[Senate Hearing 114-561]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-561
IMPROVEMENTS IN HURRICANE FORECASTING AND THE PATH FORWARD
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OCEANS, ATMOSPHERE, FISHERIES, AND COAST GUARD
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 25, 2016
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation
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SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JOHN THUNE, South Dakota, Chairman
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi BILL NELSON, Florida, Ranking
ROY BLUNT, Missouri MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
MARCO RUBIO, Florida CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri
KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota
TED CRUZ, Texas RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
JERRY MORAN, Kansas EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska CORY BOOKER, New Jersey
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin TOM UDALL, New Mexico
DEAN HELLER, Nevada JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia
CORY GARDNER, Colorado GARY PETERS, Michigan
STEVE DAINES, Montana
Nick Rossi, Staff Director
Adrian Arnakis Deputy Staff Director
Rebecca Seidel, General Counsel
Jason Van Beek, Deputy General Counsel
Kim Lipsky, Democratic Staff Director
Chris Day, Democratic Deputy Staff Director
Clint Odom, Democratic General Counsel and Policy Director
----------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OCEANS, ATMOSPHERE, FISHERIES,
AND COAST GUARD
MARCO RUBIO, Florida, Chairman CORY BOOKER, New Jersey, Ranking
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
TED CRUZ, Texas EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin GARY PETERS, Michigan
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on May 25, 2016..................................... 1
Statement of Senator Rubio....................................... 1
Statement of Senator Booker...................................... 3
Statement of Senator Nelson...................................... 5
Statement of Senator Schatz...................................... 20
Statement of Senator Blumenthal.................................. 21
Statement of Senator Markey...................................... 27
Witnesses
Dr. Richard Knabb, Director, National Hurricane Center, National
Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce.................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 9
Appendix
Response to written question submitted to Dr. Richard Knabb by:
Hon. John Thune.............................................. 31
Hon. Marco Rubio............................................. 31
IMPROVEMENTS IN HURRICANE FORECASTING AND THE PATH FORWARD
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 2016
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and
Coast Guard,
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:20 p.m. in
room SR-253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Marco Rubio,
Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Rubio [presiding], Ayotte, Booker,
Nelson, Blumenthal, Schatz, and Markey.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARCO RUBIO,
U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA
Senator Rubio. We'll call this hearing to order.
I want to thank all of you for being here. I apologize for
the delay. We had another meeting that ran over a few minutes.
I wanted to convene this hearing one week before the
official start of the 2016 hurricane season. As the hearing
title suggests, we will be focusing on improvements in
forecasting, and we will discuss how track and intensity
forecasts can be further enhanced.
Ninety years ago, Florida was hit by a Category 4 storm
that was later named the Great Miami Hurricane, but it not only
devastated Miami but crossed the Gulf of Mexico, inflicting
damage to Pensacola Bay. This was a time of little
meteorological data or capabilities, and, thus, alerts to
Floridians came too late.
The National Hurricane Center reports that Coconut Grove
experienced a 15-foot storm surge, and people mistakenly left
their homes as the storm's calm eye centered overhead. It is
unclear how many people perished, as the Red Cross estimates
373 souls lost their lives, but the count cannot be certain as
more than 800 people were missing.
Although my home state of Florida has not seen a hurricane
make landfall in almost 11 years, we must never sit idle and
succumb to hurricane amnesia.
Innovation is the key to ensuring lives and property are
spared by accurate forecasting. This hurricane season, there
are two new tools that will be at the disposal of our
researchers and forecasters.
The first is called the Coyote. It is a small unmanned
aerial system deployed directly from the P-3 hurricane hunters.
This drone is able to fly into weather conditions that are
otherwise impossible for manned aircraft, while capturing
atmospheric observations and relaying that data in real time to
the Hurricane Center.
While this technology has been in testing since 2014, I
hope it will be fully utilized in upcoming storms.
The second involves tools for storm surge, which is
critically important as water is responsible for 90 percent of
the deaths associated with storms. The storm surge watch and
warning graphic, while still in the experimental phase, will
provide watches and warnings to coastal residents similar to
those issued for tropical storms or hurricanes, but will focus
solely on the risks associated with high water. In response to
these risks, it will issue guidance for evacuations in the
areas impacted.
The potential storm surge flooding map, which began testing
during 2014, will finally become operational this season. This
map will highlight areas where storm surge could inundate areas
and estimate the height at which waters could reach.
One only needs to look at Hurricane Katrina to realize how
devastating storm surge can be. Not heeding storm surge
warnings could be the difference between life and death.
I applaud the National Hurricane Center for its work on
this new tool, and I stress the importance of educating people
on the dangers of storm surge. The need for timely and accurate
forecasts cannot be overstated. Indeed, advancements in
forecasting have made great strides as technology and research
have intersected.
As our witness notes in his written testimony, the National
Hurricane Center's five-day track forecast is about as accurate
as the three-day forecast was just 20 years ago.
This improvement in modeling not only allows more notice
for evacuations, which will help especially in the Florida
Keys, but appropriately provides for proper planning and damage
mitigation to be conducted prior to a storm.
Also, increased confidence in the center's track and
intensity forecasts will lead to the public's trust in heeding
those warnings.
Last year, along with my colleague Senator Nelson, I
introduced the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Act. This bill
would require NOAA to improve guidance for hurricane track,
intensity, and storm surge forecasts. It is modeled after
NOAA's Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project, which has laid
the groundwork for coordinating and improving research.
This program has a worthy goal of reducing errors in storm
tracking. And with continued research, it is my hope a
reduction in the loss of life, injury, and economic harm will
result.
Now is the time to continue the momentum for research and
technology to drive our forecasters to better track storms, not
cut millions of dollars from the project, as the
administration's Fiscal Year 2017 budget suggests.
I had hoped my legislation, which was adopted in Chairman
Thune's larger weather bill, would have made it to the
President's desk by now. But, unfortunately, it has been tied
up due to unrelated issues.
Nonetheless, I will continue to push for its passage and
support the center's work for better forecasting.
I must note that Senator Nelson has been a good partner in
these efforts. I know he will be here in a few moments to speak
to us as well, and I look forward to continuing that
partnership so that this does, indeed, get signed into law.
In closing, Floridians will always remember the year 1992
as the year Hurricane Andrew changed the landscape of our state
forever. Known as the third largest hurricane to hit the United
States, Andrew produced a 17-foot storm surge, was responsible
for 23 deaths, and caused $26.5 billion in damage. For the
terrible destruction the storm inflicted on Florida, it also
shed light on the need to be prepared.
Last week, our Nation recognized Hurricane Preparedness
Week. Our witness, Dr. Knabb, took part in many activities
throughout the gulf coast to increase awareness. Education
coupled with strong support from State and local partnerships
is the key to ensuring families and have a hurricane plan in
place.
At the end of the day, the most important function of storm
forecasting is, indeed, to protect the lives of those we love.
Floridians are incredibly resilient, but as we enter this
year's hurricane season, which I hope will not be active, I
urge everyone to assess the risk and develop a plan and be
prepared.
On a side note, two weeks ago, I visited the National
Hurricane Center in Miami, and I saw firsthand the good work
that is being done on this front.
Again, I thank Dr. Knabb for appearing before us today.
Now I recognize Ranking Member Booker for his opening
statement.
STATEMENT OF HON. CORY BOOKER,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY
Senator Booker. I want to thank Chairman Rubio for having
this very important hearing. It is an honor to sit between two
Florida Senators. It is also very appropriate, given how many
people from New Jersey are retiring in Florida.
[Laughter.]
Senator Booker. This really reflects the demographics of
his state.
This is a very important hearing, but it is also a very
timely hearing, as the National Hurricane Center prepares for
the upcoming hurricane season, which starts just next week.
I would like to thank our witness, Dr. Richard Knabb, the
Director of the National Hurricane Center. I really thank him
for his testimony and his dedicated service to our Nation.
On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall in
southern New Jersey. It, too, as was discussed earlier by the
Chairman about Andrew, changed our state forever.
By the time it had dissipated, it had claimed 159 lives and
left more than $70 billion in damage along its path. Sandy
affected the entire eastern seaboard from Florida to Maine with
its gale force wind gusts as far west as the western Great
Lakes.
Hurricanes wreak havoc, bring devastation, and bring pain
and agony to families. They also bring devastation and pain to
our economy.
There are 30 coastal states that border the Atlantic, the
Pacific, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes. Nearly 40
percent of Americans live and work in coastal regions,
contributing to over half of our Nation's economic
productivity.
Rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures are causing more
extreme weather events. Scientists are telling us that we can
expect the frequency of the most intense storms to increase
substantially in some areas, including the Atlantic basin.
Manmade climate change, I believe, is real. Manmade impacts
on our climate system are real.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
manmade global warming by the end of the 21st century will
cause hurricanes globally to be more intense, on average of up
to 11 percent stronger. Those sound like abstract percentages,
but that equates to significantly more damage to our
communities.
Just last year, we had a record-setting storm with
Hurricane Patricia. It reached sustained winds of 215 miles per
hour, the strongest recorded hurricane in history.
Accurate hurricane prediction is absolutely vital for all
levels of government when we are making emergency management
decisions and keeping the public out of harm's way. Those at
the National Hurricane Center, under the leadership of Dr.
Knabb, are making exceptional progress in their efforts to
increase observation and develop products that improve the
forecasting accuracy.
This coming hurricane season, NOAA will deploy up to eight
Coyote unmanned aircraft, which will fly above and through
future hurricanes to better measure critical data within
storms. In addition, the center's new potential storm surge
flooding map will become fully operational this hurricane
season and will provide critical evacuation and emergency
management information, potentially saving many lives.
In New Jersey, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab (GFDL) is
conducting research on the gaps in data linking extreme weather
events and climate change. Scientists at the GFDL use high-
performance computing to develop models and simulations to
improve understanding and prediction of the behavior of the
atmosphere, the oceans, and climate.
This research can be used to understand the causes of
unusual and destructive events such as Sandy and Andrew, and
lead to improved hurricane predictions.
We must do more. We must do more to connect our global
climate models with our regional hurricane models. What is
ultimately needed is a unified prediction system that pushes
the boundaries of forecasting from hours to years so that we
can save more lives.
We cannot prevent future hurricanes from happening, but we
can certainly prevent future lives from being lost. It is
imperative that we increase our funding for R&D in this area.
Again, I want to thank the Chairman for his leadership on
this issue and for holding this hearing. I look forward to
hearing from our witnesses. Now, I imagine I would like to hear
from the other Senator from Florida.
Senator Rubio. The senior Senator from Florida and the
Ranking Member on the Commerce Committee, Senator Nelson.
STATEMENT OF HON. BILL NELSON,
U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA
Senator Nelson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Knabb, I hope you have a very boring job all the way up
through the end of November.
We have been lucky for 10 years, but we weren't so lucky in
1992 with Hurricane Andrew. Then there was Katrina and Rita and
Wilma in 2005, which covered Florida. So I hope you have a
boring job.
As Senator Rubio and I know as native Floridians,
hurricanes are a way of life. It used to be that way. It hasn't
been that way for the last 10 years.
When I was a kid, a hurricane was an excuse to get out of
school. When I was a bachelor, a hurricane was an excuse to
have a party. But now these things are deadly. We know what
Andrew did to Florida's homeowners' insurance marketplace. We
know the 26 people who were killed by Andrew. And you can go on
and on.
What Senator Booker was talking about, this UAV called a
Coyote. We had it here yesterday. It is about that long. You
eject it from the P-3 through a hole in the underside of the
airplane, and it is like a canister instrumented like a normal
sonde, like the sondes that are about that long, that big
around that we eject out of the G-IV that flies at 45,000 feet
over the hurricane. But the P-3 goes right in.
Then this thing comes out of the airplane. It opens up the
wings. It opens up the tail. It opens up the propeller. It can
go out there, get into the eyewall and loiter where the
fiercest winds are, taking all of these measurements to help
folks like Dr. Knabb more accurately predict the hurricane's
track, its intensity, and its winds. That means saving a lot of
lives and a lot of property.
Senator Rubio and I have been looking at this and filing
legislation to codify the Hurricane Forecast Improvement
Project. We simply have too much at risk.
So I am looking forward to the head of the Hurricane
Center's testimony.
Senator Rubio. Thank you. I am going to defer my questions.
Actually, let's begin with our distinguished witness today, Dr.
Knabb, who is the Director of the National Hurricane Center. He
received his Bachelor's Degree in Atmospheric Science from
Purdue, and his Master's of Science and Doctorate of
Meteorology from Florida State University.
I was going to make a joke because I'm from Florida, but
Florida State is great. We talked about it when I went to visit
you.
Dr. Knabb. You can make a Rutgers reference, if you like.
Senator Rubio. He didn't go to Rutgers.
But I was just commenting, when I was visited there, a lot
of the forecasters, Florida State was well-represented in the
Hurricane Center.
He completed his postdoctoral work at the University of
Hawaii, and he has served as Director at the National Hurricane
Center since 2012.
We appreciate you appearing before us today, and we look
forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF DR. RICHARD KNABB, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
HURRICANE CENTER, NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE,
NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Dr. Knabb. Good afternoon, Chairman Rubio and Ranking
Members Booker and Nelson, and members of the Subcommittee. It
truly is my honor to testify before you today on the state of
the United States hurricane forecasting capabilities.
I will also focus on the partnerships between NOAA and
other Federal, State, and local government agencies that make
effective use of these forecasts and to whom we provide
decision-support services, and our public outreach and
education efforts in collaboration with numerous public and
private partners to prepare our citizens well in advance of the
next hurricane.
We at NOAA welcome your interest, support, and the
opportunity to discuss these important topics.
NOAA's National Weather Service has the best forecasters
and technical experts in the world that enable us to provide
critical lifesaving forecasts, warnings, products, and
services. The National Hurricane Center is one of nine centers
of expertise in the National Centers for Environmental
Prediction, known as NCEP. That is part of the National Weather
Service as well.
The Hurricane Center mission is to save lives, mitigate
property loss, and improve economic efficiency by issuing the
best watches, warnings, forecasts, and analyses of tropical
weather, and, importantly, by increasing the understanding of
these related hazards.
The Hurricane Center also conducts an extensive outreach
and education program, and it is a very visible component of
building a weather-ready Nation.
The United States has not experienced a landfall of a major
hurricane defined as Category 3 on our Saffir-Simpson hurricane
wind scale since Wilma in October 2005. Wilma was also the last
hurricane of any intensity to strike the state of Florida.
Nevertheless, several other hurricanes and tropical storms
have come ashore in the United States and resulted in major
impacts and loss of life in this country. Many of those impacts
and losses, including Sandy in New Jersey, have been due to
water, with storm surge causing fatalities and extensive damage
in coastal areas, and deadly and damaging freshwater floods
caused by heavy rain extending well inland.
We continue that hurricanes and tropical storms are not
just coastal events or just a problem for people with
beachfront property.
Our recent studies have documented that during the past
half century, nearly nine out of 10 fatalities, as Senator
Rubio mentioned, in the United States from the direct forces of
tropical cyclones have been due to water. Wind can be dangerous
and destructive, of course, but people often do not realize
just how heavy, powerful, damaging, and deadly water can be.
In addition to the lives we lost at the beach and on boats,
25 percent of these fatalities have been caused by rain-induced
flooding that is the most frequent cause of death, meaning that
it has taken lives in more tropical cyclones than any other
hazard.
But the deadliest hazard overall, however, taking the
largest number of lives overall in far fewer events, has been
storm surge. Storm surge causes about half of the direct
tropical cyclone fatalities in the United States.
So motivated by the desire to reduce storm surge
fatalities, we have placed a heavy focus on storm surge in our
tropical cyclone product development during the past several
years. That work is coming to fruition.
A potential storm surge flooding map is operational
beginning this hurricane season. Developed over several years
in consultation with social scientists, emergency managers,
broadcast meteorologists, and others, this map shows in a game-
changing way, I believe, where the storm surge flooding could
occur; how far inland from the immediate coastline the flooding
could go that could be miles in some locations, in some
scenarios; and how high above normally dry ground storm surge
floodwaters could reach in a given community.
So emergency managers will be able to more clearly identify
areas that they must decide to evacuate. And our media partners
will be much more on the same page, conveying a consistent
message on storm surge.
And the map will first be disseminated when we issue a
hurricane watch or tropical storm watch, and when storm surge
poses a threat for any portion of the Gulf or East Coast of the
United States.
Then, in 2017, we plan to issue a new National Weather
Service storm surge watch and warning for tropical cyclones.
While it is not an actual watch and warning for 2016, we will
this year experimentally issue a prototype storm surge watch/
warning graphic for tropical cyclones for the gulf and east
coast of the United States. This graphic, like the actual
warning will be in 2017, will depict those areas that have a
significant chance of a life-threatening storm surge.
The goal of both, the potential storm surge flooding map
and the storm surge watch and warning, it is to increase the
chances that when people are instructed by their emergency
managers to evacuate, they go.
The effectiveness of our partnerships with the emergency
management community at the Federal, State, local, and tribal
levels are as high as ever. NOAA, FEMA, the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, and the Federal partners in the National Hurricane
Program provide evacuation decisionmaking training and tools to
State and local emergency managers. The jointly run Hurricane
Liaison Team at the Hurricane Center then supports real-time
decisionmaking by facilitating the rapid exchange of critical
information regarding tropical cyclone hazards and their
potential impacts between NHC and emergency managers at all
levels.
Our advances in communicating these individual wind and
water hazards are taking advantage of the tremendous progress
NOAA has made in tropical cyclone predictions. We have reduced
tracked forecast errors by about half during the past 15 years
in our 5-day track forecast today, about as accurate as the 3-
day forecast was about 20 years ago.
In addition, tropical cyclone forecasts were recently
extended from 2 to 5 days, the tropical cyclone formation
forecasts.
Work is also well underway to develop the capability to
issue Hurricane Center forecasts and Weather Service tropical
storm and hurricane watches and warnings even prior to the
formation of a tropical cyclone, with a potential debut of the
capability experimentally in 2017.
This change would enable us to issue even more timely
watches and warnings for storms that form close to the U.S.
coast, including storm surge watches and warnings starting in
2017.
The new supercomputers that Congress appropriated have
allowed us to run more complex and sophisticated forecast
models, including the new Hurricane Weather Research and
Forecast, or HWRF, model. The HWRF represents a significant
step forward in our operational prediction of hurricane
structure and intensity. This research and development has been
a joint effort between NOAA, primarily involving the Weather
Service and NOAA's research division, OAR, and our academic
partners as part of the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project,
HFIP.
HFIP continues with a multiyear, multimillion dollar effort
to improve hurricane forecasts intending to improve tracking
and intensity forecasting accuracy by 50 percent in 10 years.
We are already meeting the 5-year HFIP goal to reduce hurricane
forecast track and intensity errors by 20 percent.
Recent enhancements that have been made to the operational
HWRF have made it our best performing intensity forecasting
model during the 2013 to 2015 period.
Operations continue to benefit from and rely on aircraft
reconnaissance, both the WC-130J aircraft of the U.S. Air Force
Reserve from the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, 403rd
Wing, in Biloxi, Mississippi, and the NOAA G-IV jet, and NOAA
P-3 stationed at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.
We are also excited about the launch of the new GOES-R
satellite scheduled for later this year. Its technological
advances include improvements upon existing data, such as
dramatically increased spatial, temporal, and spectral
resolutions for Earth monitoring, and new observations such as
lightening data.
I am convinced that all of the data forecast technology,
products, warnings, evacuation decisions and plans will not
achieve their full potential if individuals, families, and
businesses do not prepare now, well in advance for the next
hurricane. People need to know ahead of time what they will do
during an actual hurricane event, so that they can survive the
event and recover quickly in the aftermath.
Many things that we all desperately need to do, including
myself and my family, to prepare are far more difficult,
expensive, or even impossible to do if we wait until a
hurricane is on our doorstep.
We battle mightily against public complacency and a lack of
preparedness as certain parts of the country have gone for
years, or even decades in some places, since their last
significant hurricane impact. We work hard to explain that
overall hurricane activity has almost no relationship to
hurricane impacts in any one community.
We remind everyone that it only takes one. In 1992, that
hurricane season was below average, overall, and Andrew was the
one that struck South Florida as a Category 5 hurricane. There
was a tremendous difference between how busy the season might
be overall and how bad it could be where you live. We all must
prepare for hurricane season the same way every year.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I'm happy
to take any questions you might have.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Knabb follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Richard Knabb, Director, National Hurricane
Center, National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce
Good morning Chairman Rubio, Ranking Member Booker, and Members of
the Subcommittee. It is my honor to testify before you today on the
state of United States hurricane forecasting capabilities, the
partnerships between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) and other government agencies that make effective
use of those forecasts, and our public outreach and education efforts
to prepare our citizens well in advance of the next hurricane. We at
NOAA welcome your interest and the opportunity to discuss these
important topics. NOAA's mission is to understand and predict changes
in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface
of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine
resources. As a mission-driven, operational agency, NOAA is responsible
for global satellite observations, atmospheric and oceanic research
(both in-house and collaborative research with our valued external
partners), operational weather and water forecasts, and the delivery of
critical products and services.
The National Weather Service (NWS)--a line office within NOAA--is a
science-based service organization that works closely with NOAA's other
line offices in carrying out its mission. NWS has the sole Federal
responsibility for issuing weather and water warnings to protect lives
and property in communities across the country and in U.S. territories.
NOAA provides environmental information and forecasts to American
citizens, businesses, and governments to enable informed decisions on a
range of issues and scales--local to global and short-term to long-
term. NOAA provides a suite of products and services to the American
people, including the reliable and timely delivery of public weather
warnings that help safeguard lives. To do so, we work closely with the
larger community of state, local, and tribal emergency management
officials, other Federal agencies, and the commercial weather industry
to deliver the best possible information that science and technology
can provide. Put simply, NOAA provides critical information that saves
lives and enhances our national economy. We also work with the external
community to continually conduct weather and water research to improve
our forecasts and warnings.
The NWS has the best forecasters in the world providing critical,
life-saving products and services. However, to take weather prediction
to the next level and ensure that the U.S. becomes a Weather-Ready
Nation in the face of increasing weather and water threats, the NWS
must evolve. To ensure that forecasts are better used by a diverse
group of decisionmakers, we are striving to provide more accurate and
consistent forecasts through a fully integrated field office structure.
We are organizing ourselves internally to ensure our forecasters have
strong and effective relationships with decisionmakers at the Federal,
State, local and tribal levels. The success of NOAA's mission in this
area depends on four integrated pillars: observations; supercomputing;
research; and our forecasters.
The NWS National Hurricane Center (NHC) is one of nine NWS National
Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). NHC's mission is to: save
lives; mitigate property loss; and improve economic efficiency by
issuing the best watches, warnings, forecasts and analyses of tropical
weather, and by increasing understanding of related hazards. NHC has a
vision to be America's calm, clear and trusted voice in the eye of the
storm and, with our partners, to enable communities to be safe from
tropical weather threats. NHC maintains a continuous weather watch, and
issues analyses, forecasts and warnings of weather and ocean conditions
over millions of square miles of the North Atlantic, including the Gulf
of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, and the eastern North Pacific. It
communicates its products through multiple methods, including the
media. NHC also conducts an extensive outreach and education program as
a very visible component of building a Weather-Ready Nation. NHC's
operational, outreach, and other supporting activities are conducted by
extensively collaborating with the local NWS Weather Forecast Offices,
other NCEP centers, other line offices within NOAA, the emergency
management community and other agencies at the Federal, State, local
and tribal levels, the media, other private sector entities, academia,
like-minded nonprofit organizations, and numerous international
meteorological services and other organizations.
Over the past few years, NOAA has made noteworthy progress
supporting the hurricane program. Funding provided in the Disaster
Relief Appropriations Act, 2013, referred to as the ``Sandy
Supplemental,'' has provided NOAA significant funding for ocean
observing, hurricane related research, coastal monitoring, upgrades to
the two NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft, accelerating our hurricane
related storm surge prediction capabilities, and providing a critical
historic enhancement in operational high-speed computing leading to
higher resolution computer models.
The Hurricane Challenge
The United States has not experienced landfall of a major hurricane
(defined as Category 3 or stronger on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind
Scale) since Wilma in October 2005. Wilma was also the last hurricane
of any strength to strike the state of Florida. Nevertheless, several
other hurricanes and tropical storms have come ashore and resulted in
major impacts and loss of life in this country. Many of those impacts
and losses have been due to water, with storm surge causing extensive
damage in coastal areas and freshwater floods extending well inland.
Storm surge from tropical storms and hurricanes poses a great threat
for large loss of life in a single day, and has always been a factor
even prior to more recent notable storm surge events including Ike
(2008) and post-tropical storm Sandy (2012). NOAA is developing new
tropical storm surge products and warnings that are scheduled to be
implemented operationally during the next couple of years. Work also is
underway to develop the capability to issue tropical warnings even
prior to the formation of a tropical cyclone, with potential debut of
this experimental capability in 2017, which will enable even more
timely watches and warnings to be issued for storms that form close to
the U.S. coast.
An important strategy in our operational communications,
development of new products and warnings, and outreach and education
efforts is to lessen the focus on the category of the hurricane and
increase attention on the individual impacts from wind and water
hazards that could occur in each community--namely winds, tornadoes,
storm surge, inland flooding, and ocean waves and rip currents. We
continue to emphasize that hurricanes and tropical storms are not just
coastal events or just a problem for people with beachfront property,
as evidenced from post-tropical storm Sandy.
Since the establishment of the NHC in the 1950s, NOAA has built
collaborations with emergency managers, the media, and the research
community--collaborations that have helped reduce U.S. hurricane-
related deaths by two-thirds. We have recently published statistics
that reveal how much work remains to be done to further reduce the loss
of life from tropical cyclones in this country. During the past half
century, we have lost almost as many people to ``indirect fatalities''
as we have to ``direct fatalities.'' Indirect fatalities are casualties
that, while not directly attributable to one of the physical forces of
a tropical cyclone, would have been unlikely to occur in the absence of
the storm. These indirect fatalities include, among others, deaths
attributable to carbon monoxide poisoning, cardiovascular failure,
vehicle accidents, electrocution, falls, and fires in residences caused
by open flames.
Direct deaths are defined as fatalities attributable to the forces
of the storms and their remnants. The most common examples of direct
deaths from tropical systems are drowning as a result of storm surge,
storm-driven waves, rip currents, or freshwater floods from rain. They
also include physical trauma incurred from wind-borne debris or
structural failure induced by wind (including hurricane-spawned
tornadoes). Almost 90 percent of deaths from land falling tropical
cyclones are attributable to water. Storm surge incidents accounted for
about half of the deaths, while inland flood events caused by excessive
rainfall took close to one quarter of the lives. After adding the many
people who also lost their lives at the beach due to rip currents or
waves, or while boating, that leaves only about 10 percent of direct
fatalities being due to wind.
Storm surge from tropical cyclones remains a great threat for a
large loss of life event from a single-day natural disaster.
Recognizing this situation, our product development during the past
several years has placed a heavy focus on storm surge from tropical
systems, and that work is showing good results. In 2014, NHC began
experimental production of a Potential Storm Surge Flooding Map, which
will be operational beginning this hurricane season. In 2017, the NWS
plans to issue tropical system-related Storm Surge Watches and Warnings
for the East and Gulf Coast states, actions designed reduce the number
of storm surge fatalities. We have also significantly increased our
outreach and education efforts on tropical storm surge and on water
hazards overall, since the public generally tends to misunderstand and
underestimate their risk due to water. The hurricane challenge is
exacerbated by an increasing vulnerability as coastal populations and
infrastructure grow. NOAA's public outreach messaging is not only about
the hurricane hazards themselves, but also about what people should be
doing to get ready, starting well in advance of the next hurricane, and
about resiliency in the face of the hazards that could occur where they
live.
We battle mightily against public complacency as certain parts of
the country have gone for years to decades since their last significant
hurricane impact. That fact motivates us to be innovative and leverage
partnerships to increase the reach and effectiveness of our outreach
and education efforts. The introduction of new tropical storm surge
products and warnings during the next couple of years will also serve
to increase public and partner focus on preparing in advance for that
hazard. We work hard to explain that overall hurricane activity has
almost no relationship to hurricane impacts in any one community. Many
people have the perception that our hurricane risk has declined in
recent years, especially in comparison to the very active and
destructive seasons in the U.S. in 2004 and 2005. We remind everyone,
however, that there is a significant difference between how busy a
given year or a particular decade might be overall, versus how bad it
might be where you live. The year 1992 is one of the best examples of
this, since it was overall a below-average year for hurricanes in the
Atlantic basin, with only one major hurricane forming, but that one was
Andrew that struck South Florida as a Category 5 hurricane.
Improvements in Hurricane Forecasts and Observations
In recent years, NOAA has extended tropical cyclone forecasts from
three to five days, watches out to two days and warnings to 36 hours,
and tropical cyclone formation forecasts from two days to five days.
NOAA has reduced track (storm location) forecast errors by 50 percent
over about the past 15 years. We are taking advantage of several
opportunities that now enable us to take predictions to the next level.
We take very seriously our annual efforts to verify our forecasts.
Verification enables us to assess our progress in making forecast
accuracy improvements and provides statistical information that drives
our suite of probabilistic products that responsibly convey forecast
uncertainties in real-time. NHC issues an official forecast of the
cyclone's center location and intensity (the maximum surface wind
speed) for all operationally designated tropical or subtropical
cyclones in the Atlantic and eastern North Pacific basins. Forecasts
are issued every six hours and contain projections valid 12, 24, 36,
48, 72, 96, and 120 hours (five days) after the forecast's initial
time. At the conclusion of the season, forecasts are evaluated by
comparing the projected positions and intensities to the corresponding
post-storm derived ``best track'' positions and intensities for each
cyclone.
We have made tremendous progress in hurricane prediction. Our five-
day track forecast today is about as accurate as the three-day forecast
was 20 years ago:
This forecast improvement has resulted in a reduction in the
coastal area that needs to evacuate, if all other factors, such as
storm size, are considered equal. The new supercomputers for which
Congress appropriated funds have allowed us to run more complex and
sophisticated forecast models, including the new Hurricane Weather
Research and Forecast (HWRF) model. The HWRF model represents a
significant step forward in our prediction of hurricane structure and
intensity. The research and development has been a joint effort between
NOAA (primarily NWS and NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric
Research (OAR)) and academic partners as part of the Hurricane Forecast
Improvement Project (HFIP). This advancement highlights the importance
of the research and operational entities working hand-in-hand to
transfer promising research techniques into operations. Another joint
effort between NWS and OAR, the Joint Hurricane Testbed (JHT) is a
virtual environment for cutting-edge technology testing and
demonstration funded by the U.S. Weather Research Program (USWRP). The
JHT connects the tropical cyclone research community with forecast
operations. This year, eight JHT research and development projects
focused on improving the transition of new applied research from
universities and Federal laboratories directly into NOAA operations in
the areas of improved tropical cyclone and hurricane analysis,
modeling, and forecasting techniques. A new tool available to the
forecasters helps identify the probability of tropical cyclone genesis
as far as five days in advance. This method was initially developed for
the North Atlantic basin, but work is underway to expand the tool to
other hurricane-prone ocean basins. Since its inception 15 years ago,
the JHT has supported nearly 100 projects and demonstrated great
success by transitioning about 70 percent of them into NWS operations,
resulting in improved NOAA services for the public.
HFIP is intended to improve track and intensity forecast accuracy
by 50 percent in 10 years. HFIP continues with a multi-year, multi-
million dollar effort to improve hurricane forecasts. We are meeting
the five-year HFIP goal to reduce hurricane forecast track and
intensity errors by 20 percent, and to extend the useful range of
forecasts to seven days. Recent enhancements that have been made to the
operational HWRF have made it our best-performing intensity model over
the 2013-15 period. HFIP is also supporting promising work to help
identify and adjust for biases in the primary track and intensity
models. In addition, HFIP continues to support some new product
development and evaluation. We remain on schedule with our progress
toward implementation of the new tropical storm surge products and
warnings.
Operations continue to benefit from, and rely on, aircraft
reconnaissance. Ten WC-130J aircraft are specially configured and
operated by the U.S. Air Force Reserve from the 53rd Weather
Reconnaissance Squadron, 403rd Wing, located at Keesler Air Force Base
in Biloxi, Mississippi. When flying a hurricane mission, military air
crews fly directly through the eye of the storm several times each
flight. They collect data and transmit it in near real time by
satellite directly to NHC so forecasters can analyze and predict
changes to the hurricane's path and strength. This refining of storm
track models saves U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars. The NOAA
Gulfstream-IV and Lockheed WP-3D Orion are part of NOAA's fleet of
highly specialized research and operational aircraft. These aircraft
are operated, managed and maintained by the NOAA Office of Marine and
Aviation Operations, based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.
The G-IV flies at high altitudes around and ahead of a tropical
cyclone, gathering critical data that depict the atmospheric steering
flow, and that data feed into and result in improved accuracy from
hurricane forecast models. The P-3s are NOAA's hurricane research and
reconnaissance aircraft. These versatile turboprop aircraft are
equipped with an unprecedented variety of scientific instrumentation,
radars and recording systems for both in-situ and remote sensing
measurements of the atmosphere, the earth and its environment. These
two aircraft have led NOAA's continuing effort to monitor and study
hurricanes and other severe storms, and other non-hurricane-related
missions in their ``off season.''
In 2014, NOAA successfully deployed a small unmanned aircraft--the
Coyote--from a hurricane hunter aircraft into the eye of Hurricane
Edouard. NOAA plans to expand the use of this unmanned aircraft in
2016. Planned flights will measure the strongest winds and collect
critical continuous observations at altitudes in the lower part of a
hurricane, an area that would otherwise be impossible to reach with
manned aircraft. Data will be sent in real-time to forecasters at the
NHC. We anticipate data from new technologies such as this will
contribute significantly to improved understanding of tropical cyclone
processes and ultimately to improvements in track and intensity
predictions.
Data from satellites are the most critical component of NOAA's
observation network. NOAA has managed the operation of polar-orbiting
operational environmental satellites (POES) since 1966 and
geostationary operational environmental satellites (GOES) since 1974.
Over the decades, these systems have supported weather and
environmental monitoring programs that are relied upon by users in the
U.S. and around the world. Satellites provide more than 95 percent of
the data assimilated into NOAA's operational numerical weather
prediction (NWP) models. These NWP models are used to forecast the
weather seven or more days ahead, and, in particular, the NWP models
are essential to forecasting the development of extreme weather events,
including hurricanes.
Data from GOES satellites are vital for observing and tracking
tropical cyclones, and their precursor disturbances when a few hours,
or even minutes, matter. We are excited about the launch of the new
GOES-R satellite, scheduled for later this year. Technological advances
of GOES-R include improvements upon existing data, such as increased
spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions for Earth monitoring, and
new observations, such as lightning data. Many of the GOES-R products
are aimed at monitoring hurricanes and their environment and are
expected to lead to, more timely, accurate, and actionable warnings.
The resolution of visible satellite images will be down to \1/2\ km,
and we will be able to receive images (pictures) every minute. The one-
minute images will allow us to see the hurricane ``breathe.'' We will
see things and learn on a scale that we have not ever before had
available to us. The Japanese Himawari satellite, which has the same
imager as will be on GOES-R, has produced amazing data.
New and Planned Operational Public Products and Warnings
Our strategy for developing new public products and warnings in
recent years has been to focus more on the individual hazards posed by
tropical cyclones and less on categorization of the cyclones themselves
based on the strength of the sustained wind speeds generated at the
(i.e., Saffir-Simpson scale using wind strength to describe hurricane
intensity ``CAT'' 1-5). This year we will be issuing a Potential Storm
Surge Flooding Map that will clearly and concisely depict the risk
associated with the storm surge hazard from a tropical cyclone.
Developed over the course of several years in consultation with social
scientists, emergency managers, broadcast meteorologists, and others,
this map shows:
Geographical areas where inundation from storm surge could
occur
How high above ground the water could reach in those areas
Areas of possible storm surge flooding for a given tropical cyclone
are represented in different colors on the map based on water level, as
shown in this example:
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
We are also developing a tropical cyclone surge watch and warning
product to compliment the flooding graphic depicted above. We believe
this new watch/warning product will increase awareness of the potential
life and property impacts from storm surge and flooding. Work is also
underway to be able to issue tropical storm warnings even prior to the
formation of a tropical cyclone, with potential debut of this
experimental capability in 2017.
Federal Support of Hurricane Evacuation Decision-Making
The effectiveness of our partnerships with the emergency management
community at federal, state, local and tribal levels is as high as
ever.
The NWS, along with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, directly
support the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA's) National
Hurricane Program (NHP), which provides state and local governments
with resources to inform their hurricane planning and response actions.
This NHP support is accomplished by conducting hurricane evacuation
studies, providing access to the HURREVAC (www.hurrevac.com) software
program as a common platform to view hurricane forecast information and
evacuation timing guidance, and providing real-time technical
assistance to state and local emergency managers to support their
hurricane evacuation and response decisions. In addition, the NHP
partners provide comprehensive hurricane preparedness training to
emergency managers each year. In the past 25 years, more than 1,500
emergency managers have participated in the week-long hurricane
workshops at the NHC, co-hosted by FEMA.
NWS has also partnered with FEMA to provide another venue of
Federal support for state and local governments through the Hurricane
Liaison Team (HLT). The HLT concept was piloted during the active 1995
hurricane season and formalized the next year following a request from
the Governor of Florida. The HLT supports response operations by
allowing rapid exchange of critical information regarding tropical
cyclone hazards and potential impact between the NHC and Federal,
state, local and tribal emergency managers. The HLT facilitates daily
video briefings with NHC, FEMA leadership, and other senior Federal
officials. The HLT includes NWS meteorologists, emergency managers, and
FEMA Regional Hurricane Program Managers that have technical knowledge
of local and state hurricane evacuation plans and trusted relationships
with state, local and tribal emergency managers in the affected area.
These trusted relationships begin long before hurricane threats
develop each year. The combined efforts of the HLT and NHP ensure that
the Nation works together to build, sustain, and improve our capability
to prepare for, mitigate, protect against, and respond to hurricanes.
Public Outreach and Education
Our outreach efforts serve to get the public and our partners ready
far in advance of the next hurricane, so they know what they will do
when we issue our forecasts and warnings for the hazards they might
face in a real-time tropical cyclone event.
NOAA has conducted an annual Hurricane Awareness Tour (HAT) for
more than 30 years, alternating between the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic
coasts. The tour now coincides with the presidentially-declared
National Hurricane Preparedness Week. As part of its efforts to build a
Weather-Ready Nation, each year NOAA's hurricane experts typically tour
five U.S. coastal cities to raise awareness about the importance of
preparing for the upcoming hurricane season. The tour typically
includes a U.S. Air Force Reserve WC-130J or NOAA P-3 hurricane hunter
aircraft and the NOAA G-IV aircraft. This year the tour partnered with
the nonprofit Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH) with the
``#HurricaneStrong'' campaign to re-energize and inspire hurricane
resilience by increasing public awareness and action before the next
storm strikes. The tour visited San Antonio, Galveston, New Orleans,
Mobile, and Naples. The public and media toured the aircraft and met
forecasters and aircraft crews. Staff from local emergency management
offices, FEMA, non-profit organizations, such as the American Red Cross
and FLASH, and several local NWS Weather Forecast Offices joined
various stops on the tour.
The Weather-Ready Nation (WRN) Ambassador initiative is NOAA's
effort to formally recognize its partners who are improving the
Nation's readiness, responsiveness, and overall resilience against
extreme weather, water, and climate events.
To be officially recognized as a WRN Ambassador, an organization
must commit to:
Promoting Weather-Ready Nation messages and themes to their
stakeholders;
Engaging with NOAA personnel on potential collaboration
opportunities;
Sharing their success stories of preparedness and
resiliency;
Serving as an example by educating employees on workplace
preparedness.
Building a Weather-Ready Nation requires more than government
alone. It requires the private and academic members of ``America's
Weather Enterprise'' to provide information for better community,
business, and personal decision making, and innovative partnerships
across all segments of society. We must involve everyone in an effort
to move people--and society--toward heeding warnings, taking action,
and influencing their circles of family, friends, and social network to
act appropriately. The WRN Ambassador initiative is the connecting hub
of a vast network of federal, state, local and tribal agencies,,
academic researchers, the media, the insurance industry, nonprofit
organizations, the private sector, and many others who are working
together to address the impacts of extreme weather on daily life.
Together we will inform and empower communities, businesses, and people
to make pre-event decisions that can be life-saving and prevent or
limit devastating economic losses. We are a nation of many communities,
and it is only through connected communities that we will achieve this
goal.
International Collaborations
The hydrometeorological services of the Caribbean, Central America
and North America have a long history of effective collaboration,
strong relationships, and a shared focus on learning from one another
and improving our collective service to the citizens of our respective
nations. As NHC Director, I chair the World Meteorological
Organization's Regional Association IV Hurricane Committee, which was
established in 1978 and includes nations with meteorological interests
in North and Central America and the Caribbean. This committee seeks to
improve tropical cyclone prediction and coordination in the region by
bringing member countries together on an annual basis to address issues
such as data collection requirements, operational and technical
coordination, research priorities and transition to operations,
forecast practices and procedures, outreach, and training. The
committee meeting is a tremendous opportunity for us to gain a greater
understanding of how our evolving meteorological and hydrological
services will operate each year, to enhance the benefits of our shared
data, forecast information, and training efforts, to learn key lessons
from the impacts in the previous year, and to update our regional
procedures and plans so we can perform together during the upcoming
hurricane season to the best of our combined abilities.
Conclusion
Expectations from those NOAA serves are high, and we strive to
exceed those expectations. All of the technologies we apply to issuing
the best possible forecasts will live up to their full potential only
if communities, families, and individuals also prepare far in advance.
We all must dedicate ourselves to taking steps now to be ready, long
before the next hurricane strikes. NWS forecasts, warnings, and
community-based preparedness programs are vital to enhancing the
economy and saving lives and property. It all starts with a commitment
to environmental observations, research and improved forecasts and
warnings, and our people (forecasters, modelers, technicians and
managers). It culminates with striving to become a Weather-Ready Nation
in which businesses, governments, and people are prepared to use those
forecasts to mitigate impacts. In spite of our best efforts, hurricanes
and tropical storms will still cause loss of life and significant
damage. We recognize that there is always room for improvement. I
believe NOAA and the NWS are government at its best. But I need each of
you to know that we can do better. Even more of these impacts could be
mitigated with more timely, accurate, and focused forecasts, watches,
and warnings. The impacts and lives lost from the recent tropical
disasters experienced over the past few years would have been far worse
without NOAA's observations, research, forecasts, people and the
extensive work of our federal, non-federal, academic and commercial
partners to improve the Nation's preparedness for these events through
education and outreach.
The protection of the American people from the devastation that
weather and water can bring is a sacred trust and duty given to the
NOAA and NWS by Congress. Together, we must ensure our services and
operations live up to this trust and duty. We have come a long way, but
there is more we need to do to become a Weather-Ready Nation--to be
ready for the event, to be responsive, and to be resilient. Remember,
as Hurricane Andrew proved in 1992, it only takes one.
Senator Rubio. Thank you.
I'm going to defer the beginning of the questions to the
Ranking Member, Senator Booker.
Senator Booker. Thank you very much.
I really appreciate both your written testimony as well as
the words you spoke. You're right. I was Mayor when Hurricane
Sandy hit, and we lost people because of the water, that storm
surge that came in so suddenly; in one case I will never
forget, a person drowned in their car.
We had waves as high as 32 feet. We had storm surges at
about 10 feet. Sea levels are continuing to rise now just
because of climate change.
After hearing what you just said about this incredible new
technology that is really looking at some of these storm surge
products and warnings, can you give us an idea about what we
can do to try to expedite these tools coming online?
Dr. Knabb. I am very excited to report to everyone about
the potential storm surge flooding map going operational this
year. That is many years in the making with a lot of social
scientists and partners involved in the development of that
product.
It has been thoroughly tested. We have gone through
exercises with the emergency managers. We really think that is
going to be a game-changing tool for their evacuation
decisionmaking and communicating the hazard to the public this
year.
We just sent out the service change notice today that that
product is going operational today, so that is very exciting.
It really is going to get everybody on the same page.
The storm surge watch/warning also is more than a decade in
the making. Even though it is going to be 2017, next year, when
that warning goes operational, the public, everybody, will see
a prototype storm surge watch/warning graphic this year that
will, in no less of an important way, convey where we, as
National Weather Service forecasters, think there is a
significant chance of life-threatening storm surge.
So in many ways, we are already there in terms of
dramatically enhancing how we communicate the storm surge
hazard in real time.
We do want to continue to enhance these products. The
purpose of another experimental year with this prototype storm
surge watch/warning graphic is to get a little more feedback
from our partners and factor that into what goes operational
with the storm surge warning in 2017.
Senator Booker. Dr. Knabb, if I may, and if I can correctly
interpret the Chairman's thoughts on this as well, I have some
concerns that we are not investing enough in R&D, and there is
this urgent need to significantly increase our research and
development in this area.
Could you give me an idea of how increased R&D funding
would help, in terms of expediting our forecasting
capabilities?
Dr. Knabb. Sure. So, again, just to reiterate, the
Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project is ongoing, and it is
leading to changes that are being implemented every year. The
new HWRF model enhanced through HFIP over 2013 to 2015 is our
leading intensity model during that period.
If we want to continue to improve our track and intensity
forecast, it has involved and will continue to involve having
the correct, most useful data from inside the hurricane and in
the environment; advanced computer models that leverage
research data and other knowledge to increase our understanding
of hurricanes and incorporate that knowledge into the models;
assimilation schemes that allow the models to take advantage of
all those data; and faster computers in order to run these more
advanced models, along with the staff to do the technical work
to get us to the next stage.
Senator Booker. So, yes or no? Do you believe that if
Congress and the administration were to invest more in R&D in
this area, that it would significantly help in our
preparedness, could potentially save many, many lives and help
us avert significant economic damage?
Dr. Knabb. Yes, I think that the last several years of HFIP
show us that investing in research and development, and
computer modeling, and data simulation capabilities, that
allows us to utilize things like various types of aircraft data
that we collect.
Senator Booker. So really quick, my last question.
NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, GFDL, based
in Princeton, New Jersey, has developed cutting-edge climate
modeling that for the first time has successfully reproduced
the observation year-by-year variations in Category 4 and
Category 5 hurricanes. We are very proud of that in our state.
These results highlight the potential use of climate change
modeling for long-term, season-by-season hurricane prediction,
which could really help the U.S. prepare for storms.
How could increased funding, specifically for the research
and development of high-performance computing, improve NOAA's
ability to provide long-term forecasting of extreme weather?
Dr. Knabb. Yes. More computing power has already allowed us
to run more advanced models for our 5-day forecasting. It is
part of how we are, through Sandy supplemental funding, helping
out with the supercomputing capabilities, allowing us to run
the storm surge model in real time fast enough to generate that
new potential storm surge flooding map and guidance for the
storm surge warning.
Likewise, if anyone is going to make progress in
forecasting future hurricane activity over the long haul, more
advanced models, faster computers, are part of that equation.
But, of course, at the Hurricane Center, our focus is on
the supercomputer power and the modeling capabilities that
allow us to improve the accuracy of our track and intensity
forecast in the 5-day period. Again, HFIP has shown that
investing in that capability can lead to improvements, as it
has, and that project is ongoing. We are going to hopefully
continue to see some benefits from that.
Senator Booker. Dr. Knabb, thank you for that. I may have
to step away, but please understand that, on behalf of my whole
entire state, we really do appreciate the important work that
you are doing. The growing sophistication and capabilities is
really making a difference.
And my hope is that we as a Congress will recognize how
much investments here can produce overall returns for this
country as a whole.
So I am grateful for your leadership, grateful for your
work. I hope that we can continue to support you in more robust
ways.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Rubio. Thank you, Senator Booker.
Senator Nelson?
Senator Nelson. Did you really get 32 feet of sea level
rise surge in Hurricane Sandy?
Senator Booker. Waves as high as 32 feet in the storm
surge.
Senator Nelson. Did that cover up a good part of the
coastal New Jersey?
Senator Booker. Oh my gosh, the devastation, I'm sure you
remember, looking at our state, it was catastrophic. Even in a
city like Newark, when I was Mayor, the surge came in so
dramatically that it swept away homes, moved them off their
foundations, swept away businesses, and, unfortunately,
resulted in the loss of life.
Senator Nelson. In the monster Hurricane Andrew in 1992, we
had a 17-foot storm surge. It was a hurricane that now they
think was well into a Category 5 with winds in excess of 160
miles per hour. That is why it tore up so much of Homestead,
Florida.
I will never forget flying over in a National Guard
helicopter; there were only two buildings left in downtown
Homestead. One was the bank, which was very well constructed.
The other one, Senator Rubio, was an old Florida cracker house
that had been built back in the old days that withstood the
winds and everything else.
Of course, that caused a revolution in Miami-Dade County in
building codes, much for the better, because under the old
codes, places were just wiped out completely.
Senator Booker. You will have to tell me one day what a
cracker house is.
[Laughter.]
Senator Nelson. The old-line Floridians, like Senator Rubio
and me, used to be referred to as crackers because they would
drive the cattle to Punta Rassa, which is now near Fort Myers.
And they would put those cattle on the cattle drive on a boat
going for Havana. The way they drove them was through cow
whips, crackers. So that is why we are Florida crackers.
Senator Rubio. Then my ancestors would receive them as they
came to Cuba. It is all kind of intertwined.
[Laughter.]
Senator Nelson. There you go.
All right, I have just a couple quick questions. I'm going
to make it very quick.
Senator Booker. By the way, that is a term I will never
use, cracker house. We don't have those in New Jersey.
Senator Nelson. Oh, you might have a different kind house
in New Jersey.
Senator Booker. No, sir. No, sir.
[Laughter.]
Senator Nelson. OK, you have two P-3s, and you have one G-
IV. Now if they were down, you would be in a world of hurt,
would you not, on estimating the track and intensity, and so
forth?
Dr. Knabb. Yes, Senator. Then NOAA G-IV jet is an
operational resource that we utilize when the gulf or east
coast of the U.S., or Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands, are
threatened by hurricane. The G-IV jet flies in the environment
of the hurricane in a pattern that we designate to drop the
sondes, provide vertical profile data over the data-sparse
oceans, go into the computer forecast models, and in so many
past cases have shown to enhance the accuracy of the model
track forecast and, therefore, operational track forecast.
The NOAA P-3s are research laboratories that we also
receive the data from in real time. They have also been ideal
platforms for many years for developing new technologies that
have made their way onto the Air Force WC-130J aircraft.
So, yes, the NOAA G-IV and P-3s are extremely important to
our operations and our future developments based on that
research.
Senator Nelson. So if you had an accident or a maintenance
problem, and you were down with the P-3s, you do have backup
with the Air Force?
Dr. Knabb. Yes, it's important to emphasize that the Air
Force WC-130J aircraft, there are 10 of those stationed at
Biloxi, Mississippi, at Keesler Air Force Base. They are the
operational workhorse. We task them routinely into everything
from a developing tropical disturbance trying to become a
depression or storm up to Category 5 hurricanes.
Senator Nelson. Can they drop the sondes?
Dr. Knabb. They could.
Senator Nelson. They drop the bigger sondes that we are
talking about, the Coyote?
Dr. Knabb. Right. The benefit of the NOAA G-IV jet, it
flies at higher altitude and much faster speed than either of
the P-3s or the C-130. So we really need the G-IV to do the
environmental surveillance missions to get the data into the
models, track forecasting, and the P-3s are obviously vital to
what the hurricane research division and others are doing to
conduct their field program to advance the science, which is
what instrumentation like the Coyote is promising to do.
Again, we see some of these data in real time.
Occasionally, we see the data from the Coyote in real time. It
is not a core part of our operations yet, but it has the
potential to augment the heavy manned aircraft from the P-3s
and the C-130s. So the C-130 is operational workhorse.
Senator Nelson. What I am getting at is that you have a
backup with the P-3s. It is single point failure with the G-IV,
right?
Dr. Knabb. An equivalent capability aircraft, correct.
There is not a backup for it. But we could use the P-3s and/or
the C-130s to do the surveillance missions, but the vertical
profiles wouldn't be from as high of an altitude.
Senator Nelson. And your accuracy is increased by 15
percent by the G-IV in the vertical profile?
Dr. Knabb. On average, it is in that neighborhood that we
have made the improvements in past forecasting. Yes, the G-IV
is very important.
Senator Nelson. All right. Now tell me this, the El Faro
leaves port, headed for Puerto Rico, and he sails right into
the middle of a hurricane. Now there are 33 lives, most of
which were from Jacksonville, Florida, lost.
We are now in the investigation, finding out that they were
getting 10-hour-old data on the storm.
What can we do about that?
Dr. Knabb. We at the Hurricane Center have been actively
participating in the NTSB investigation that is ongoing.
This is also an opportunity to remind everyone that the
National Hurricane Center is more than just about hurricanes.
As you have seen when you visited the center, we have a
Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch, TAFB. It is our largest
branch. Marine forecasters do offshore waters and high seas
forecasts over the Atlantic, Gulf, and Caribbean.
We are very eager to find out all the outcomes of that
investigation because we want to do everything possible to make
sure that our marine users and partners are getting the data in
a timely manner to prevent something like El Faro from ever
happening again.
Now to head in that direction, we have already had some
partners visit the Hurricane Center within the last month from
the cruise ship industry, from the cargo ship industry, and
from the Coast Guard, talking about how we enhance how they get
our forecasts and warnings in real time. I'm learning that some
of the decisionmakers in the various industries that make
decisions on routing are often folks who are on land that are
then communicating routing decisions to the ships at sea.
So we are going to make sure that we get training delivered
to those decisionmakers. We are already planning an off-season
training course next winter for these marine decisionmakers.
Senator Nelson. Good. Thank you.
Senator Rubio. Thank you.
Senator Schatz?
STATEMENT OF HON. BRIAN SCHATZ,
U.S. SENATOR FROM HAWAII
Senator Schatz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Knabb, thank you for your work. I just have two quick
questions. Hopefully, they will be quick.
I have heard reports that NOAA is or was considering
relocating the Central Pacific Hurricane Center to Florida in
an effort to reduce staffing levels. Is this true?
Dr. Knabb. There are no plans within the National Weather
Service to change the function of the Central Pacific Hurricane
Center. In fact, we are continuing at the National Hurricane
Center to partner with them, providing them training and
working on ways to enhance the consistency of products and Web
presence, and sharing of technology between NHC, the National
Hurricane Center, and CPHC, the Central Pacific Hurricane
Center.
Senator Schatz. Great. So I won't go into great detail
about this, because I think we are now on the same page, but if
you could continue to keep in touch with our staff regarding
any possible plans. Obviously, from an expertise standpoint,
from a time zone standpoint, and from the viewpoint of
logistics and relationships with local civil defense officials,
media partners, it makes a lot of sense to keep the Central
Pacific Hurricane Center in the Pacific.
Dr. Knabb. Having worked in that office myself, I can tell
you that the staff there are vital to providing decision
support services to State and local emergency managers, and
briefing the media.
Senator Schatz. Great. Thank you.
Forecasting hurricanes in the Pacific, as you know, is made
more complicated by a lack of data. Over the course of the last
15 named storms in the Pacific last year, our civil defense
community learned firsthand how much of a difference more data
and adding hurricane hunters could make. What are your Pacific
deployment plans for Coyote UAVs and APAR units when they are
operational?
Dr. Knabb. The platforms that you just mentioned are
research platforms that the research component of NOAA
primarily schedules as part of their field program. We at the
National Hurricane Center, and I am sure CPHC would be the
same, we would be eager to see some of those data in real time
and are even more eager to find out what the outcomes of those
research efforts would be.
We do have at the National Hurricane Center in Miami
permanently stationed Department of Defense employees that help
us coordinate the taskings that we issue from Hurricane Center
Miami and CPHC in Honolulu on where we want to send the Air
Force C-130s and the NOAA G-IV and P-3 aircraft.
As you saw last year, those aircraft resources were
forward-deployed to Honolulu to fly the many systems that were
in the central Pacific. We and CPHC collaborate on that.
Senator Schatz. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Rubio. Thank you.
Senator Blumenthal?
STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL,
U.S. SENATOR FROM CONNECTICUT
Senator Blumenthal. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for being here. I noted that you began your
career in Hawaii and then moved to California and then to
Florida, so you have seen a lot of different weather patterns
around the country, and you have also seen differences,
perhaps, in responses to hurricane warnings.
Superstorm Sandy, which was a hurricane before it hit
Connecticut, did untold and tragic damage in part because
people failed to respond to the warnings that they were given.
I am wondering if you have any observations on what can be done
to improve the responses of everyone from public officials to
citizen groups to citizens themselves?
Dr. Knabb. Sure. I mentioned earlier the national hurricane
program, which is a Federal partnership between NOAA, our
agency, and FEMA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That
national hurricane program is currently going through a
modernization. It has already been very effective to date in
providing tools, training, and the resources, and the real-time
decision support, for State and especially local emergency
managers to make more effective evacuation and other decisions.
But that program is currently being modernized, and one of
the most exciting parts about it is that the modernized tools
for emergency managers will be developed in lockstep with new
National Hurricane Center products and warnings, so they are
ready to utilize it in their systems when those products become
available.
In addition, we are, with many different partners,
government and outside of government, enhancing how we conduct
our outreach and education, and provide messages in a far more
personal and emotional level to make people realize that we
have to prepare our families just as much as other people do.
So our Hurricane Preparedness Week recently focused on messages
having to do with putting your personal and family evacuation
plan together, buying your supplies in advance, getting an
insurance checkup in advance, doing whatever you can now to
strengthen your home.
I am doing those things. By telling the public that I am
doing those things, hopefully people realize that it is
something that they ought to be doing as well.
So those are just some of the things that we are doing to
get people and our partners more prepared. When people see us
as government partners getting more prepared, hopefully they
have more confidence in their government and they get prepared
as well.
Senator Blumenthal. How about the media, in terms of the
way it depicts or provides warnings? Have you interacted with
them a lot? Because that is the way most people figure out
whether they are going to move or stay put.
Dr. Knabb. Yes. Despite the increased use of social media,
television is still the main way that people get their
information as a hurricane approaches. We have developed and
continue to maintain and try to enhance our relationships with
our media partners, both national outlets and local ones.
Some of them come to the Hurricane Center. We engage them
at a variety of off-season conferences. I talked to some of
them yesterday on a webinar. One thing that we have emphasized
going into this hurricane season is making sure they fully
understand how to interpret this new potential storm surge
flooding map, and the new prototype storm surge warning
graphics, so they are conveying the right, consistent message.
So our relationships with our media partners are absolutely
vital, and we have increased the amount of training we provide
to them. And they were involved in some of the development of
this new storm surge product.
Senator Blumenthal. They have their own meteorologists. Do
they ever push back or differ with you as to what they think
the response should be or whether your interpretation of the
data is correct?
Dr. Knabb. There are at least a couple reasons why that
isn't a huge problem. Number one is that because we develop the
relationships with them, they understand why we are conveying
what we are conveying in our forecast. Our discussion products
convey the reasoning.
And, usually, any disagreements on exactly where the
forecast should have been placed are well within the bounds of
uncertainty. If you put 20 different meteorologists, even at
the Hurricane Center, in the same room, it will not be the
exact same forecast. But all the opinions that might be out
there I think are still well within the bounds of the areas
that we are trying to alert with regard to the wind and water
hazards that they might experience.
But we have enhanced the content of our products. Just last
year, during Hurricane Joaquin, and then during eastern Pacific
Hurricane Patricia, primarily for the benefit of the media, we
inserted in our discussion product that they are very familiar
with some key messaging points, main issues that we want our
media partners to be focused on conveying.
That is not just for the on-camera meteorologists, but for
the producers and the people populating the crawls and the
reporters and the anchors. The media feedback from that, plus
our proactive use of social media to let them know what is
coming in terms of Hurricane Center product, very good feedback
from media partners. So that dialogue goes on year-round.
Senator Blumenthal. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Rubio. Thank you, Senator Blumenthal.
Dr. Knabb, let me touch on a couple points.
Number one, let me just say that there is obviously a lot
of negativity today about government and politics, things going
on in our country. But our men and women who serve us in public
service, in various different fields, do an excellent job on
our behalf, and one of those places is in the National
Hurricane Center. I had a chance to visit there previously,
once as a State legislator and now again as a U.S. Senator. I'm
just incredibly impressed with the work that you do, and we
want to thank you.
The level of expertise and the resource that you provide,
as was pointed out to me, which I understood before as well, it
is not just to the men and women of the United States, but so
many liaison partners around the world that don't have a
National Hurricane Center of their own rely on our expertise as
well. So that service you also provide to so many partner
nations who have come to rely of the United States as the
authority on these issues.
By the way, almost as if on cue, and no one can accuse me
of having anything to do with this, but already I see there is
a special tropical weather outlook report. There is a system
developing in the western Atlantic. Development is not
anticipated for the next couple of days, but environmental
conditions are expected to become more conducive for tropical
or subtropical development on Friday.
So just a reminder that even as we are meeting here today,
everything is starting up. And hurricane season is a date on
the calendar, but a reminder to everyone that you can have
storms before that date. We had storms last year, I believe,
after that date, or close to the end of the season, late in the
season.
So it doesn't matter when it is. It is a real issue.
I talked in my opening statement about the legislation that
Senator Nelson and I have worked on. We introduced it last
year. It would require NOAA to improve guidance for hurricane
tracking, intensity, storm surge forecast. It builds on
important work that has already been deployed, which is the
Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project. But it has not yet been
congressionally authorized. Now the President's budget is
recommending a cut of $3 million.
So I am not asking you to opine on the congressional
process or on the budget recommendation, but I am asking you to
speak a little bit about how valuable this project is, the
forecast improvement project, and how forecasting would be
impacted should a future administration further cut or, worse,
absent any legislation, end the program entirely.
Dr. Knabb. Sure. I want to take this opportunity to thank
you, Senator Rubio and Senator Nelson, for your support of the
national hurricane program and what we do with our partners.
That support is very much appreciated.
It is obvious from what we have already accomplished
through the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project that
investments in advanced modeling capabilities pay off, and they
are already paying off.
The good news is that HFIP is not going away. It is going
on. Again, we have been able to improve our Hurricane Weather
Research and Forecast model, the HWRF. And again, during the
past three hurricane seasons combined, it has remarkably become
our best-performing intensity model. That is a tremendous
accomplishment.
Because we have been able to make some improvements so far
in meeting these 5-year goals with HFIP, there is promise for
continued improvements, given a proper level of investment.
Again, those areas of investment have to be multifaceted and
include the data you need from inside the hurricane and the
environment, scientific advancements, including from data like
the Coyote and other platforms to increase our understanding of
hurricanes, models that can use those data, and the
supercomputer power to run those more advanced models, and,
importantly, to have the staff that we need in order to do the
development work and leverage the improvements that come from
these scientific advances.
The faster we can hire our vacancies, the better off we are
going to be, and that has been a challenge recently.
So all of those things require investments to move forward.
It is always the case, and it is the case heading into this
hurricane season, that the National Hurricane Center is fully
prepared to carry out its operational mission, but we always
have more difficulty in applying and having the resources to
apply to advance our products and warning suite, and have the
research resources, mainly in terms of people, to enhance the
computer forecast models that has been happening during HFIP.
Senator Rubio. You also, in your testimony, talked about
the next evolution of the geostationary operational
environmental satellite, which is set to be launched from Cape
Canaveral, I believe later this year. This satellite is going
to provide high-resolution images of storms up-to-the-minute
every minute, and, as a result, more accurate tracking and
intensity forecast.
Once that satellite is launched, do you have an estimate as
to how long it will take to come online and begin providing
this data?
Dr. Knabb. Yes. I will also say, before I directly answer
that, that the National Hurricane Center has already been
preparing itself, as have other components of the National
Weather Service, to get ready for these new data by
participating in what is called the GOES-R proving ground. Some
of our forecasters have already directly had their hands on the
operations floor on some proxy data sets that prepare us for
what GOES-R is going to be providing.
We have also installed in our backyard at the Hurricane
Center, as you saw when you visited, the three dishes getting
ready to bring down the GOES-R data.
Once those data start flowing, after the satellite is
launched, my understanding is that it could take up to a year
for calibration, validation, and checkout to occur. But that
means that perhaps at some point during the 2017 hurricane
season, calibrated, validated data from GOES-R could be
flowing.
We have tried also to prepare our computing infrastructure
for that, because we are going to have three times as many
channels on the satellite, four times as much spatial
resolution, and five times as much temporal resolution in the
data, so tremendous advances are coming. We are very excited
about what is ahead.
Senator Rubio. In my statement as I was opening up the
hearing, I talked a little bit about hurricane amnesia and the
ability to forget over time about what this is like.
I do recall 2004 and 2005, living in South Florida, we
experienced storms, if I'm correct--I believe Katrina was in
September, and there was one again a month later. So we lost
power. We did not see the extensive damage of Andrew obviously
in Florida, but Katrina went on to do extensive damage in the
gulf coast, Louisiana and Mississippi.
But time passes and people forget. You have been on the
road now for the better part of last week traveling the gulf
coast, primarily in Florida, talking to people about what they
needed to be doing to get ready.
What is your assessment? How aware are people that
hurricane season is upon us? How prepared are they? What is
your sense of the standing today among the public about the
upcoming season?
Dr. Knabb. I'm still very concerned that way too many
people in the public in Florida and other states are not as
prepared as they need to be. One of the concerns is not only
has it been more than a decade since the last Florida
hurricane, but in that timeframe, we have gained something like
three million new residents in the state of Florida.
Other metropolitan areas are similar. I just visited
Houston, Texas, last week. Since Hurricane Ike struck there in
2008, they have something like a million new residents in their
metropolitan area.
So not only do you have people who might have been through
a hurricane in the past and maybe they have gotten out of the
habit of preparing, or maybe they experienced the fringes of a
hurricane in the past and they haven't really been through the
core of a major hurricane, or maybe they are new to the
problem, and they have never prepared for a hurricane at all. I
think there are way too many of those people still out there,
which is why last week during the hurricane awareness tour,
which was merged with the presidentially-declared National
Hurricane Preparedness Week, the themes each day focused on
things that people, residents of our states, need to be doing
to get ready for the next hurricane.
That is why we focused on planning your evacuation route
and destination in advance, buying your supplies in advance,
updating your insurance now, because of those 30-day waiting
periods for flood insurance, for example, and doing whatever
you can today to strengthen your home.
And again, by telling people that I'm doing those things
personally, hopefully, we are reaching people a little bit more
on an emotional level so that they realize that all of us share
in this problem. I welcome anyone who is willing to go out
there and share what they do to get ready for the next
hurricane to set an example for what the public can be doing.
Senator Rubio. One of the things we discussed, and I heard
this discussed previously, is that one of the most devastating
potential storms would be one that went right into the Tampa
Bay area and right into the bay. We saw some models of what
that would look like, rough models.
But in essence, I think this is important. I think this is
an area that hasn't had that event happen, at least not in
modern times.
Could you describe briefly for people living in the Tampa
Bay area what that storm situation would look like and what
level of intensity would require for the worst-case scenario? I
was particularly impressed, I should say, and impacted by some
of the flooding and storm surge projections where there were
communities not necessarily on the water that could see
extensive amounts of flooding as a result of a storm of that
magnitude.
If you could briefly take this moment, if you were talking
to people in the Tampa Bay area, what would that event look
like for them, and just sort of worst-case scenario, which,
unfortunately, 1 day will happen, just by matter of statistics?
Dr. Knabb. Yes, Senator. It certainly is a matter of when,
not if. The Tampa Bay area is one of those many areas that I am
very, very concerned about.
They last experienced a direct hit of a major hurricane
back in October 1921. So nearly a century later, there are a
lot more people and a lot more infrastructure in harm's way
there. And it is important for people to realize there that the
storm surge flooding risk in many portions of the Tampa Bay
area goes not just across the street from the beachfront
property, not just blocks inland, but, in some locations, miles
inland from the coast.
So it is vital that people, even if you can't see the water
from where you are at your home, find out today if you live in
a hurricane surge evacuation zone and figure out today where
you would go and how you would get there, if told to evacuate.
For folks who live far enough inland, in whatever part of
Florida or any other hurricane-prone states, if you are not in
one of those storm surge zones, find someone you care about who
is and plan now to be their inland evacuation destination.
But again, that storm surge hazard in the Tampa Bay area,
like in many other areas, goes miles inland. That is why it is
even more important that we are going operational this year
with our potential storm surge flooding map, because if people
haven't gotten it by that time, then when that product comes
out, if a hurricane is threatening that area, then we will be
showing people just how far inland from the immediate coastline
the storm surge flooding could go in that scenario.
Senator Rubio. How could someone, whether it is in the
Tampa Bay area or anywhere else, see whether their home is in
that? Where would they go? Where is the resource they can go
to, to see whether their property or where they are living is
located in that zone?
Dr. Knabb. The best advice is to contact your local
emergency management agency in your county, your city. In the
state of Florida, you shouldn't have too much trouble getting
information from them about what evacuation zone, if any, that
you live in.
Your local emergency managers have prescribed those
evacuation zones, in large part based on guidance from the
Hurricane Center on who is vulnerable to storm surge. So when
they prescribe those evacuation zones, they are doing it for
good reason. When they call for evacuations and tell people to
evacuate, it is vital that they go because they will do that
based on advice from the National Weather Service on who is
vulnerable to storm surge in that situation.
Senator Rubio. To that, I would just add, oftentimes, this
is anecdotal, but I've heard from people who live on the sixth
floor of a building and their argument is that there is not
going to be water on the sixth floor. That is not really the
point. The point is if you live on the sixth floor but the
street is heavily flooded, you can't get out, nothing can get
in. And if, God forbid, you have a medical emergency,
responders can't get there either.
So people need to understand that being in the zone, it
doesn't matter if you're on the tenth floor of a big building.
That doesn't mean you'll be able to get out for days to come in
a worst-case scenario, such as the one you described.
Senator Markey?
STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD MARKEY,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS
Senator Markey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for
this very important hearing.
Although it was a Nor'easter that delivered the perfect
storm, Massachusetts is not immune to hurricanes. We saw the
effects from Hurricane Noel in 2007, Hurricane Earl in 2010,
and Hurricane Irene in 2011; storms that began off the coast of
Africa, traveled across the Atlantic, hang a right, and
sometimes find themselves in New England.
And if they are anything like Boston drivers, they do so
without a turn signal.
[Laughter.]
Senator Markey. That is what we get hit with.
But with the National Hurricane Center at the wheel, we
have the best science and technology to predict where the
storms are going to go. You are our needed turn signal, and we
thank you for that.
But there is still room to improve. There are still many
questions about hurricanes. Answers to them will enhance the
prediction of track intensity and when a storm may transition
into an extratropical system, one that is powered by
differences in atmospheric temperatures rather than ocean
temperatures that drive hurricanes.
One of the big questions remaining is: what will hurricanes
look like in a warmer world? Scientists expect stronger storms
with a higher frequency of the most intense storms, and heavier
rainfall. In addition, sea level rise will enhance the threat
from coastal storms and flooding.
While hurricanes are sometimes such that we can only
predict and prepare for them, we can do something to steer the
path of climate change, and we must do that. Now that is of
concern to us because of all the places on the planet, the
entire planet, it is the sea surface temperatures off of New
England that are warming faster than any place else on Earth.
As temperatures continue to warm along the mid-Atlantic and
New England coast, how might the northern extent of these
storms change, Doctor?
Dr. Knabb. Certainly, there is a lot that we know about how
the climate has changed up to this point. It is rather
uncertain how much the numbers and strength of hurricanes have
changed in the decades prior to leading up to now, mainly
because we haven't had current monitoring tools as long as
people might think. We have only had the satellites for half a
century, and aircraft reconnaissance since the 1940s.
Then looking forward, there still remains a lot of
uncertainty with regard to what will change in terms of the
numbers and strength of hurricanes.
Senator Markey. So especially the kinds of storms that lose
strength as they head north? What could it mean in the future
as our ocean gets warmer and warmer in terms of the intensity
of these storms further north as they get that extra fuel out
of the ocean?
Dr. Knabb. We have many, many events in the northeastern
U.S. to point to in the last many decades to show it is a
relatively frequent occurrence to have systems, hurricanes,
major hurricanes moving north and then having tremendous impact
up in the Northeast.
In fact, one of these days, Senator Rubio, we are going to
start having hurricanes in Florida like they do in the
Northeast. We have had them hitting the Northeast with quite a
bit of frequency the last few years.
The main concern I have with regard to how hurricane
impacts are going to change in the future, and many cities and
states in the Northeast are no exception, is that even if the
numbers and strength of hurricanes don't change, and even if
the behavior of the storms that move up the East Coast and into
the Northeast don't change, the potential for rising sea
levels, the increased population, and the increased
infrastructure, I am really worried about increased impacts
from storm surge, from heavy rainfall.
And that, to me, is the biggest challenge that we face in
coastal regions over the years and decades to come.
Senator Markey. When we had that huge 111-inch snowstorm
last winter, a series of snowstorms that just came week after
week, they were measuring temperatures in the ocean off of
Boston 20 degrees warmer than normal. This was off the coast of
Boston in the winter.
As that cold air hit them, that warmer water is really what
led to that Gronkowski-like spike of snow that came down on us.
It was a very simple phenomenon.
Obviously, we are getting more concerns as our waters warm
in terms of what the implications can be, because it was a
``there but for the grace of God'' situation that the storm
that hit New Jersey and New York did not hit us just 3 years
ago.
Can you discuss some of the forecasting challenges with
extratropical transition and why it is hard to predict exactly
when the changes from a tropical storm to something that looks
more like a Nor'easter will occur?
Dr. Knabb. Yes, as Sandy and many other storms in the past
have shown, it is in real time rather uncertain, in many cases,
to forecast exactly when a tropical cyclone, a tropical storm,
a hurricane, will lose its tropical characteristics.
The reason that is difficult is that involves the changes
in the inner core structure of a hurricane. That is very
difficult to forecast. Computer forecast models are getting
better at forecasting that. But because that is so difficult,
and because that kind of transition can happen near the
coastline, after the dilemma we faced in Sandy going forward,
we can continue to issue National Hurricane Center forecasts
and advisories even after a hurricane has lost its tropical
characteristics. We can maintain or issue tropical storm or
hurricane watches and warnings. We can do that also for the
storm surge watches and warnings, once they become operational
in 2017, for a tropical system, a hurricane that loses its
tropical characteristics.
In addition, for a purely extratropical situation, NOAA is
taking a proactive approach in looking at all of the components
of our agency that could bring to bear forecast products and
warnings for extratropical storm surge.
Senator Markey. May I ask one final question, Mr. Chairman?
Thank you.
In recent years, we have seen more land-falling storms in
the Northeast, in the mid-Atlantic, than we have in Florida.
Can you talk about that phenomenon and what you think might be
occurring?
Dr. Knabb. Where the hurricanes go from year to year, from
decade to decade, is a very chaotic system. It is not very
predictable at all.
We have had periods in the past, like the 1950s, that were
very, very busy for the East Coast, the mid-Atlantic, and
northeastern hurricanes. Then we saw what happened in 2004 and
2005 with Florida receiving unprecedented back-to-back
hurricane impacts in each of those years.
No one knows where this year's hurricanes are going to go.
I have not seen convincing research that tells us we can
predict who is going to get more hurricane landfalls in the
future.
But I do know that for any of us, Texas to Maine, and
places inland from the coast, it is simply a matter of when,
not if, the next tropical storm or hurricane brings wind,
water, or both to your community worse than you have ever
experienced. So no one is off the hurricane hook this year or
in future years.
Senator Markey. Thank you for your good work.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Knabb. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Rubio. Thank you, Senator Markey.
I want to thank you, Dr. Knabb, for being here today. It is
a timely hearing that hopefully, in addition to informing
members of this panel and the Senate about the important work
you do and what needs to happen, I hope it will also serve to
inform the public about the constant threat we face from these
weather events. It is no longer just a southern U.S.,
southeastern U.S., Gulf of Mexico issue, but, in fact, one that
is increasingly impacting other parts of our country, as we
have heard here today. So I thank you.
The hearing record is going to remain open for two weeks.
During this time, Senators are asked to submit any questions
they might have for the record.
Upon receipt, Dr. Knabb, I ask that you submit your written
answers to the Committee, if there are any, as soon as you
possibly can.
With that, that concludes our hearing.
I want to thank you again for appearing today.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:28 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. John Thune to
Dr. Richard Knabb
Question. We have been monitoring the situation of the necessary
relocation of NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center (AOC). Our
understanding is that moving forward NOAA plans to award a short-term
lease option on, or before, January 2017, that will not exceed 10
years. In order to retain AOC's highly specialized staff and meet the
Atlantic hurricane mission requirements, NOAA has focused its short-
term airfield and hangar options within 50 road miles of the MacDill
AFB main gate. For the long-term solution, NOAA plans to initiate a
Nationwide Business Case Analysis. If a nearby location for the long-
term airfield and hangar solution cannot be found, what other locations
would meet NOAA's mission requirements?
Answer. NOAA's aircraft mission requirements cover many areas
ranging from snow water equivalent detection, to air chemistry
research, to winter storms, El Nino, and of, course, hurricanes. NOAA
aircraft fly missions in areas spanning the entire United States, to
include the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, and covering most of the
Atlantic Ocean. Supporting NOAA's hurricane missions are arguably
NOAA's most critical requirement and locating the NOAA aircraft
Operations Center in the southeastern states, especially Florida, is
most effective for meeting that particular mission. Extensive costs to
``pre-stage'' aircraft to be able to support the hurricane missions
make other locations farther away from this region much less favorable
and not affordable.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Marco Rubio to
Dr. Richard Knabb
Question 1. Technology has taken us from a time where the only
forecasting available was from the conditions fishermen and mariners
were able to relay to shore, to a time of satellites, super computers,
intelligent minds and a fleet of aircraft. What would you credit as the
biggest advancement in hurricane forecasting?
Answer. Multiple technological advancements during the past several
decades have simultaneously contributed to our increased understanding
of hurricanes and to improvements in our forecasting capabilities.
Geostationary satellites arguably provide our forecasters with their
most fundamentally critical observational data for monitoring all
stages of a hurricane's development and life cycle, leading to
indispensable benefits to timely forecasts and warnings. Data from
polar orbiting satellites are also extremely important, for our
computer models to correctly depict and then forecast the state of the
atmosphere on a larger scale, and these data also enhance human
analyses of tropical cyclone internal structure and environmental
factors that contribute to better forecasts. Advances in physical
sciences knowledge, coupled with these improvements in observing, have
also led to improvements in understanding and modeling. Aircraft
reconnaissance data provide much needed smaller-scale data from within
tropical cyclones and developing disturbances that are vital to our
operational forecasts and warnings, and these data are also
increasingly utilized by higher-resolution hurricane forecast models,
including those currently in operational use and those still under
development via programs like the Hurricane Forecast Improvement
Project (HFIP). Overall, the combinations of advancements in satellite
data observations, improvements in the understanding of the physical
factors, and advanced computer model forecasts, augmented by aircraft
reconnaissance in our areas of responsibility, have together produced
the advancements in hurricane forecasting that we have seen and that we
expect will continue.
Question 2. Speaking of advancements, NOAA has been testing a small
unmanned aircraft system (UAS) that is deployed directly from the P-3
Hurricane Hunter. This UAS, named ``the Coyote,'' is expected to better
capture atmospheric data in areas of a storm where manned aircraft
cannot travel. This technology is promising, especially as the costs of
the unit can decrease. What is the status of the Coyote and its use for
the 2016 season? Where do you see the technology taking us--what, in
your opinion, is the next step in hurricane forecasting advancement?
Answer. NOAA has six Coyote UAS aircraft available to test in 2016.
The goal is to fly these Coyote into mature hurricanes and transmit
critical data in real time to NOAA's operational centers (National
Hurricane Center and Environmental Modeling Center). While not
currently a significant part of our operational analysis and
forecasting process, operational forecasters can view and evaluate data
from the Coyote, providing feedback to researchers. The goal for the
NOAA UAS Coyote is to transform this promising R&D technology into a
more economical operational tool. Operational forecasters are eager to
see how this technology evolves, because platforms like the Coyote
offer the potential to linger at specified flight levels and collect
data in portions of the hurricane circulation where more data are
needed more frequently. Modifying instruments currently used on the GPS
dropsondes and integrating them with the targeted low level flight
capabilities of the Coyote UAS has the potential to allow scientists to
regularly and reliably sample the lowest regions of the hurricane for
an hour or longer which could be valuable for increased understanding
of hurricane physics, and ultimately operational model and forecast
improvements. We still envision that the manned aircraft used by NOAA
and the U.S. Air Force will continue to be our primary operational
sources of aircraft data within hurricanes for the foreseeable future,
due to many characteristics such as their fast speed, ability to survey
a storm in the period of time needed for operational forecasts and
warnings, and ability to carry a full payload of necessary
instrumentation.
NOAA is pursuing other technological advancements that could prove
important in advancing hurricane prediction, including the capability
to enhance wind measurements in and around hurricanes through the use
of Doppler Wind Laser Radar (Lidar) and evaluating the impact of real
time weather data gathered by the NASA Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial
System on weather and hurricane prediction models.
We are also looking forward to the detailed data that will be
available from GOES-R--which is scheduled to be launched later this
fall.
Question 3. I wholeheartedly agree that we need to be a Weather-
Ready Nation, where our people, businesses and governments are prepared
for, and able to respond quickly to, severe weather events. In terms of
collaboration with Federal, state and local officials, can you speak to
how important those partnerships are, and what, if any gaps exist?
Answer. The collaboration with Federal, state, and local officials
and the much broader community is essential to achieving a Weather-
Ready Nation. We now have over 3,500 Weather-Ready Nation Ambassadors
who are our partners, committed to working with NOAA and other
Ambassadors to strengthen national resilience against extreme weather.
In effect, the Weather-Ready Nation Ambassador initiative helps unify
the efforts across government, non-profits, academia, and private
industry toward making the Nation more ready, responsive, and resilient
against extreme environmental hazards. We are seeing much more weather
awareness than ever before, and we are hoping this trend will continue
as we realize our vision of a Weather-Ready Nation. Part of meeting
this goal will be increased emphasis on social science research to
complement NOAA's physical sciences research and operational
activities. As an example of our proactive approach to promoting
hurricane resilience, we collaborated more closely than ever before
with numerous Weather-Ready Nation Ambassadors in conducting the NOAA
Hurricane Awareness Tour this past spring, resulting in increased media
and public attention on tangible steps that individuals, families, and
businesses must take well in advance of the next hurricane.
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