st
century climate forecasts is short-sighted.
We have a National Weather Service; now we need to give the nation the
resources to realize its plans for a National Climate Service.
As things
stand, the scope of NOAA’s mission far exceeds the dollars devoted to it. Many of its facilities and operations are partially
paid for out of its research budget, shortchanging the very science and
partnerships that support and inform those services and operations and that
contribute so greatly to NOAA’s national value.
In fact, the total research component of NOAA’s 2009 budget request,
$537 million, is only 14% of its total budget.
That mismatch between funding for services and operations and funding
for research can only, in turn, shortchange sound policy and decision-support. Increasing NOAA’s research budget and recalibrating
that balance will be in line with this Administration’s
determination to restore the voice of science to the collaborative
formation of national environmental policy.
That will be good for NOAA, good for science, and, most of all, beneficial
for the nation.
Originally published: March 4, 2009