WASHINGTON, Dec. 7,
2016 - Looming among the last-minute business for the adjourning 114th Congress
is a bevy of investments and directives in atmospheric and climate science and
communications aimed to keep Americans safer, help farmers and ranchers
succeed, broaden participation in weather forecasting, and make agencies
studying weather and climate cooperate more effectively.
“From long-term
forecasting that can prevent costly agricultural losses to more actionable
information about severe weather, this legislation will help save lives and
reduce avoidable property loss.” Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune,
R-S.D., declared when the Senate had amended and passed the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation
Act of 2016 unanimously last
week. The House passed the bill earlier, and a staffer for a House Science
Committee member says the panel is asking leadership to approve the Senate’s
amended version and send it to the president before adjournment this week. Note
that few actions are sure bets when lawmakers are rushing for the exits.
The bill aims at
reforms. Although just weeks ago the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) successfully launched GOES-R, its first of a new class of very
high-powered, technologically advanced weather satellites, the legislation
presses NOAA to rein in its serious cost-overruns and stay on schedule with its
research and development programs.
Congress is also
trying to expand ground-level participation. For example, it will require at
least one employee at each of the National Weather Service’s 122 forecasting
sites be assigned as the “warning coordination meteorologist,” who must work
with other NWS offices, “local officials, media, and other channels to maximize
the usefulness and effectiveness of emergency communications” and ensure that
the public is fully informed.
The bill also aims
to bring private weather and climate experts’ contributions into NOAA’s work.
It urges that at least 30 percent of the funds authorized for research and
development be made available to private parties “through competitive grants,
contracts, and cooperative agreements.”
Also, note that NOAA
has already tiptoed into one of this legislation’s directives. The bill directs
the agency “to enter into a pilot program contract to evaluate the private
sector’s capabilities in providing space-based weather data.” But in September,
it issued its first two contracts, totaling about $1 million, through its new
Commercial Weather Data Pilot to two companies, GeoOptics and Spire Global, to
furnish satellite data for NOAA forecasting. The legislation ensures that such
NOAA efforts continue.
For purposes of
helping farmers and ranchers, Elwynn Taylor, veteran meteorologist and
extension climatologist at Iowa State University, says two areas of advancement
are most important. First is the launch and proper use of the new sophisticated
satellites to monitor and report detailed local climate conditions such as
topsoil moisture and drought stress on plants, along with the expected
sophisticated weather forecasting data.
Second is increased
attention and expertise focused on local climate conditions and forecasts on a
seasonal basis. The legislation, according to the Senate’s summary, presses
NOAA, for example, to increase its capabilities for “long-range forecasts for
time periods between two weeks and two years to allow farmers to make more
informed decisions about when and what to plant.”
While predicting
short-term severe weather events is important for farmers, Taylor said,
agriculture producers also need the longer outlooks on seasonal climate
conditions and year-to-year trends to make good crop and livestock management
decisions. He especially supports the regional Climate Hubs that USDA
set up two years ago to coordinate weather and climate monitoring and research
among its Agriculture Research Service, Forest Service, Natural Resources
Conservation Service, Cooperative Extension, plus NOAA, the Department of
Interior, land grant universities and others.
Taylor wants to see
resources the bill adds at NOAA supporting such collaborative climate research
and monitoring. “I think they’re our hope. Because they will work on not just
what is happening but on what is likely to happen, so that we can get some sort
of a [seasonal] forecast,” he says.
#30
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