[Senate Hearing 116-597]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




                                                        S. Hrg. 116-597

                     ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE RESEARCH 
                       AND FORECASTING INNOVATION

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               before the

        SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, OCEANS, FISHERIES, AND WEATHER

                                 of the

                         COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
                      SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                              MAY 16, 2019

                               __________

    Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and 
                             Transportation



[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]







                Available online: http://www.govinfo.gov  
                             _________
                              
                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                 
52-696 PDF               WASHINGTON : 2023
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
       SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                  ROGER WICKER, Mississippi, Chairman
JOHN THUNE, South Dakota             MARIA CANTWELL, Washington, 
ROY BLUNT, Missouri                      Ranking
TED CRUZ, Texas                      AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska                RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
JERRY MORAN, Kansas                  BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska                 EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts
CORY GARDNER, Colorado               TOM UDALL, New Mexico
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee          GARY PETERS, Michigan
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia  TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
MIKE LEE, Utah                       TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin               JON TESTER, Montana
TODD YOUNG, Indiana                  KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona
RICK SCOTT, Florida                  JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
                       John Keast, Staff Director
                  Crystal Tully, Deputy Staff Director
                      Steven Wall, General Counsel
                 Kim Lipsky, Democratic Staff Director
              Chris Day, Democratic Deputy Staff Director
                      Renae Black, Senior Counsel
                                 ------                                

        SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, OCEANS, FISHERIES, AND WEATHER

CORY GARDNER, Colorado, Chairman     TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin, Ranking
TED CRUZ, Texas                      RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska                 BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin               GARY PETERS, Michigan
RICK SCOTT, Florida   



















                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hearing held on May 16, 2019.....................................     1
Statement of Senator Gardner.....................................     1
Statement of Senator Baldwin.....................................     2
Statement of Senator Blumenthal..................................    38
Statement of Senator Sullivan....................................    42
Statement of Senator Udall.......................................    47

                               Witnesses

Dr. Waleed Abdalati, Director, Cooperative Institute for Research 
  in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder......     4
    Prepared statement...........................................     6
Deborah A, Bronk, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer, 
  Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences..........................    10
    Prepared statement...........................................    12
Radley Horton, Lamont Associate Research Professor, Columbia 
  University.....................................................    22
    Prepared statement...........................................    24
Erika Washburn, Ph.D., Director, Lake Superior National Estuarine 
  Research Reserve...............................................    28
    Prepared statement...........................................    30

                                Appendix

Response to written questions submitted to Deborah A. Bronk, 
  Ph.D. by:
    Hon. Richard Blumenthal......................................    51
    Hon. Edward Markey...........................................    52
Response to written questions submitted to Erika Washburn, Ph.D. 
  by:
    Hon. Richard Blumenthal......................................    54
    Hon. Edward Markey...........................................    58

 
                     ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE RESEARCH 
                       AND FORECASTING INNOVATION

                              ----------                              


                         THURSDAY, MAY 16, 2019

                               U.S. Senate,
   Subcommittee on Science, Oceans, Fisheries, and 
                                           Weather,
        Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m. in 
room SD-562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Cory Gardner, 
Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Gardner [presiding], Sullivan, Scott, 
Baldwin, Blumenthal, and Udall.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CORY GARDNER, 
                   U.S. SENATOR FROM COLORADO

    Senator Gardner. Thank you so much. I will call this 
hearing to order.
    Thank you to Ranking Member Baldwin for your work on the 
subcommittee. I look forward to serving with you and working 
with you in this capacity.
    And thank you to the witnesses for being here today.
    I would like to extend a special welcome to Dr. Waleed 
Abdalati from the Cooperative Institute for Research in 
Environmental Sciences, CIRES, which is based in Boulder, 
Colorado. One of the many positive aspects of getting this 
opportunity for the hearing today in the Senate is the ability 
to showcase the best of our great State, Colorado. And Dr. 
Abdalati is among the best in the country on issues related to 
climate science, and I am honored that you would be here today. 
I am thankful that you took the time to travel and join us.
    Today's hearing is about atmospheric research and 
innovation. In short, it is about the work that so many of our 
scientists are doing to combat the threat of climate change. I 
believe in climate change. I believe in the consensus within 
the scientific community. I believe humans are contributing to 
climate change, and I believe we have work to do together to 
solve it.
    Unfortunately, climate change has become a partisan weapon 
used for more fighting than as a topic of serious discussion. 
In reality, there is unreasonableness on both far ends of the 
spectrum, but much in the middle where we can agree.
    Last Congress, I worked closely with my colleague, Senator 
Gary Peters from Michigan, to pass the American Innovation and 
Competitiveness Act, legislation that updated policies at the 
National Science Foundation and the National Institute of 
Standards and Technology. Both of those agencies do work 
applicable to climate science.
    After 18 months of hard bipartisan work, we passed that 
bill into law, the first major science legislation to pass the 
Commerce Committee and into law in nearly a decade.
    It is going to take a lot of that kind of commitment and 
good will on both sides of the aisle to find reasonable 
solutions to climate change. I look forward to working with my 
colleagues to find a path forward in that regard while we are 
investing huge sums of money into clean energy resources here 
in the United States and continue to work to reduce emissions.
    I am looking forward to hearing from the witnesses today 
and how the United States is investing in climate research, how 
it is helping us tackle the challenge of climate change, and 
how we can be engaging others around the world in pursuing 
similar approaches to science.
    With that, I will turn it over to Senator Baldwin.

               STATEMENT OF HON. TAMMY BALDWIN, 
                  U.S. SENATOR FROM WISCONSIN

    Senator Baldwin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure 
to open the first hearing of the new Science, Ocean, Fisheries, 
and Weather Subcommittee with you and especially on a topic 
that is so important to both of our States, research that helps 
us better understand our changing climate and how our 
communities can respond to the challenges they face because of 
it.
    I know our esteemed witnesses will describe the knowledge 
we have gained about this challenge that has impacts at the 
local level and across the globe. I believe it is critical that 
we use that information to support our communities as they face 
new and growing challenges to health, public safety, and 
economic stability. And as we review this information, this 
hearing is a perfect example of a guiding force in my state, 
something we call the Wisconsin Idea. It is the idea that 
public research is not intended to just gather dust on a shelf. 
Rather, its purpose is to improve the lives of the public, 
address threats to our economy, and to innovate to improve 
lives for the next generation.
    This is urgently important right now as we are presented 
with an abundance of strong research findings that show that 
climate change is happening rapidly. We know that substantial 
and swift action is needed to reduce the impact of these 
changes, as well as to help our communities prepare for and 
recover from the increasingly intense weather events that 
impact our safety and economic stability.
    I would like to talk a bit about the changes that we are 
seeing in my State and what they mean for the people of 
Wisconsin. We are seeing more extreme storm events. 
Infrastructure that has weathered storms for decades is now 
failing. Our infrastructure was not built to handle rain like 
the rain we are seeing. Bridges and roads are being washed away 
literally, people cutoff from lifesaving services and urgent 
medical treatment. Heavy rain events are overwhelming our storm 
water systems, and this leads to more contamination released 
into our lakes and it threatens our drinking water supplies. 
These are not inconveniences. These are fundamental and 
dangerous disruptions to people's lives. And after a bridge 
washes out, communities need the tools, funding, and 
information to build better and more resilient infrastructure 
that can withstand this new reality of more severe weather.
    Many communities in Wisconsin are focused on building back 
stronger and more resilient because they know and live the 
realty of a changing climate every day, and they know the 
enormous local costs to taxpayers of having to replace 
infrastructure and manage public health and safety risks. It is 
our job to help give them the tools that they need to succeed.
    Unfortunately, a lot of the tools communities have right 
now are delaying or even preventing actions to rebuild in a 
stronger and more resilient way. The disjointed Federal 
disaster response process can be hard for communities to 
navigate. Aid for rebuilding can be delayed, making it 
difficult to move forward with repairs critical to daily life. 
Sometimes regulations make it harder for communities to act on 
current information and make strategic investments for their 
future.
    Climate change is certainly a big and global problem, but 
it is also just as importantly a very local reality. Things are 
changing. Communities are struggling to have the resources to 
stay ahead of those changes, and we need to do more.
    Fortunately, people across Wisconsin and across the country 
are leading the way when Washington has failed to respond to 
these threats. Local leaders are championing infrastructure 
design for the very rainfall that their communities will face 
in the future and making investments now that use taxpayer 
dollars strategically and guard against future loss of life and 
property. Businesses are looking at these risks, implementing 
strategies to avoid losses from weather events, and the supply 
chain disruptions.
    Our faith communities are also leading the way, 
acknowledging the important reality that people with less means 
will also be less able to protect themselves and their families 
from the costs of recovering from natural disasters, facing 
heat waves, and managing higher costs for food, water, and 
other necessities.
    Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your leadership and having a 
discussion on this important research that gives our 
communities good information so they can make informed 
decisions for their future.
    And now I would like to welcome a leader in research and 
community resiliency from Superior, Wisconsin, our own Dr. 
Erika Washburn. Dr. Washburn, I know that you and your team 
have helped respond to many emergencies across northern 
Wisconsin over the past several years from floods to water 
monitoring after a refinery explosion in your community. Our 
communities have been better equipped to react to these 
challenges because of your expertise and leadership. Thank you 
for the work you do and thank you for making the trip to share 
that expertise in this important discussion.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Senator Baldwin.
    And to Dr. Bronk and Dr. Horton, if you want a special 
call-out in opening statements, you are going to have to move 
to Wisconsin or Colorado. All right?
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Baldwin. Dr. Bronk hails from Wisconsin.
    Senator Gardner. Hails from Wisconsin. OK, very good. You 
are always welcome. So very good.
    But I will just quickly introduce all the witnesses 
together. As I mentioned, Waleed Abdalati is the Director of 
the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental 
Sciences, also known as CIRES, in Boulder. Dr. Deborah Bronk, 
the President and CEO of Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences 
of East Booth Bay, Maine; and Dr. Radley Horton--welcome--
Associate Research Professor at Lamont-Doherty Earth 
Observatory at Columbia University Earth Institute, Palisades, 
New York. And of course, as talked about by Senator Baldwin, 
Dr. Erika Washburn, Director of the Lake Superior National 
Estuarine Research Reserve in Superior, Wisconsin. I very, very 
much appreciate all of your willingness and testimony today, 
looking forward to our conversation.
    And, Dr. Abdalati, if you would start, and then we will 
just go down the line. Thank you.

          STATEMENT OF DR. WALEED ABDALATI, DIRECTOR,

               COOPERATIVE INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH

                   IN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES,

                 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER

    Dr. Abdalati. So thank you, Chairman Gardner and Ranking 
Member Baldwin and other distinguished members of the 
Committee, for inviting me to provide testimony at this 
important hearing.
    I also thank you for your ongoing support of weather and 
drought-related research, which directly impacts our national 
economy, health, livelihood, and prosperity.
    As was said, I am the Director of CIRES at the University 
of Colorado, and as part of our broad research portfolio, CIRES 
scientists directly support NOAA in its weather forecasting 
efforts and climate research by developing key insights into 
atmospheric and related phenomena, building modeling and 
analytical tools to improve forecasts and projections.
    In the last 5 years, forecast model improvements made by 
NOAA and the research community have greatly improved 
forecasting of thunderstorms, blizzards, floods, and even smoke 
from wildfires. Forecast error has gone down 25 percent in that 
time, and we find even greater improvement in some areas. For 
example, our skill in pinpointing the location of precipitation 
has improved by 50 percent in the last 5 years.
    Despite these successes, however, there remain critical 
needs for more accurate forecasts and better lead-time. In the 
longer term, seasonal and sub-seasonal forecasting and longer-
term climate projections, as well as information at more local 
levels are needed.
    Achieving these objectives requires continued development, 
maintenance, and operation of super computers, the effective 
use of cloud computing, and support for research on techniques 
such as improving code, advancing machine learning, and 
improving data analytics.
    Improvement in these areas also requires key observational 
capabilities such as surface weather stations, weather balloons 
and aircraft, radar and satellites, targeted field studies and 
novel innovative methods such as webcams and crowd-sourced 
observations, which can be especially valuable in remote or 
rural areas.
    In the coming decade, there are likely to be new satellite 
capabilities based on the recommendations of the National 
Academy of Sciences' Earth Science Decadal Survey, which I have 
the privilege of co-chairing. If the high priority 
recommendations put forth in the report are implemented, 
particularly those related to clouds, precipitation, aerosols, 
winds, ice, and other phenomenon, the observational information 
to inform the physics and meteorological and climate modeling 
will tremendous.
    Another critical area of advancement is in the social 
sciences because the full value of our weather and climate 
forecasting capabilities and risk assessments can only be 
realized when they are used and understood by people beyond the 
community, people other than the experts. And these kinds of 
capabilities could never be realized without Federal 
investments in both the research and operational domains. The 
returns on these investments in both dollars and capabilities 
are tremendous, and because much of this investment flows 
through universities, it supports the development and training 
of a capable workforce that will contribute to the strength, 
health, and safety of our Nation in the future.
    Another area in which CIRES is very active is in the 
development and implementation of the National Integrated 
Drought Information System, or NIDIS. NIDIS coordinates and 
integrates drought research from various sources, and drought 
will be a key manifestation of climate change. Drawing from 
existing capacity in states and universities and across Federal 
agencies, NIDIS works to improve the nation's capacity to 
manage drought-related risks by providing the best information 
available and tools to assess potential impacts of drought and 
to support drought preparedness. Their improved drought 
forecasting and monitoring provides the kind of objective and 
timely information that farmers, water managers, 
decisionmakers, and State and local governments need for 
effective drought risk management and response, none of which 
would be possible without the Federal investment and structure 
provided through NIDIS.
    Finally, these weather and drought processes I am referring 
to occur against an evolving backdrop, which as Senator Gardner 
mentioned, is climate change. Climate change has implications 
for weather, seasonal climate, drought, air quality, sea 
levels, storm surge, human health, and many other aspects of 
our environment that affect the way we live.
    Our success as a society really in the face of climate 
change is going to depend on four things: the magnitude of 
those changes, the rate at which they occur, our ability to 
anticipate them, and how well equipped we are to deal with 
them. It is critical that we invest in and use our 
understanding of the physical, chemical, ecological, and social 
dimensions of the earth system to understand these issues and 
best position us for success in the future.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Baldwin. I 
appreciate your invitation to testify before this important 
committee, and I look forward to the Committee's questions.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Abdalati follows:]

          Prepared Statement of Dr. Waleed Abdalati, Director,
     Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, 
                     University of Colorado Boulder
    Thank you, Chairman Gardner and Ranking Member Baldwin and the 
other distinguished members of the committee, for holding this 
important hearing today, and for allowing me to provide testimony. It 
is an honor to be here today to speak about the state and importance of 
such critical environmental matters as weather forecasting, drought 
management, and related issues. I thank this committee for its efforts 
to equip the Nation to face challenges of human and economic importance 
through advancing atmospheric research in ways that have improved 
weather forecasting, our understanding of air quality, and our ability 
to understand and deal with drought. Investments by the Federal 
government in research in these and related areas are critical to 
positioning individuals and the Nation to successfully meet the 
challenges posed by varying weather and climate conditions with which 
our economy, livelihood, and prosperity are so intertwined.
    From the earliest days of civilized society, people have sought to 
understand the world around them and the conditions in which they live 
in order to be successful in the face of challenges, and to capitalize 
on opportunities presented. In few places is the value of such 
understanding more immediately evident in than in the areas of weather 
and drought, which is why I am happy to be here to discuss the current 
state of knowledge, the value of that knowledge, and ways in which that 
knowledge can be improved.
    I am the director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in 
Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder. 
CIRES is NOAA's largest cooperative institute, and we support the 
agency in the execution of its mission and carry out a wide range of 
research aimed at understanding many aspects of the Earth's 
environment--from the surface of the Sun to the depths of the Earth's 
interior. A key part of our mission is directly supporting NOAA in its 
weather forecasting efforts, developing key insights into atmospheric 
phenomena, and building modeling and analytical tools to improve 
forecasts. Another area in which we are very active is in the 
development and implementation of the National Integrated Drought 
Information System (NIDIS), which seeks to ``Advanc[e] drought science 
and preparedness across the nation'' (https://www.drought.gov/drought/
).
    I would like to focus my initial comments on weather forecasting 
and improvement, then provide some perspectives on NIDIS, and finally 
speak a little bit about the broader backdrop against which these key 
societally critical activities lie.
Weather Forecasting and Improvement
    In the last five years forecast model improvements made by NOAA 
researchers and their colleagues (through partnerships such as the 
cooperative agreements with CIRES and our sister institute, the 
Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere [CIRA], based in 
Fort Collins at Colorado State University, as well as grants to other 
researchers) have meant we are doing a significantly better job 
forecasting thunderstorms, blizzards, floods, and even smoke from 
wildfires. One measure of forecast error, Root Mean Square Error 
(RMSE)--or the difference between what was observed and what was 
predicted--is down 25 percent in last 5 years alone, and we find even 
greater improvement in some areas. Our skill in pinpointing the 
location of precipitation in, for example, has improved by 50 percent 
in the last 5 years.
    However, limits in prediction capability and the lag from research 
to operations can come at a high cost. As a tragic example, in 2013, 
the HRRR model (High-Resolution Rapid Refresh) estimated strong 
thunderstorm winds would reach a Yarnell, Arizona wildfire site. The 
model, however, was still in development, it was not yet operational, 
so this information was not yet incorporated in weather forecasting 
offices. Tragically, on June 30th, nineteen City of Prescott 
firefighters, members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, were trapped 
and killed when the wind-shift left them with no escape. The 
experimental new model had forecast that wind shift with great 
accuracy. Three years later, when HRRR was operational, the National 
Weather Service in San Francisco, CA was able to use the model to tell 
the public where wildfire smoke was expected to spread, serving the 
health and safety needs of the community. And in 2018, during the Carr 
fire in California, detailed smoke forecasts allowed Amtrak to make 
informed decisions about suspending some regional services until 
visibility improved. The HRRR smoke model is used widely today, 
including by TV broadcasters to tell viewers what to expect, when, and 
where. An informed public facilitates the realization of these 
benefits, which are health-related, safety-related, and economic in 
nature.
    These detailed benefits and capabilities go far beyond smoke and 
the rain and temperatures that we typically associate with weather. 
They are also tied to hail, for example. An experimental version of the 
HRRR ensemble regional analysis and prediction system forecasted the 
location and path of a severe hail storm eight hours in advance of 
hitting Colorado Springs last August (2018). In addition, HRRR 
accurately predicted the maximum amount of snowfall from a 2018 
snowstorm in the Midwest with 36 hours of lead time. There are other 
critical forecasting tasks the Nation relies on, which I will mention 
briefly here: We at CIRES support NOAA and other agency efforts to 
understand and forecast air quality, for example, both during high 
impact events, like wildfires or a massive oil spill, and during normal 
pollution seasons like summer in Denver or winter in Salt Lake City. We 
conduct world-class atmospheric chemistry research essential to these 
weather modeling efforts, and we focus on the world's frozen places, 
too. Changes in Earth's ice cover impacts weather and climate, in ways 
we don't entirely understand yet, and they have direct, immediate 
implications for military and commercial work in the Arctic. Ship 
captains and navigators need to know where the sea ice is, and where it 
will be tomorrow. These kinds of information protect and save lives and 
property, allowing individuals, businesses, governments and others to 
make informed decisions that impact their well-being, livelihood, and 
prosperity.
    Despite these successes, there remain critical needs for more 
accurate forecasts, better lead times, and information at more local 
levels. To achieve these objectives, we need continued improvements in 
high-performance-computing as well as sustained and improved 
observations. In the area of computing, there is a significant need for 
support of the development, maintenance, and operation of 
supercomputers, as well as the effective use of cloud computing as a 
high-performance computing resource. Beyond the hardware/computing, 
however, there is a critical need for support for research on 
techniques, such as improving weather model code, advancing machine 
learning, and improving data analytics.
    On the observational side, quality data really are foundational to 
the ability to successfully understand and predict weather. Key 
observation capabilities include surface weather stations, weather 
balloons and aircraft observations, radars and satellite observations 
of atmospheric, oceanic, and land-surface phenomena, targeted field 
studies, and novel innovative methods such as web cams and citizen 
science/crowd-sourced observations. These crowd-sourced observations 
can be especially critical in remote or rural areas.
    In the area of ground-based observations, the Mesonet network in 
Oklahoma, with its 120 ground stations covering the state, serves as an 
excellent example that could be emulated elsewhere. In the case of 
citizen science, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow 
(CoCoRaHS) system, developed by Professor Nolan Doesken at Colorado 
State University after the devastating 2013 floods in Colorado, allows 
citizens to collect local rain, hail, and snow, data all over the 
country, upload it to a central database, and facilitate improved 
local-scale weather forecasting. This kind of citizen science, which 
costs the government almost nothing, provides detailed local 
information for improved precipitation forecasts that would otherwise 
be nearly impossible to achieve.
    In addition to computational, analytical, and observational 
capabilities, continued cross-line office partnerships between the 
National Weather Service (NWS) and the Office of Atmospheric Research 
(OAR) are essential in order to coordinate the innovative weather 
services needed to address future challenges, as well as to facilitate 
the transition of scientific advances into operations and applications.
    Fortunately, there are some significant developments underway or on 
the horizon to advance our capabilities in the understanding and 
prediction of weather. One is the Unified Forecast System (UFS). UFS is 
NOAA's community-based, coupled comprehensive Earth system modeling 
system, designed to support the Weather Enterprise and to be the source 
system for NOAA's operational numerical weather prediction 
applications, as well as to serve both the research and development and 
operational communities engaged in the numerical prediction of the 
Earth System. Using advanced high-performance computing architectures, 
the system will incorporate the most recent advances in weather 
prediction modeling from NOAA and the research community. UFS is 
expected to:

   Implement a weather-scale, fully-coupled Numerical Weather 
        Prediction System

   Extend forecast skill beyond 8 to 10 days

   Improve hurricane track and intensity forecast

   Extend weather forecasting to 30 days.

    Elsewhere on the modeling and physics front is the FV3, the Finite 
Volume Cubed-Sphere Dynamical Core, under development at NOAA's 
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, which incorporates state-of-the-
art physics in new ways, allowing for more accurate global forecasts. 
FV3 is currently being implemented into NOAA's Global Forecast System 
(GFS) at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and 
is expected to be fully operational for global forecasts later this 
year. NOAA's academic partners played key roles in evaluating this and 
other core model packages under consideration and determining which 
would best serve the Nation's growing forecasting needs. Other 
applications, such as regional high-resolution forecasting and coupled 
atmosphere-ocean modeling for seasonal prediction, are planned for 
later implementation at NCEP. These new capabilities, coupled with more 
robust ensemble model forecasts in which multiple models are run and 
compared to reduce uncertainty, will continue to advance our 
capabilities in weather prediction accuracy and reliability.
    Another major effort that will accelerate knowledge and 
capabilities is the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC), which 
was authorized under the recent NIDIS and Weather Research and Forecast 
Innovation Act Reauthorizations. This integration of efforts by NOAA 
and the National Center for Atmospheric Research is expected to advance 
numerical guidance skill, reclaim and maintain international leadership 
in numerical weather prediction, and improve the research to operations 
transition process. It expected that EPIC will:

   Leverage the weather enterprise

   Enable scientists and engineers to collaborate more 
        effectively

   Strengthen NOAA's ability to undertake research projects

   Leverage existing resources in NOAA

   Create a community global weather research modeling system 
        accessible by the public

   Be computationally flexible

   Utilize cost-effective, innovative strategies and methods, 
        including cloud-based computing capabilities, for hosting and 
        management of part or all of the system.

    In addition to modeling, there are likely to be new satellite 
capabilities on the horizon, based on the recommendations of the 
National Academy of Science's Earth Science and Applications from 
Space--2017 decadal survey, which I had the privilege of co-chairing. 
If the high-priority recommendations put forth in that report are 
implemented, particularly those related to clouds, convection, and 
precipitation, as well as aerosols and winds, the observational 
information to inform the physics of meteorological and climate 
modeling will be tremendous.
    Another critical area of advancement that continues to be 
recognized is in the area of social science. The successful use of the 
information generated depends on it being delivered in a way that 
people respond to and use, and also that risk is communicated 
effectively. Risk communication was specifically called out in the 
Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017 The true value 
of our weather forecasting capabilities can only be realized when they 
are used and understood broadly. For this reason, the social science 
dimension of weather forecasting is critical to the broader enterprise.
    And finally, these advances that I described above and future 
capabilities could never be realized without Federal investments in 
both the research and operational domains. This research is carried out 
by Federal scientists, not just at NOAA, but at NASA, the Department of 
Energy, and elsewhere; as well as by university scientists, including 
those at CIRES, who are supported by Federal dollars. The return on 
those investments in research our government makes nationally is 
tremendous. Though somewhat dated, a 2009 study from the National 
Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado, showed Americans 
used 300 billion weather forecasts annually at an estimated the value 
of $31.5 billion. At the time, the funds spent on such forecasts 
totaled roughly $5 billion annually, providing an enormous return on 
investment. No doubt, in the ten years since, weather forecast usage 
and economic benefit have increased considerably. Beyond the dollars, 
however, a critical benefit realized by these Federal investments and 
the broader weather enterprise has been the training of students, who 
will serve as the next generation of forecasters, scientists, 
entrepreneurs, and weather savvy citizens and professionals. Because 
much of the investment flows through universities, where training and 
education are fundamental to our mission, the investment of Federal 
dollars today ensures the development of a capable workforce and 
comprises a sound and important investment in the strength, health, and 
safety of our Nation in the future.
National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS)
    I would like to turn our attention now to the National integrated 
Drought Information System, or NIDIS. NIDIS was authorized by Congress 
in 2006 and reauthorized in 2014 and 2019 to coordinate and integrate 
drought research, building upon existing federal, tribal, state, and 
local partnerships in support of creating a national drought early 
warning information system. NIDIS aims to improve the Nation's capacity 
to manage drought-related risks by providing the best available 
information and tools to assess the potential impacts of drought, and 
to prepare for and mitigate the effects of drought. CIRES supports 
NIDIS through the seven CIRES/CU Boulder staff members who comprise the 
NIDIS Program Office, based at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory 
in Boulder, CO.
    A major focus of NIDIS this year is development of a national 
drought early warning system. In support of that development, NIDIS is:

   Partnering with private sector, academic institutions, 
        agencies and citizen scientists

   Hosting the National Drought Forum in Washington, DC, July 
        30-31, which seeks to educate the community on the status of 
        droughts in the US, examine needs, report progress on the early 
        warning system, etc.

   Developing a national coordinated soil moisture monitoring 
        network (multi-agency, multi-institutional)

   Developing a public health strategy to support research and 
        communications of the links between drought and public health 
        impacts (There will be a summit in Atlanta in mid June on this 
        topic.)

   Studying the Mississippi River corridor and its sensitivity 
        to drought, including impacts to agriculture, navigation and 
        transportation, manufacturing, recreation and tourism

   Conducting a Southwest regional drought economic impact 
        assessment to compare the scope and severity of the 2017-2018 
        drought to previous ones to understand how conditions 
        influenced economic, health and even crime outcomes

   Implementing a drought and wildland fire strategic plan, to 
        improve the use of drought information in wildland fire 
        management for ecological health, public health, and 
        firefighter safety.

    Government investment has been critical to NIDIS. Reauthorization 
in 2019 recommended an increase in funding from $13.5 million in Fiscal 
Year 2019 to $14.5 million in Fiscal Year 2023. NIDIS supports an 
integrated, collaborative approach to managing drought events, building 
on existing programs and partnerships. This approach includes improved 
drought forecasting and monitoring that provides the kind of objective 
and timely information that farmers, water managers, decision-makers, 
and state and local governments need for effective drought risk 
management and response. By drawing from existing capacity in states, 
universities, and across Federal agencies, NIDIS serves as a model for 
federal-state collaboration in shared information services, none of 
which would be possible without the Federal investment and structure 
provided through NIDIS.
Backdrop and Context
    As the scientific community works to understand atmospheric and 
oceanic processes that determine and influence weather, it is critical 
to understand that these processes occur against an evolving backdrop, 
which is climate change. As heat continues to be trapped in the 
atmosphere and temperatures rise, there is an increase in the amount of 
energy in the system that ultimately has implications for weather, 
climate, drought, air quality, sea level, storm-surges, human health, 
and many other aspects of our environment that affect the way we live. 
It is that same type of understanding of basic physics that we use to 
develop reliable weather forecasts that informs our understanding of 
climate change and the implications for the Earth system. The effects 
and manifestation of climate change are well documented and well 
understood, not just by the scientific community, but by entities with 
a vested interest in such knowledge. These include the U.S. military, 
the insurance industry, the real-estate industry, coastal planners, 
farmers, etc.
    Unfortunately, the climate change discussion has been far too 
politicized in recent years, in large part because the stakes are very 
high on multiple fronts (strategic, economic, social, etc.). 
Paradoxically, it is precisely because those stakes are so high that 
the conversation needs to be depoliticized, and that the leaders of 
this Nation and the leaders of the world accurately incorporate our 
best understanding of climate change in policy-and decision-making. As 
a scientist, I focus on the underlying physics of change and the 
mechanisms, but I am also well aware that there are economic 
implications of policies that go far beyond the physics of climate 
change. It is for that reason, that I am not trying today to prescribe 
solutions to the climate challenges. Rather I am here simply to ask 
that as policies are made that intend to support economic prosperity 
now and in the future, the role climate change plays in that future be 
considered in a way that takes advantage of what we know today, and 
ensures we continue to build on that understanding in the future, and 
that a flow of that information can be used for strategic and informed 
decision-making.
    The Earth's climate is changing. It always has, and it always will. 
Our success as a nation and society depends critically on:

   The magnitude of those changes

   The rate at which they occur

   Our ability to anticipate them

   How well equipped we are to deal with them.

    The first two items are dependent on whatever mitigative measures 
are taken, since mitigative measures can limit the magnitude of the 
change and slow them down. The third bullet is why the research 
community is working to understand the changes that are occurring, the 
mechanisms that underlie those changes, and what those changes mean for 
the future. The final bullet speaks to our resilience, which requires 
awareness and the effective use of information, as well as a robust 
flow between the knowledge producers and the knowledge users (decision 
makers, planners, etc.).
    So as we discuss weather and drought today, it is critical that we 
keep in mind that the phenomena we seek to understand--for the purpose 
of saving lives and property and securing economic prosperity--are 
occurring against a backdrop that is changing. It is changing in ways 
that follow similar physics and have major implications for those 
shorter-term weather-and drought-related phenomena. Investments in 
research are critical to our ability as a Nation and as a society to 
manage the challenges associated with a changing climate, to capitalize 
on the opportunities created, and ultimately, to ensure that we use our 
knowledge and understanding of the physical, chemical, ecological, and 
social dimensions of the Earth system to best position us for success 
in the future.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Baldwin, I appreciate your 
invitation to testify before this important committee, and I look 
forward to the committee's questions.

    Senator Gardner. Thank you very much for your testimony.
    Dr. Bronk, please proceed.

        STATEMENT OF DEBORAH A. BRONK, Ph.D., PRESIDENT

        AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, BIGELOW LABORATORY

                       FOR OCEAN SCIENCES

    Dr. Bronk. Thank you for the opportunity to provide this 
testimony in service to this country and the ocean, both of 
which I love.
    I am an oceanographer who has done research in over 50 
research expeditions all around the world. I have been the 
president and chair of two scientific societies that represent 
over a million scientists in the U.S. I served as Director of 
the Division of Ocean Sciences at the National Science 
Foundation, and I currently serve as President and CEO of one 
of the world's most innovative oceanographic institutions, the 
Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.
    I am about as middle of the road politically as one can 
get, which means I am constantly defending one side or the 
other. I have what I would love to see more of in this country.
    On this panel, I represent the ocean science community and 
their need to provide the data necessary for accurate climate 
predictions. My take-home message is this. With the large 
increase in greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, we are 
conducting a massive experiment on the only planet we have. To 
know how best to protect ourselves from and respond to the 
changes in our climate, the United States should commit to 
sustained increased investment in four things: climate 
modeling; collecting the global ocean observations of key 
physical variables, including atmospheric aerosols above the 
ocean; developing the tools needed to generate global 
observations of key chemical and biological parameters; and 
training and attracting the workforce needed to do all three of 
these things successfully.
    I emphasize the word ``sustained'' because programs that 
can lay out work plans over the course of a decade will be 
better able to leverage resources and save the taxpayers money.
    Finally, the priorities should be generated by leaders in 
their respective scientific disciplines and should be done in 
the context of a robust international collaboration.
    Now to the science. Every year humanity releases billions 
of tons of carbon into the atmosphere and as a result, our 
oceans are warmer. Ocean warming leads to the melting of sea 
ice, a reality I have seen in my own work in the Arctic. Ocean 
warming leads to sea level rise and coastal flooding, a reality 
I saw firsthand living near Norfolk, Virginia, home of the U.S. 
naval fleet. Ocean warming leads to changes in the migration 
and distribution of marine organisms, changes that have 
threatened disruption of the $200 billion fishing sector in the 
U.S. Ocean warming also leads to the reduction in ocean oxygen, 
which impacts more than 500 ecosystems all around the world, 
including the tragic dead zone where the Mississippi River 
enters the Gulf of Mexico.
    Then there is ocean acidification. When carbon dioxide in 
the atmosphere dissolves in seawater, it changes ocean 
chemistry and threatens many organisms, including coral reefs, 
the loss of which is estimated to cost this country $140 
billion by the end of the century.
    To prepare and mitigate these changes, we need to know what 
we will be facing, and that requires accurate predictive 
climate models. At a basic level within a climate model, the 
surface of the earth is divided into squares and each square 
includes a series of mathematical equations that represents the 
important processes that occur. For a model to accurately 
represent what is happening in the real world it must have data 
and lots of it. Currently there is not nearly enough data from 
the ocean.
    From an ocean perspective, climate models--most need data 
on three cycles: heat, fresh water, and carbon. A heat budget 
measures the balance between the incoming solar radiation and 
the outgoing heat that escapes. The fresh water budget is 
important to understand in the salinity or salt in the ocean, 
which along with temperature, determines the density of water 
and so controls the deep global ocean circulation. The ocean 
carbon cycle is made up of many pools of carbon such as carbon 
dioxide or organisms and the processes that move this carbon 
from the atmosphere to the ocean and the sediments below. This 
cycle is by far the most complex and the one with the largest 
uncertainty in climate models.
    To collect the data we need requires a whole suite of 
measurements, including unmanned instruments like buoys and 
gliders, as well as shipboard measurements. Unmanned 
approaches, cost effective, exist for many physical and 
chemical variables such as temperature and salinity and pH, but 
there are many chemical and biological measurements where 
unmanned methods and instrumentations simply do not exist, 
which is what severely limits our ability to collect the data 
we need and strongly impedes our understanding of the earth's 
climate system.
    The ocean does not see national boundaries, so expanding a 
truly global ocean observation system requires strong 
international cooperation. And developing and conducting these 
ocean observations will require a trained work force, which is 
another reason the U.S. should increase its investment in STEM 
education now. I also want the best and the brightest from 
around the world to be on Team USA in this effort. We should 
welcome students from every country around the world, train 
them well, and then staple a green card to their Ph.D. diploma, 
and hope that they stay with us.
    Thank you for taking up this issue, and thank you for 
giving me the opportunity to share my views.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Bronk follows:]

  Prepared Statement of Deborah A. Bronk, Ph.D., President and Chief 
        Executive Officer, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences
                             My background
    For the last thirty years I have devoted my life to the study of 
the oceans. For twenty-six of those years I was a college professor who 
ran my own laboratory focused on the study of nutrients and how they 
control the growth of phytoplankton and bacteria at the base of the 
ocean food web. I have participated in over 50 research expeditions 
from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Over the last decade, I have also 
taken what I learned in the ocean, and applied it to help water 
reclamation facilities.
    Throughout my career I have been committed to service--to science 
and this country. I was a member of the Ocean Carbon and 
Biogeochemistry Scientific Steering Committee and the U.S. Carbon Cycle 
Science Plan Working Group, and have served on numerous review 
committees for tenure and promotion, research funding, and programs, 
including as chair of the institutional review of the Woods Hole 
Oceanographic Institution.
    I was elected member-at-large and then president of the Association 
for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography, the largest 
international scientific society dedicated to the aquatic sciences. I 
have also served as member-at-large, treasurer and chair of the Council 
of Scientific Society Presidents, an organization that represents over 
a million scientists in the U.S. across all scientific disciplines.
    From 2012 to 2015, I served at the National Science Foundation as 
section head and then director of the Division of Ocean Sciences where 
I was responsible for programs across all ocean disciplines as well as 
major oceanographic facilities including NSF use of the U.S. research 
fleet, ocean observing, and the ocean drilling program. It is an honor 
to continue that service by providing testimony to this committee. I 
offer these thoughts as a citizen based on my experience as a 
scientist, an educator, and a mother.
    I also note that I am a middle child; we tend to be the 
peacekeepers. I was raised by very conservative parents that I 
respected and adored and I have spent my life working with many very 
liberal individuals who are like a second family. This means I have 
spent my entire life trying to look at both sides of what can be very 
contentious issues. When it comes to the ocean there are many.
                              Introduction
    In my comments, I will focus on climate, which is the average 
weather conditions on the planet over decades. This is in contrast to 
weather, which is the day to day state of the atmosphere and how it 
changes over days to weeks. One way to think about this is that climate 
is what you expect, but weather is what you get on any given day.
    My take home message is that the United States should commit to a 
sustained investment in four things--climate modeling, collecting the 
global ocean observations of key physical variables, developing the 
tools needed to generate global observations of key chemical and 
biological parameters, and training the workforce needed to do all 
three successfully.
    There is an abundance of scientific literature on the ocean's 
impact on climate and I will not do it justice here. In the time and 
space allowed I have tried to provide a brief tutorial of the basics 
that I would want all of our elected officials to know. I direct 
interested readers to a number of summary reports including Sustaining 
Ocean Observations to Understand Future Changes in Earth's Climate 
(National Academies 2017), the National Climate Assessments (Jewett and 
Ramanou 2017; Taylor et al., 2017; Hayhoe et al., 2018; Pershing et 
al., 2018), the State of the Carbon Cycle Reports (USGCRP 2018), and 
the many products developed through the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change (IPCC).
A. Why the climate is changing
    Life exists on Earth because the planet has a blanket of 
atmospheric gases, including water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane, 
that acts like the glass of a greenhouse and retains some of the energy 
from incoming solar radiation. Over the past 100 years, mankind has 
taken carbon buried deep within the ground as fossil fuels, and burned 
it to power the incredible technological advances started during the 
Industrial Revolution. The result raised the standard of living for 
billions of people around the globe. It also increased the 
concentration of these greenhouse gases in our atmosphere resulting in 
an average increase in global temperature from 1901 to 2016 of 1.0+C 
(1.8+F; Hayhoe et al., 2018).
    This massive alteration of Earth's atmosphere has had a profound 
impact on our oceans, which have absorbed more than a quarter of the 
carbon dioxide released. Here I highlight two direct effects this 
increase in greenhouse gas concentrations have had on our oceans--they 
are now warmer and the pH of the water has declined, making the ocean 
more acidic. Both of these changes have had an effect on the ocean's 
role in climate.
B. Ocean warming
    Every year, humans release about 10 gigatons (36 billion tons) of 
carbon into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels and other 
activities (Le Quere et al., 2018). In 2016, atmospheric levels of 
carbon dioxide passed 400 ppm, a striking milestone and a dramatic 
increase from pre-Industrial levels of 280 ppm. This huge surge in the 
levels of carbon and other greenhouse gases blanketing the atmosphere 
traps excess heat in the Earth's climate system.
    The oceans have absorbed 93 percent of this excess heat and store 
it for two main reasons. First, water has the highest specific heat 
capacity of any common material, meaning that it can absorb a great 
deal of heat before its temperature actually increases. Second, the 
global ocean is vast, covering 71 percent of the Earth's surface with 
an average depth of 4 kilometers (12,123 feet). This incredible volume 
makes it a huge reservoir for heat that is continuously distributed by 
currents and other circulation processes.
    The highest degree of warming has taken place in the upper 75 
meters (246 feet), as this upper layer lies closest to the warming 
atmosphere. Average global temperatures in the surface ocean have 
increased by 0.7  0.08 +C (1.3+  0.1+F) per 
century between 1900 and 2016 (Jewett and Romanou 2017). The upper 
ocean also mixes vigorously, distributing the heat it absorbs. As more 
energy enters Earth's climate system, heat penetrates deeper into the 
ocean. Warming at the poles is especially impactful because these are 
the sites of deep ocean water formation. The combination of ice 
formation and extreme cold makes the waters in the North Atlantic dense 
relative to surrounding waters. These dense waters sink carrying heat 
to the ocean's interior.
    Most of the remaining 7 percent of this heat goes into melting sea 
ice, glaciers, ice caps, and warming the continent's land mass. Only a 
tiny fraction goes into warming the atmosphere, but even that is felt 
in rising global temperatures. The six warmest years on record have all 
occurred since 2010 (NOAA State of the Climate Report 2019). While 
there is much debate over the record of increasing air temperatures, 
the ocean does not have parking lots or heat island effects and yet 
still we see significant increases in temperature.
    The complex interactions between continued greenhouse gas 
emissions, the resulting energy imbalance, and changes in ocean heat 
storage and transport will largely control the impacts of anthropogenic 
climate change. I focus on five critical impacts here--melting of sea 
ice, sea level rise and coastal flooding, changes in the distribution 
and migration of marine organisms, the decline of coral reefs and 
deoxygenation of the ocean.
1.  Melting of sea ice
    The Arctic Ocean is important to the world's ecology, climate, and 
economy. Due to the shape of the planet, more incoming solar radiation 
concentrates at the equator than at the poles. The atmosphere and ocean 
currents address this energy imbalance by transporting heat away from 
the equator. This process has driven annual average temperatures in the 
Arctic to increase more than twice as fast as the global average, 
resulting in substantial loss of sea ice and glacial mass. Climate 
models using the IPCC ``business as usual'' scenario predict average 
Arctic temperatures will increase 7+C (45+F) by the year 2100.
    Since 1979, the annual average extent of Arctic sea ice has 
decreased 3.5 to 4.1 percent per decade, including an 80 percent loss 
in summer sea ice volume (Comiso and Hall 2014; Vaughan et al., 2013). 
The melting of sea ice now starts 15 days earlier than it did in the 
past, and it is predicted that the Arctic will be nearly free of late-
summer sea ice by the middle of this century (Taylor et al., 2017).
    The lack of summer Arctic sea ice is increasing seaside erosion, 
undercutting villages, and washing away infrastructure. Alaskans are 
being forced to change their hunting strategies and even the locations 
of whole communities. From 2010 to 2017, I made seven trips to Barrow, 
Alaska, the northern most village in the U.S. In that short time, the 
changes to the region and community have been profound including the 
impending destruction of the main road from Barrow to Point Barrow due 
to erosion from the sea.
    The effect of sea ice loss is profound because it is a key part of 
polar ecosystems. Large blooms of algae occur at the ice edge and form 
the base of the Arctic Ocean food web (Arrigo 2014). As ice coverage 
declines, the timing and location of the ice edge blooms change, as 
does critical habitat for more than a thousand species, including polar 
bears, seabirds, and seals. Many organisms hunt, give birth, migrate 
and shelter on ice, and the loss of ice is causing declines in a number 
of species (Laidre et al., 2015). As one example, walruses are moving 
farther from shore as the sea ice extent shrinks, and hunters from 
native Arctic communities that rely on them must now travel further 
across open water, threatening both people's safety and traditional 
ways of life.
    Shrinking ice cover is also making the Arctic more accessible to 
shipping, with access by various countries and commercial entities. 
This brings both new opportunities and risks. The challenges that 
accompany greater access include protecting the border from new threats 
to national security, a heightened threat of oil spills and illegal 
fishing, and the need to update severely outdated nautical charts and 
put search and rescue plans in place.
2. Sea level rise and coastal flooding
    Sea level is rising as a result of warming ocean temperatures and 
the melting of ice on land, such as glaciers and ice sheets. Warming 
water temperatures contribute to sea level rise because of thermal 
expansion--warm water takes up more volume than cooler water. Since 
1900, average sea level has risen by about 16 to 21 cm (7 to 8 inches) 
globally with about a third of the increase due to thermal expansion. 
Even more alarming than the amount is that nearly half of this increase 
has occurred since 1993. Sea level continues to rise at a rate of about 
one-eighth of an inch per year (Hayhoe et al., 2018).
    The ultimate magnitude of sea level rise will vary based on how 
land ice responds to continued warming. Predictions for the century 
between 2000 and 2100 vary from one to four feet of sea level increase, 
with extreme increases of over eight feet if the Antarctic ice sheets 
collapse. If the ice sheet on Greenland were to melt, sea level could 
increase by an incredible 21 feet. These scenarios are unlikely, but I 
note that past increases have been larger and occurred more rapidly 
than expected. As a nation, we need to prepare for the worst.
    There will be many consequences of higher sea levels. Destructive 
and deadly storm surges will reach farther inland, bringing more 
frequent flooding with high tides. These floods are disruptive and 
expensive. Today, nuisance flooding is estimated to be from 300 percent 
to 900 percent more frequent within U.S. coastal communities than 50 
years ago (Sweet et al., 2014).
    As ocean and atmospheric warming trends persist, sea level rise 
over the next centuries will ramp up to rates significantly higher than 
what we see today. Nearly 40 percent of people in the United States 
live in high-population-density coastal areas, where they will be 
subject to the flooding, shoreline erosion, and hazardous storms that 
come with rising sea levels. These impacts will also be felt globally--
eight of the 10 largest cities in the world are near a coast as are 
four of the 10 largest cities in the U.S.
    Specific locations will experience sea level rise differently based 
on local factors, such as subsidence and rebounding from natural 
geological processes, changes in regional ocean currents, and 
withdrawal of groundwater and fossil fuels. Sea level rise has already 
increased the frequency of flooding at high tide by a factor of 5 to 10 
since the 1960s for several U.S. coastal communities. The frequency and 
extent of tidal flooding are expected to continue to increase in the 
future and its anticipated that there will be more severe flooding 
associated with coastal storms, hurricanes and nor'easters (Sweet et 
al., 2014). The infrastructure essential for local and regional 
industries in urban environments will be threatened, including roads, 
bridges, oil and gas wells, and power plants.
3. Changes in the migration and distribution of marine organisms
    Increases in water temperatures and its associated effects have 
caused alterations to global patterns of ocean and atmospheric 
circulation, precipitation, and nutrients. Collectively, these effects 
are having a drastic impact on the abundance, diversity, and 
distribution of marine organisms--from the smallest bacteria to the 
largest fish.
    Most of the life in the ocean is microscopic. While we cannot see 
these microorganisms without a microscopic, they produce half of the 
oxygen we breathe and form the base of ocean food webs. As most are 
single-celled organisms that can only drift in the water column, these 
vital plankton are highly vulnerable to ocean changes.
    Broadly speaking, the ocean has two parts--a warmer, less dense 
layer at the surface that receives sunlight but has low nutrients 
(because the microorganisms have taken them all up) and a deep layer 
that is denser and colder, with no light but lots of nutrients (because 
decomposing organisms sink and release nutrients as they decompose). 
Rapid warming of surface water is increasing the temperature difference 
between these layers, increasing the stratification of the ocean and 
preventing the surface and deep water from mixing efficiently. As a 
result, most phytoplankton have a harder time staying near the sunlight 
that they need to grow, and the greater stratification restricts the 
delivery of nutrients phytoplankton need from the deep ocean.
    These changes to the base of the ocean food web reverberate through 
other marine species including the fishing sector, which contributes 
over $200 billion in economic activity each year and supports 1.6 
million jobs (NOAA Fisheries 2017). The species this industry relies 
upon are changing as a result of warming waters. These shifts in 
species distributions are complicating fishery management by changing 
the nature of traditional fisheries and efforts to protect endangered 
species.
    These shifts are especially prominent off the U.S. east coast. For 
example, surveys conducted by state and Federal agencies documented a 
number of shifts in distribution in fish, shellfish and other species 
along the mid-Atlantic with a trend toward poleward movement and/or 
movement to deeper cooler water (Lucey and Nye 2010). Recent research 
at Bigelow Laboratory shows that copepods (tiny crustacean that eat 
phytoplankton and are then eaten by higher organisms) are less viable 
if grown in warmer waters. Shrinking copepod populations will threaten 
numerous marine species that rely on them for nutrition, including the 
endangered North Atlantic right whale (Record et al., 2019).
    I have provided a few examples of shifts in the distribution of 
organisms but I note that detecting and quantifying these changes are a 
challenge because each species within a community may response 
differently due to differences in their life history, where they live, 
and what they eat. Organisms also vary with respect to the outside 
forces that affect them such as fishing, destruction of their habitat 
or pollution. Due to this complexity, detecting and understanding 
shifts in species and populations requires a commitment to long-term 
monitoring programs, which have historically been very difficult to 
maintain.
4. Coral reef decline
    Coral reefs are the foundations of many tropical ecosystems. 
Temperature is a powerful controlling variable for the health and 
location of coral reefs, and many exist at or near their upper 
temperature limit (Schoepf et al., 2015). As a result, ocean warming 
has had a devastating effect on coral reefs around the world. When 
corals are exposed to waters even slightly above their temperature 
maximum, they can release the symbiotic algae, called zooxanthellae, 
that live within their tissues. This process is known as bleaching 
because of the stark white color it turns corals. The symbiotic algae 
provide vital nutrients to the coral, and so bleaching often kills 
them.
    During the last 30 years, there have been several global-scale 
coral bleaching events (in 1987, 1998, 2005, and 2015-2016) that have 
resulted in a dramatic reduction of live coral. This puts the entire 
community of plants and animals that rely on the reefs in jeopardy. In 
the United States, mass bleaching events and outbreaks of coral 
diseases have occurred in the waters off Florida, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, 
the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands 
(Miller et al., 2009; Rogers and Muller 2012).
    In addition to the direct physiological stress of elevated 
temperatures, ocean warming also increases the incidence of coral 
disease, and ocean acidification affects the ability of corals to 
produce their calcium carbonate structures (discussed further in 
section B below). When these effects compromise reef-building corals, 
the entire reef ecosystem becomes threatened (Jones et al., 2004). This 
includes a vast number of invertebrates and fish, organisms that many 
coastal communities depend on for subsistence. Corals also provide 
storm protection to coastal ecosystems and can form the basis of local 
or regional tourism economies (Prachett et al., 2008).
5. Low oxygen
    Oxygen makes up 21 percent of the air we breathe and supports life 
on Earth, and half of this oxygen was produced by phytoplankton in the 
ocean. In water, oxygen exists in a dissolved form and acts as a 
limiting resource that controls the growth of many marine species. One 
consequence of climate change is the loss of oxygen from the oceans, 
known as ocean deoxygenation (Deutsch et al 2011).
    Levels of oxygen in the ocean depend on a balance between oxygen 
production through phytoplankton photosynthesis, depletion through 
respiration by animals, and physical mixing processes. Climate change 
is shifting this balance in several ways. At the most fundamental 
level, warmer water holds less oxygen than cold. As the oceans warm, 
they lose their ability to physically hold oxygen. The same holds true 
for greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane.
    In addition, the surface ocean is warming fastest due to its 
proximity to the atmosphere. This makes the surface water less dense 
and less able to mix with the colder, denser water below, limiting the 
distribution of oxygen. At the same time, global ocean circulation 
patterns are shifting with climate change. Slower circulation and more 
upwelling of oxygen-poor deep water are further decreasing oxygen 
levels in the ocean.
    Long-term monitoring efforts reveal that oxygen concentrations have 
declined during the 20th century, and the IPCC 5th Assessment Report 
predicts that they will decrease 3-6 percent during the 21st century 
due to ocean surface warming. In coastal regions, low oxygen is a 
particularly devastating problem and dead zones where most organisms 
cannot live because of insufficient oxygen have been reported for more 
than 479 systems and their numbers have doubled every decade since the 
1960s (Diaz and Rosenberg 2008).
    Changes to biological processes are also contributing to this 
issue. Warmer water temperatures increase oxygen demand from organisms, 
leading to the faster depletion of available oxygen and threats to a 
vast range of species, including those that comprise valuable 
fisheries. For example, off the coast of California, waters between 200 
and 300 meters have lost 20-30 percent of their oxygen in the last 25 
years (Bograd et al., 2008), threatening important fisheries. In the 
tropical Atlantic Ocean, the vertical habitat of tuna and blue marlin 
reduced by 15 percent between 1960 and 2010 due to expanding oxygen 
minimum zones (Stramma et al., 2012; Schmitko et al., 2017).
C. Ocean acidification
    In addition to warming, excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has 
a direct and independent effect on the chemistry of the ocean, which 
can also impact future climate. Ocean acidification is the process of 
carbon dioxide being absorbed by the oceans and causing significant 
changes to seawater chemistry. Global chemical processes keep gasses in 
the ocean and the atmosphere in equilibrium. While humans have 
drastically increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, 
the ocean has been working to keep up. About a quarter of the carbon 
dioxide we generate through industrial activity ends up in the ocean, 
and the resulting change in chemistry has caused the surface ocean to 
become 30 percent more acidic. This has occurred at a rate at least 10 
times faster than any natural acidification event in the past, and 
affects everything from chemical processes to sea life.
    When carbon dioxide in the atmosphere dissolves in seawater, it 
changes three aspects of ocean chemistry. First, it increases levels of 
dissolved carbon dioxide and bicarbonate ions, which are the fuel for 
photosynthesis in phytoplankton and plants. Second, it increases the 
concentration of free hydrogen ions, which makes the water more acidic. 
Third, it reduces the concentration of carbonate ions. Carbonate is 
critical to many marine organisms, which use the mineral calcium 
carbonate to form their shells or skeletons. For some species, rising 
temperatures and decreasing oxygen levels in the ocean may exacerbate 
the effects of ocean acidification.
    The cold temperature of high latitude ecosystems results in greater 
carbon dioxide solubility making polar regions highly vulnerable to 
ocean acidification. Sea ice loss is also causing Arctic waters to 
acidify faster than expected. Further, acidification along the United 
States coast is greater than the global average for a number of 
reasons, including the natural upwelling of acidic waters off the 
Pacific Northwest and California coasts, changes to freshwater inputs 
in the Gulf of Maine, and anthropogenic nutrient input into urban 
estuaries. Here I will focus on two major consequences of ocean 
acidification--changes to the ocean carbon cycle and the impact on 
organisms and the industries built around them including fisheries and 
aquaculture.
1.  Changes to the ocean carbon cycle
    Carbon is recycled and reused through biological and physical ocean 
processes including photosynthesis, respiration by animals, and mixing 
within the ocean. The carbon cycle drives important biogeochemical 
processes that shape the character of the global ocean and planet as a 
whole. When organisms die, they sink, bringing the carbon that composes 
their bodies into the deep ocean. This is referred to as the biological 
pump because it pumps carbon from the surface to the deep ocean and can 
sequester carbon away for hundreds of years. The oceans are by far the 
largest carbon sink, or storage reservoir, on Earth.
    The combined effect of ocean warming and acidification lowers the 
ability of the ocean to take up additional carbon dioxide in three 
general ways. First, as noted above, warmer water can simply hold less 
gas than colder water. Second, the warmer water in the surface ocean 
becomes, the more stratified the water column will be. Greater 
stratification reduces mixing and so reduces the ability for carbon 
dioxide dissolved in surface water to be mixed into deeper waters. 
Third, it is generally harder for organisms to build shells out of 
calcium carbonate in more acidic waters. This means that phytoplankton 
that build shells (such as coccolithophores), and are therefore heavier 
and so sink faster, are at a disadvantage. As the ocean continues to 
acidify, any selection away from organisms that build shells and 
towards organisms that do not, will likely weaken the biological pump 
and decrease the transport of carbon into the deep ocean as 
phytoplankton die. These effects are already being seen and the oceans 
are becoming less able to absorb carbon dioxide (e.g., Khatiwala et 
al., 2016).
2. Threats to organisms, including fisheries and aquaculture
    The impacts of ocean acidification are diverse. Although certain 
species are favored by more acidic waters, ocean acidification appears 
to negatively impact more marine species than it helps. Organisms that 
use carbonate minerals to build skeletons or shells struggle with this 
basic function in more acidic waters. Organisms like clams, mussels, 
and phytoplankton that use calcium carbonate to build shells and other 
structures are important in environments and economies around the 
globe. Under the IPCC low emissions scenario, seven to 12 percent of 
calcifying species would be significantly affected by lowering pH, and 
21 to 32 percent of calcifying species would be impacted under the high 
emissions scenario (Azevedo et al., 2015).
    Ocean acidification also appears to favor some toxic phytoplankton 
species that form harmful algal blooms, allowing them to become more 
abundant in changing ecosystems (Riebesell et al., 2018). Including 
freshwater and marine ecosystems, harmful algal blooms are a 
significant environmental problem in all 50 states (EPA 2013).
    Entire coral reef ecosystems are also severely threatened by ocean 
acidification. Corals depend on calcium carbonate to build their 
exoskeletons, and acidification impedes this process. The acidic water 
also literally dissolves coral structures, and the bulk of a coral reef 
itself. Many reefs around the world are dissolving faster than they can 
build themselves back up. In addition to forming the foundations of 
ecosystems, corals also provide storm protection to coastal ecosystems 
and can form the basis of local or regional tourism economies. By the 
end of this century, the loss in recreation from coral reefs in U.S. is 
expected to reach $140 billion (Pershing et al., 2018).
    Some of the animals at risk from acidification also comprise 
lucrative fisheries in the U.S., like lobsters in the Northeast and 
squid in California. These animals are physically compromised by 
acidification, and they may find it harder to get the food they need in 
acidifying oceans. Acidification impairs the senses of some fish and 
invertebrates, causing them to misinterpret cues from predators and 
engage in risky behaviors, like swimming far from home. Damage to key 
phytoplankton and zooplankton species can reverberate through entire 
food webs, affecting the fisheries that they support.
    The U.S. aquaculture industry is already shifting in response to 
ocean acidification. Larval shellfish cannot build shells under high 
acidity, and high mortality rates have afflicted the Pacific 
Northwest's $270 million shellfish industry since 2005. The poor 
conditions have prompted some shellfish aquaculture facilities to 
relocate. In Maine, some shellfish farmers are growing kelp in an 
effort to improve local water quality and the health of their stocks.
D. Feedback loops between the ocean and climate
    Natural systems have feedback loops that allow them to adjust to 
changes in the environment. In Earth's warming climate system, a 
positive feedback loop would increase the warming, while a negative 
feedback loop would reduce it. The changes in the ocean described above 
will affect climate in a number of different ways. Unfortunately, the 
feedbacks are largely positive and work to exacerbate warming.
    For example, the decline in sea ice has a direct positive feedback 
on warming. Light colored surfaces reflect more incoming solar 
radiation back into space than darker surfaces. When light colored ice 
melts, it exposes blue ocean water. This blue ocean water absorbs more 
energy, thus creating a positive feedback loop. The warmer it gets, the 
more blue water exposed, the more solar radiation absorbed to further 
increase the temperature.
    Ocean acidification contributes to another positive feedback loop 
with a warming climate. As the ocean acidifies, phytoplankton that 
produce calcium carbonate shells will be selected against and 
phytoplankton that do not build shells will have a competitive 
advantage. The fewer phytoplankton that build calcium carbonate that 
sink into the deep ocean, the less carbon dioxide the ocean will be 
able to adsorb, and the higher the concentration of carbon dioxide in 
the atmosphere available to continue to warm the planet.
E. Taking action--The need for sustained ocean observations
    Earth's climate is now changing more rapidly than at any time in 
human history. The accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere 
will continue and the impacts describe above will worsen. As a result, 
this country will be increasingly called on to make complex decisions 
about how to manage and mitigate the impacts of climate change. We will 
be better able to make these decisions if we have the tools in hand to 
model and predict changes in the climate system. This will require a 
national commitment to increase investment to advance the field of 
climate modeling, continued support for sustained, high quality, ocean 
observations to power the models, and targeted experimental and field 
work to address outstanding questions raised by model uncertainty 
surrounding the biological and chemical processes that are key drivers 
of the ocean carbon cycle.
1.  Modeling
    To study how the atmosphere and the different layers of the ocean 
interact to predict changes in climate, scientists build computer 
models. At a basic level, within the model the surface of the Earth is 
divided into squares and each square includes a series of mathematical 
equations that represent the processes being modeled. These equations 
are based on physical and chemical laws. The more refined the model, 
the smaller squares and the more information they contain.
    Modelers have a saying--``garbage in, garbage out.'' For a model to 
accurately represent that is happening in the real world, it must have 
data and lots of it. To predict changes in climate, models need data on 
the temperature, salinity, and carbon concentrations in the surface and 
deep ocean, global sea ice distribution, surface stress and surface and 
deep ocean currents, and heat flux. They also need data on the movement 
of freshwater from the land via rivers, glaciers, and ice sheets. These 
data need to be collected over decadal time scales and be global in 
scope. To predict climate, we also need to understand ocean biology 
because biology controls carbon uptake and regeneration at the base of 
the ocean food web.
2. Types of observations needed--heat, freshwater, and carbon
    A common tool used by scientists is the construction of budgets for 
important variables in the model. As an oceanographer who studies 
nitrogen, I would construct nitrogen budgets to show where nitrogen was 
coming from, such as a river or a waste water treatment plant, and 
where it was going, such as into phytoplankton or bacteria. A recent 
National Academies (2017) report identified three global budgets that 
were needed to understand climate--heat, freshwater, and carbon. They 
were selected because they each are necessary to understand the climate 
system and to predict how it will change in the future. To truly 
quantify these three budgets requires a global ocean observing system 
where continuous, calibrated measurements are made over decades.
    Heat--A heat budget is the balance between the heat absorbed by 
Earth from incoming solar radiation and outgoing heat escaping from 
Earth in the form of radiation. Slight changes in the balance would 
lead to Earth getting progressively warmer or cooler with each passing 
year.
    Over the past 100 years, there has been a net gain in heat on 
Earth's surface. Ninety percent of this gain has been through ocean 
warming. The adsorption of heat by the ocean is one the reason why 
atmospheric temperatures at the Earth's surface have not increased more 
(Fyfe et al., 2016). This heat is transported throughout the surface 
and deep ocean currents. Currents in the deep ocean are controlled by 
small variations in temperature and salinity and are known as 
thermohaline currents. The greatest challenge for measuring global 
ocean heat content has been to sample a large enough number of sites 
around the globe and at enough depths throughout the ocean.
    Freshwater--Less than 4 percent of the water on Earth is 
freshwater. Sixty-eight percent of this freshwater is locked up in ice 
and glaciers and another 30 percent is groundwater. Understanding the 
freshwater budget is important to understanding the salinity of the 
ocean. Salinity and temperature determine the density of water and so 
is an important control on ocean stratification and ocean circulation. 
Generally, temperature is more important and the basic structure of the 
ocean water column as warm water at the surface and progressively 
colder water as one moves deeper. Freshwater, and its effect on 
salinity, however, can change this relationship drastically. Areas 
where there is a lot of freshwater input, such as at a river outflow, 
regions with high rates of precipitation, or where sea ice is melting 
are areas where salinity is reduced making the water less dense. This 
less dense water remains at the surface, creating a barrier to mixing 
with the water below. This stratification reduces mixing of heat and 
gases between the surface and deep ocean thus impacting the heat 
balance in the region.
    Carbon--The global carbon cycle is made up of pools of carbon and 
the processes that move this carbon from the atmosphere, surface and 
deep ocean and the sediment below. The cycle includes inorganic carbon, 
which is non-living carbon such as carbon dioxide and organic carbon, 
which is carbon that have been incorporated into organisms or the 
dissolved organic carbon they produce. This cycle is important to 
climate for a number of reasons, but primarily because of its control 
on concentrations of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, and the huge 
effect carbon dioxide has on the heat balance of the planet.
    An understanding of the carbon budget is essential to predicting 
future atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations under different 
scenarios. Closing the carbon budget will require sustained 
observations of how much carbon dioxide the ocean absorbs and what 
happens to that carbon once it enters the ocean. This information is 
needed to predict how much carbon dioxide will be absorbed by the ocean 
in the future and the impact it will have on ocean acidification.
3. How do we collect the data we need?
    We are not currently able to close the budgets described above, 
meaning that there are unaccounted for sources or sinks of heat, 
freshwater, and carbon in the ocean. To address this deficit, we need 
to develop methods or improve existing methods for some parameters and 
expand observations into areas of the ocean that are poorly sampled.
    A successful global ocean observing system will use a suite of 
measurement and instrument approaches to provide complete coverage at 
the time scale of relevance to the measurement being taken. There are a 
number of ways to collect ocean data including the use of unmanned 
autonomous platforms such as satellites, buoys, floats, gliders and 
moorings. All of these approaches require that methods and 
instrumentation are available and able to withstand the incredibly 
harsh, corrosive ocean environment.
    Suitable approaches exist for many physical and a few chemical 
variables such as temperature, salinity, the strength and direction of 
currents, carbon dioxide concentrations and pH. In the case of most 
chemical and biological measurements (such as trace metals, bacterial 
abundance, phytoplankton pigments, grazing rates to name just a few) 
autonomous methods and instrumentation do not exist or are cost 
prohibitive. These data can only be collected by scientists on board 
ships and so will remain severely limited in number and geographic 
scope. This lack of data is a strong impediment to understanding 
Earth's climate system.
4. International cooperation
    The United States has been a leader in the development and 
deployment of ocean observing systems. We cannot do it alone, however, 
nor should we want to. Support for United States scientists to 
participate and lead international programs in climate modeling and 
ocean observations should be a priority. Coordinated international 
programs provide the opportunities to share the financial cost of long-
term observing systems, improve the quality of the measurements taken 
through a robust program of intercalibration, and serve as an important 
route for science diplomacy. When nations collaborate to address common 
problems, partnerships are forged that can extend well beyond the 
original issue that brought the nations together.
    An excellent example is the ARGO float program, which collects high 
quality profiles of temperature and salinity in the upper 2000 m of the 
ocean. There are currently 3875 ARGO floats in the ocean, purchased and 
deployed by 34 countries with nearly another 20 countries contributing 
to the program through field assistance or data analysis. The floats 
move passively with the current, slowly moving up and down the water 
column. When they reach the surface, they transmit their position and 
the data they collected to a data repository. ARGO has transformed our 
understanding of ocean currents. Additional sensors for oxygen and 
nitrogen (nitrate) have been developed and deployed on a small subset 
of the floats. Investment to increase the number of chemical and 
biological parameters that can be measured with the floats would be 
money well spent.
5. Workforce development
    To address the issues outlined above, the United States will also 
require a highly skilled workforce. Increasing investment now into STEM 
education across the United States is necessary to support a sustained 
system of climate observations into the future. We also do not need to 
go it alone. For decades, the best and the brightest around the world 
wanted to come and be trained at institutes of higher learning in the 
United States and we welcomed them. We are fortunate that many of them 
chose to stay, and our Nation benefitted immensely from the skill, 
passion and innovation they brought. Those that chose to return home or 
go elsewhere, took with them a better understanding of our republic and 
lasting relationships with our citizens.
    We now live in an era marred by terrorism and in our fear, we are 
making it increasingly more difficult for students to come to the 
United States and then to stay once they are trained. If I had to name 
one thing that most frightens me about the future of this country--this 
is it. The technological challenges in the future will be immense and 
we will only solve them by bringing together a wide array of 
viewpoints, perspectives, and experiences from across this great nation 
and around the world. I want the best and the brightest to be on our 
team. We should welcome them, train then well, and then staple a green 
card to every PhD diploma to encourage them to stay.
F. Conclusion
    With the large increase in greenhouse gases that mankind has 
released into the atmosphere, we are conducting a massive experiment on 
the only planet we have. To know how best to protect ourselves from and 
respond to the changes in our climate, the United States should commit 
to sustained investment in four things--climate modeling, collecting 
the global ocean observations of key physical variables, developing the 
tools needed to generate global observations of key chemical and 
biological parameters, and training the workforce needed to do all 
three successfully. I emphasize the word sustained, because programs 
that can lay out workplans over the course of a decade or more will be 
more productive and better able to leverage resources than shorter term 
initiatives. Finally, the priorities for initiatives in modeling and 
data collection should be generated by leaders in the respective 
scientific disciplines and be done in the context of international 
collaborations.
G. Citations
    Arrigo KR. 2014. Sea ice ecosystems. Annual Review of Marine 
Science. 6:13.1-13.29. doi 10.1146/annurev-marine-010213-135103.
    Azevedo, LB, AM DeSchryver, AJ Hendriks, MAJ Huijbregts. 2015. 
Calcifying species sensitivity distributions for ocean acidification. 
Environmental Science and Technology. 49(3): 1495-1500. doi:10.1021/
es505485m.
    Bograd, SJ, CG Castro, E DiLorenzo, DM Palacios, H Bailey, W Gilly, 
and FP Chavez. 2008. Oxygen declines and the shoaling of the hypoxic 
boundary in the California Current. Geophysical Research Letters. 
35(12): L12607. doi:10.1029/2008gl034185.
    Comiso, JC and DK Hall. 2014. Climate Trends. In: The Arctic as 
Observed from Space. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change. 
5: 389-409. Doi:10.1002/wcc.277.
    Deutsch, C, H Brix, T Ito, H Frenzel, and L Thompson. 2011. 
Climate-forced variability of ocean hypoxia. Science. 33: 336-339.
    Diaz, RJ and R Rosenberg. 2008. Spreading dead zones and 
consequences for marine ecosystems. Science. 321(5891): 926-929.
    Environmental Protection Agency. 2013. Impacts of climate change on 
the occurrence of harmful algal blooms. EPA 820-S-13-001.
    Fyfe, J. C., G. A. Meehl, M. H. England, M. E. Mann, B. D. Santer, 
G. M. Flato, E. Hawkins, N. P. Gillett, S.-P. Xie, and Y. Kosaka. 2016. 
Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown. Nature Climate Change 
6(3):224-228.
    Hayhoe, K, DJ Wuebbles, DR Easterling, DW Fahey, S Doherty, et al., 
2018: Our Changing Climate. In: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the 
United States: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II. 
Reidmiller, DR, CW Avery, D. Easterling, KE Kunkel, KLM Lewis, TK 
Maycock, and BC Stewart, Eds. U.S. Global Change Research Program, 
Washington, DC, USA, pp. 72-144. doi: 10.7930/NCA4.2018.CH2.
    Jewett, L and A Romanou. 2017: Ocean acidification and other ocean 
changes. In: Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate 
Assessment, Volume I, Wuebbles, DJ, DW Fahey, KA Hibbard, DJ Dokken, BC 
Stewart, and TK Maycock, Eds. U.S. Global Change Research Program, 
Washington, DC, USA, 364-392. http://dx.doi.org/10.7930/J0QV3JQB.
    Jones, GP, MI McCormick, M Srinivasan and JV Eagle. 2004. Coral 
decline threatens fish biodiversity in marine reserves. Proceedings of 
the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 
101(21): 8251-8253.
    Khatiwala, S, F Primeau, and T Hall. 2016. Reconstruction of the 
history of anthropogenic CO2 concentrations in the ocean. 
Nature. 462: 346-349.
    Laidre, K, H. Stern, M. Kovacs, L Lowry, SE Moore, et al., 2015: 
Arctic marine mammal population status, sea ice habitat loss, and 
conservation recommendations for the 21st century. Conservation 
Biology. 29 (3): 724-737. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12474.
    Le Quere, C, RM Andrew, P Friedlingstein, S Sitch, J Hauck, et al., 
2018. Earth System Science Data. 10: 1-54. doi: 10.5194/essd-10-2141-
2018.
    Lucey, SM and JA Nye. 2010. Shifting species assemblages in the 
Northeast U.S. continental shelf large marine ecosystem. Marine Ecology 
Progress Series. 415: 23-33.
    Miller, J, E Muller, C Rogers, R Waara, A Atkinson, KRT Whelan, M 
Patterson, and B Witcher. 2009. Coral disease following massive 
bleaching in 2005 causes 60 percent decline in coral cover on reefs in 
the U.S. Virgin Islands. Coral Reefs. 28 (4): 925-937. doi.org/10.1007/
s00338-009-0531-7
    National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. 
Sustaining Ocean Observations to Understand Future Changes in Earth's 
Climate. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/
10.17226/24919.
    NOAA State of the Climate: Global Climate Report for Annual 2017. 
National Centers for Environmental Information, published online 
January 2018, retrieved on February 4, 2019 from https://
www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201713.
    NOAA Fisheries, 2017: Fisheries Economics of the United States, 
2015. NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-F/SPO-170. NOAA National Marine 
Fisheries Service, Office of Science and Technology, Silver Spring, MD, 
pp 245.
    Paulmier, A and D Ruiz-Pino. 2009. Oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) in 
the modern ocean. Progress in Oceanography. 80(3): 13-128.
    Pershing, AJ, RB Griffis, EB Jewett, CT Armstrong, JF Bruno, et 
al., 2018: Oceans and Marine Resources. In Impacts, Risks, and 
Adaptation in the United States: Fourth National Climate Assessment, 
Volume II, Reidmiller, DR, CW Avery, D. Easterling, KE Kunkel, KLM 
Lewis, TK Maycock, and BC Stewart, Eds. U.S. Global Change Research 
Program, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 353-390. doi: 10.7930/NCA4.2018.CH9.
    Pratchett, MS, PL Munday, SK Wilson, MAJ Graham, JE Cinner, DR 
Bellwood, GP Jones, NVC Polunin, and TR McClanahan. 2008. Effects of 
climate-induced coral bleaching in coral-reef fishes: Ecological and 
economic consequences. Oceanography and Marine Biology: An Annual 
Review. 46: 251-296.
    Record, NR, JA Runge, DE Pendleton, WM Balch, KTA Davies, AJ 
Pershing, CL Johnson, K. Stamieszkin, R. Ji, Z Fend, SD Kraus, RD 
Kennedy, CA Hudak, CA Mayo, C Chen, J Salisbury, CRS Thompson. 2019. 
Rapid climate-driven circulations changes threaten conservation of 
endangered North Atlantic Right Whales. Oceanography. https://doi.org/
10.5670/oceanogr.2019.201.
    Riebelsell, U, N Alberle-Alzahn, EP Achterberg, M Alguero-Muniz, S 
Alvarez-Fernandez, J Aristegui, LT Bach, M Boersma, T Boxhammer, W 
Guan, M Haunost, HG Horn, CR Loscher, A Ludwig, C Spisla, M Sswat, P 
Strange, and J Taucher. 2018. Toxic algal bloom induced by ocean 
acidification disrupts the pelagic food web. Nature Climate Change. 8: 
1082-1086.
    Rogers, CS and EM Muller. 2012. Bleaching, disease and recovery in 
the threatened scleractinian coral Acropora palmata in St. John, U.S. 
Virgin Islands: 2003-2010. Coral Reefs. 31(3): 807-819. https:/doi. 
org/10.1007/s00338-012-0898-8
    Schmidtko, S, L Stramma, and M. Visbeck. 2017. Decline in global 
oxygen content during the past five decades. Nature. 542: 355-339.
    Schoepf, V, M Stat, JL Falter, MT McCulloch. 2015. Limits to the 
thermal tolerance of corals adapted to a highly fluctuating, naturally 
extreme temperature environment. Scientific Reports. 5: 17639. doi: 
10.1038/srep17639
    Sweet, W, J Park, J Marra, C Zervas, and S Gill. 2014. Sea level 
rise and nuisance flood frequency changes around the United States. 
NOAA Technical Report NOS CO-OPS 073. 58 pg.
    Stramma, L, ED Prince, S Schmidtko, J Luo, JP Hoolihan, M Visbeck, 
DWR Wallace, P Brandt, and A Kortzinger. 2012. Expansion of oxygen 
minimum zones may reduce available habitat for tropical pelagic fishes. 
Nature Climate Change. 2: 33-37.
    Taylor, PC, W Maslowski, J Perlwitz, and DJ Wuebbles. 2017. Arctic 
changes and their effects on Alaska and the rest of the United States. 
In: Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, 
Volume I. Wuebbles, DJ, DW Fahey, KA Hibbard, DJ Dokken, BC Stewart, 
and K Maycock, Eds. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, 
DC, USA, 303-332. http://dx.doi. org/10.7930/J00863GK
    USGCRP. 2018. Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR2): A 
Sustained Assessment Report. Cavallaro, N, G Shrestha, R Birdsey, MA 
Mayes, RG Najjar, SC Reed, P Romero-Lankao, and Z Zhu (eds). U.S. 
Global Change Research Program, Washington, D.C., USA, 878 pp. https://
doi.org/10.7930/SOCCR2.2018.
    Vaughan, DG, JC Comiso, I Allison, J Carrasco, G Kaser, et al., 
2013. Observations: Cryosphere. TF Stocker, D Qin, G-K Plattner, M 
Tignor, SK Allen, J Boschung, M Nauels, Y Xia, C Bes, PM Midley, Eds. 
Cambridge University Press. Pg 317-382.

    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Dr. Bronk.
    Dr. Horton.

     STATEMENT OF RADLEY HORTON, LAMONT ASSOCIATE RESEARCH 
                 PROFESSOR, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

    Dr. Horton. Thank you, Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member 
Baldwin, and the other distinguished members of the Committee. 
My name is Radley Horton and I am Associate Research Professor 
at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
    Extreme weather events, such as tropical storms, heat 
waves, heavy rain events, and drought threaten the economic 
livelihood of our Nation and the health and safety of our 
communities. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey inflicted an estimated 
$125 billion in damages, with 200,000 homes affected. In 2012, 
a drought caused $33 billion in losses, affecting multiple 
states. In light of the growing Federal, State, and local costs 
of extreme weather events, continuing forecasting advances and 
enhanced communication of scientific information with 
decisionmakers are necessary preconditions for the increased 
preparedness, improved disaster response, and long-term 
resilience we are discussing.
    And continued forecasting improvements of extreme events 
will require new data from the atmosphere, the ocean, the land, 
and the cryosphere, as well as improved models that can better 
reproduce the key physical processes and the ways that they 
interact and also interact with the complex human system 
components.
    So to give one example of those complex system interactions 
in the western U.S., including Colorado, the observed increase 
in extreme wildfires since the early 1980s. These large fires 
are, indeed, putting human safety and assets at risk with 
potential cascading impacts across insurance markets and public 
utilities. Weather and climate are clearly a big part of the 
story, as today when an individual weather system passes 
through; it is facing a new baseline of higher temperatures and 
reduced snow pack that have essentially stacked the deck toward 
an easier ignition of those fire systems.
    But forecasting fire risk also requires integration of 
other environmental data, such as historical forest management 
decisions and changes in the risk of new ignitions as people 
are moving to previously wild areas.
    As another quick example of system interactions, the 
surface of the ocean has warmed more than 1 degree Fahrenheit 
since 1900, which again loads the dice, this time toward 
heavier rain events that penetrate far inland, also toward 
combinations of high heat and high humidity that put our 
vulnerable populations at risk and threaten overall outdoor 
labor productivity as well.
    But as the weather bill of 2017 notes, advances in our 
scientific understanding of extreme events alone do not ensure 
societal risk reduction. Working with communities and 
businesses to help ensure that the most useful information is 
being generated and that it is being communicated as 
effectively as possible for diverse audiences, thereby adding 
value to existing Federal investments in scientific research, 
is critical.
    One quick example is NOAA's regional integrated sciences 
and assessments program, or RISA. A team in the south central 
United States worked with the strategic petroleum reserve to 
identify strategies to secure the nation's 32-day, roughly $33 
billion value, supply of oil in the face of hurricane-related 
storm surge along the Gulf of Mexico.
    In the remainder of my time, I want to further emphasize 
how small shifts in long-term average conditions, what we call 
climate, can have a large affect on the frequency and magnitude 
of extreme weather events. It follows that if we hope to reduce 
economic and safety risks to the nation, climate must play a 
central role in research on extreme weather and its impacts.
    Since 1900, global temperatures have increased by about 2 
degrees Fahrenheit. So far this century, just with that small 
change, the U.S. has seen twice as many record-breaking high 
temperatures as low temperatures.
    It is a similar story with sea level rise. We have only had 
an average change of 7 or 8 inches globally in sea level. It 
may sound like nothing, but as shown in figure 1, for some 
locations the past two generations have witnessed a 5 to 10fold 
increase in the number of days with nuisance flooding, flooding 
that disrupts business, transportation, and critical public 
services.
    Now let us look at the future of coastal flooding, the next 
slide. And instead of looking at nuisance flooding, let us look 
at the big coastal floods, the 1 in 100 year events, the 
heights that flood insurance and zoning decisions are based 
upon. Even under the most optimistic sea level rise scenario 
imaginable of 1 to 2 feet of sea level rise by late this 
century, we see here that across the entire U.S., events, high 
water levels that used to happen once every 100 years, are 
going to be happening within the lifetime of the typical 30-
year mortgage. And in some places, those high water levels 
could happen once every couple of years.
    Along the coast, our homes and critical infrastructure are 
all vulnerable, but it is all Americans who suffer the economic 
costs of sea level rises. It is, after all, U.S. taxpayers who 
bear much of the bill for coastal damages. If ports are 
damaged, and we can expect broader supply chain implications 
and economic disruption well inland.
    Fortunately, through investments in science and science 
communication geared toward decisionmakers, there is great 
potential for risk reduction and new opportunities across the 
U.S. economy. Moody's Investors Service, a major credit rating 
agency, has put cities on notice that if they do not plan both 
for historical extreme weather events but also for emerging 
weather and climate risks, their credit ratings, and thus 
ability to finance future expenditures, may be at risk. Growing 
numbers of investors and companies are now making similar 
demands, while recognizing the opportunities for first movers 
in this space.
    Thank you for inviting me to testify, and I look forward to 
our discussion.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Horton follows:]

    Prepared Statement of Radley Horton, Lamont Associate Research 
                     Professor, Columbia University
    Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Subcommittee, my name is Radley 
Horton. I am an Associate Research Professor at Columbia University's 
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Thank you very much for the 
opportunity to participate in this hearing. I have served as an author 
on the 3rd and 4th U.S. National Climate Assessments, and as a Lead 
Principal Investigator within NOAA's Regional Integrated Sciences and 
Assessments (RISA) Program. I speak to you today though in my personal 
capacity as a private citizen.
    Extreme weather events, such as tropical storms, heat waves, inland 
flooding, and droughts, threaten the economic livelihood of our Nation 
and the health and safety of our communities. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey 
caused an estimated $125 billion in losses, with an estimated 200,000 
homes experiencing damage. Ongoing flooding in the Upper Midwest is 
sure to produce agricultural losses alone in the billions of dollars, 
and extreme drought across much of the U.S. in 2012 caused $33 billion 
in losses (NCEI, 2019). In light of growing federal, state, and local 
costs of extreme weather events, preparedness and early warning to 
reduce vulnerabilities is critical. Better forecasts, and enhanced 
communication of scientific information with decision-makers, are 
necessary preconditions for increased preparedness, improved disaster 
response, and long-term resilience.
    As my colleagues have described, we are seeing rapid advances in 
scientific understanding and forecasting of extreme weather events, but 
continued success will hinge on continued investment in the science, 
and in insuring that information is communicated in ways that can 
benefit decision-making.
    Extremes events operate across a range of time and space scales, 
from for example: a tornado less than one mile in diameter that may 
touch down for only minutes; to: a drought that may span half the U.S. 
and persist for several years. Our forecasting and prediction of these 
events must similarly range from the traditional multi-day weather 
forecast, through the subseasonal (two weeks to 3 months), and out to 
the seasonal and multi-decadal scales. Continued forecast improvements 
across these scales will require new data--from the atmosphere, ocean, 
land, and cryosphere--as well as improved models that can better 
reproduce the key physical processes and interactions among these 
complex systems, including our human systems.
    As one example, the surface of the ocean has warmed more than one 
degree Fahrenheit since 1900, which loads the dice towards (1) heavier 
rain events extending far inland, and (2) combinations of high heat and 
humidity that put the health of our vulnerable populations, as well as 
outdoor labor productivity, at risk. But more research, with the best 
models and the latest data, is needed to understand just how much these 
extreme events will be affected by ocean temperature extremes. 
Similarly to ocean temperatures, changes in Arctic sea ice--volume had 
declined by more than 50 percent in the past 40 years--are impacting 
extreme weather events in the U.S., but our understanding of exactly 
how remains in its infancy. More data and modeling are urgently needed 
given the rapid changes we are observing in the Arctic, and the 
potential implications for National Security.
    As another example, in the western United States, including 
Colorado, an observed increase in the number of large wildfires since 
the 1980s is putting human health and assets at risk, with potential 
cascading impacts ranging from insurance markets to the financial 
health of utilities (Wuebbles et al., 2017). Weather and climate are 
clearly a large part of the story, with the `noise' of individual 
weather systems encountering a `signal', or new baseline, of warmer 
average temperatures and long-term decline in mountain snow pack. But 
forecasting fire risk also requires integration of environmental data 
such as historical forest management decisions, risk of new ignitions, 
and how dry the fuel source is.
    As a final example of the need to integrate diverse types of 
information to produce the best forecasts, marine heat waves, which now 
occur against a backdrop of warmer baseline ocean temperatures, are 
interacting with emerging ocean acidification and in some regions de-
oxygenation, to threaten our fisheries and coastal ecosystems in 
complex ways.
    But as NOAA's Weather Bill of 2017 acknowledges, advances in our 
scientific understanding of extreme events alone do not ensure societal 
risk reduction. Working with communities and businesses helps ensure 
that the most useful information is being generated, and that it is 
being communicated as effectively as possible for diverse audiences. 
I'd like to briefly describe one model for how scientists can work 
hand-in-hand with stakeholders and decision makers to make scientific 
research and information responsive to their needs, adding value to 
existing Federal investments in scientific research.
    NOAA's RISA team in the south-central U.S. worked with the 
Strategic Petroleum Reserve to identify strategies to secure the 
Nation's 32-day, $33 billion, supply of oil in the face of hurricane-
related storm surge along the Gulf of Mexico. After Hurricane Sandy 
inflicted $20 billion in damages in the greater New York Metropolitan 
Region, our RISA team partnered with local, state, and Federal 
entities, including the USACE and FEMA, to provide the science 
foundation and tools to support for example NYC's $20 billion 
resilience plan (Horton et al., 2016).
    In the remainder of my time, I want to emphasize a little 
appreciated point: that small shifts in long-term average conditions--
what we call climate--can have a large effect on the frequency of 
extreme weather events. Higher average temperatures have already loaded 
the dice towards more heat extremes and fewer cold extremes, just as 
sea level rise is already causing coastal flooding to happen more often 
than it used to, with trillion-dollar implications that extend to every 
state. It follows that if we hope to reduce economic and safety risks 
to the nation, climate changes must play a central role in research on 
extreme weather and its impacts.
    Since 1900, global temperatures have increased by about 2 degrees 
Fahrenheit (Wuebbles et al., 2017). One could be forgiven for initially 
thinking, `so what'? or `how could 2 degrees matter?' given the much 
larger temperature variations we experience from one day to the next. 
But with 2 degrees of warming, record high temperatures become much 
more common, and record low temperatures much less common. In fact, so 
far this century the U.S. has experienced roughly twice as many daily 
record high temperatures as low temperatures.
    It is a very similar story with sea level rise. Globally the oceans 
have `only' risen about 7-8 inches since 1900 (Wuebbles et al., 2017). 
How could that matter, when for many places the elevation change over 
the course of six hours between high tide and low tide is a few feet?
    Sea level rise means more frequent coastal flooding and more 
intense/higher magnitude coastal flooding (Wuebbles et al., 2017). 
Already we are seeing nuisance (also known as `sunny-day') flooding 
happen far more often than it used to across the U.S. coastline, as 
shown in Figure 1. For some locations, the past two generations have 
seen a 5 to 10-fold increase in the number of days with nuisance 
flooding. (It should be noted that some of these places, including the 
Mid-Atlantic states, have had more sea level rise than the global 
average, but even for those states that have not, the trend towards 
more nuisance flooding is clear.) From Miami to Norfolk, this means for 
example: (1) more stores unable to open for normal business, with 
associated ripple effects on the economy; (2) people not able to drive 
home along their normal routes, leading to delays, and 3) more water in 
people's basements. These events perhaps deserve to be called a mere 
`nuisance' when they only happen a few times per year--but at what 
point does it become something more than a nuisance?
    Now lets look to the future of coastal flooding. And instead of 
looking at nuisance flooding, lets look at the big coastal floods--what 
are colloquially known as the `1 in 100 year' events--heights that 
flood insurance, and zoning decisions are made based upon (Figure 2). 
Lets take the most optimistic scenario sea level rise scenario 
imaginable for late this century. With just one to two feet of sea 
level rise, and even if coastal storms do not change at all, the 1 in 
100 year high water levels of the past become events that for most of 
the U.S. coast will be experienced within the 30-year lifetime of the 
typical home mortgage. In some areas, these high water levels could 
happen every couple of years in the future. Rather than focusing on the 
exact numbers in any one location, I would encourage you to note how 
the statistics shift strongly across the entire U.S. And once again, 
this is a low-end sea level rise scenario, and one that includes no 
assumptions about coastal storms changing in the future. For 
hurricanes, this assumption is probably somewhat optimistic, since the 
balance of evidence suggests that major hurricanes will become more 
frequent and intense, in large part due to the warming of the upper 
oceans (Weubbles et al., 2017).
    But sea level rise does more than just cause more frequent 
flooding. It means that when a coastal storm makes landfall, additional 
areas are flooded that would not have flooded before. And deeper 
floodwaters, which allow for greater wave penetration, cause more 
economic damage and loss of life. If the foot of sea level rise in the 
Greater New York/New Jersey Metropolitan Region since 1900 had somehow 
not occurred, 2012's Superstorm Sandy would have flooded the residences 
of 80,000 fewer people (Climate Central 2013; Miller et al., 2013).
    The more frequent and intense coastal flooding brought on by sea 
level rise will impact all Americans. Along our coasts are assets worth 
trillions of dollars. From our homes, to critical service providers, to 
critical infrastructure including interstates like I-95, rail lines 
including Amtrak, airports, and municipal water treatment plants.
    And sea level rise is also a public health and safety issue. It 
means less time to evacuate from low lying areas in advance of a 
coastal storm, and greater risk of injury and death for those 
vulnerable members of our communities who are unable to evacuate.
    And just as all Americans suffer when the health and safety of any 
American is imperiled, so too will all Americans suffer the economic 
costs of sea level rise. It is after all U.S. taxpayers who bear much 
of the bill for coastal flood damages. And coasts are economic hubs for 
the entire nation. Our ports, which almost by definition are vulnerable 
to sea level rise, serve inland interstates and rail systems, as well 
as regional distribution centers. If ports are damaged or operating at 
reduced capacity, we therefore see supply chain implications, and 
economic disruption.
    And then there are the national security implications. From NASA's 
Kennedy Space Center on Florida's Space Coast and Johnson Space Center 
outside Houston, to Norfolk's Naval Base and shipyards, what happens 
along U.S. coasts can have global implications. Recent coastal storm 
damages made worse by climate change have led to billions in damages at 
an Air Force base and a Marine Corps camp.
    And of course, extreme events interact. For example, for a low 
lying coastal city, even a small increase in rainfall intensity, 
combined with a small increase in a hurricane's storm surge could lead 
to a large increase in flooding if accompanied by even modest sea level 
rise.
    To conclude, extreme events sit at the interface between great 
potential for advances in scientific understanding on the one hand, and 
great societal need on the other. Through investment in science and 
science communication geared towards the specific questions decision-
makers are asking, there is thus great potential for risk reduction and 
new opportunities across the U.S. economy. It is becoming clear that 
groups such as large investors and infrastructure stewards realize that 
they must plan for rapidly evolving risks of extreme weather events. As 
one of many examples, Moody's Investors Service, a major credit ratings 
agency, has put cities on notice that if they do not plan for both 
historical and emerging weather and climate risks, their credit 
ratings, and thus ability to finance future expenditures, may be at 
risk. Growing numbers of investors and companies are now making similar 
demands, while recognizing the opportunities for first movers.
    Thank you for inviting me to testify, and I look forward to our 
discussion.
References
    Climate Central, 2003. Surging Seas Sea level rise analysis by 
Climate Central. Retrieved February 25, 2019, from http://
sealevel.climatecentral.org./
    Horton, R., Rosenzweig, C., Solecki, W., Bader, D., & Sohl, L. 
(2016). Climate science for decision-making in the New York 
metropolitan region. Climate in Context: Science and Society Partnering 
for Adaptation, 51-72.
    Miller, K. G., Kopp, R. E., Horton, B. P., Browning, J. V., & Kemp, 
A. C., 2013. A geological perspective on sea-level rise and its impacts 
along the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast. Earths Future, 1(1), 3-18. 
doi:10.1002/2013ef000135
    Moser, S. C., M. A. Davidson, P. Kirshen, P. Mulvaney, J. F. 
Murley, J. E. Neumann, L. Petes, and D. Reed, 2014: Ch. 25: Coastal 
Zone Development and Ecosystems. Climate Change Impacts in the United 
States: The Third National Climate As-sessment, J. M. Melillo, Terese 
(T.C.) Richmond, and G. W. Yohe, Eds., U.S. Global Change Research 
Program, 579-618. doi:10.7930/J0MS3QNW.
    NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) U.S. 
Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (2019). https://
www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/
    Sweet, W.V., R. Horton, R.E. Kopp, A.N. LeGrande, and A. Romanou, 
2017: Sea level rise. In: Climate Science Special Report: Fourth 
National Climate Assessment, Volume I [Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. 
Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock (eds.)]. U.S. 
Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 333-363, doi: 
10.7930/J0VM49F2.
    Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, B. DeAngelo, S. Doherty, 
K. Hayhoe, R. Horton, J.P. Kossin, P.C. Taylor, A.M. Waple, and C.P. 
Weaver, 2017: Executive Summary of the Climate Science Special Report: 
Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I [Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. 
Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock 
(eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, 26 
pp.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Dr. Horton.
    Dr. Washburn.

  STATEMENT OF ERIKA WASHBURN, Ph.D., DIRECTOR, LAKE SUPERIOR 
              NATIONAL ESTUARINE RESEARCH RESERVE

    Dr. Washburn. Thank you, Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member 
Baldwin, and members of the Subcommittee.
    I direct the Lake Superior Reserve administered by the 
University of Wisconsin-Madison's Division of Extension. I am 
also here representing the National Estuarine Research Reserve 
Association nonprofit, which represents all 29 designated 
reserves around the Nation.
    For 46 years, the reserves have served, as a national 
network of coastal and estuarine places in a Federal-State 
partnership that works directly in response to community needs 
to deliver science, education, and stewardship to track the 
health of our coastal systems and understand how they are 
changing.
    We leverage the expertise and resources of our Federal 
partner, NOAA, and collaborate with many more partners all over 
the Nation. We work in a non-regulatory, non-advocacy framework 
on issues that communities care about through such things as a 
system-wide monitoring program which collects data every 15 
minutes, adding up to over 40 million publicly available data 
points every year for communities to use for planning purposes.
    I work on the shores of Lake Superior, the world's largest 
body of freshwater. Every day I drive between Wisconsin and 
Minnesota over the St. Louis River, home to the largest 
freshwater port in the world. The resilience of our community 
is connected to our coast. Yet, those are changing rapidly. 
Today I will focus on three aspects of change: water levels, 
habitats, and changing water temperatures and chemistry.
    Right now, Lake Superior is 15 inches higher than the 
average over the last century. Region-wide, we are projected to 
reach or exceed record high water levels, coupled with more 
frequent and intense storms. This increases our risk for severe 
coastal flooding. Last month, the City of Ashland suffered 
heavy rains forcing 5 million gallons of untreated sewage into 
Lake Superior. In 2012, as my first image shows, a 500-year 
storm destroyed much infrastructure in the twin ports and 
surpassed over $100 million in damage. In the past 7 years, our 
region has had nine Federal disaster declarations related to 
storms and flooding. There is another image here that shows a 
close-up.
    The ability to predict and plan for changing water levels 
is critical and complicated. Yet, our many partners and we are 
helping coastal communities adapt. Duluth residents are 
piloting natural infrastructure as a strategy to reduce storm 
damage. Lake Michigan communities have access to tools to 
manage bluff erosion so they can protect their property from 
landslides.
    Like water levels, our coastal habitats are changing, 
threatening native species while allowing invasive species to 
take hold. Changing water levels and habitat threaten the 
future of wild rice, or manoomin, which is very important for 
our partners of the Fond Du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. 
This threatens Ojibwe heritage and identity. Children cannot be 
named without wild rice as part of the ceremony.
    Reserves work on habitat conservation and restoration for 
wild rice and other things by advancing such topics as natural 
shorelines to mitigate flooding and increase resilience. With 
the Lake Superior and Ohio reserves, we have permanent 
monitoring stations that provide data decisionmakers need to 
protect water quality and habitat. Our reserve is also 
partnering on enhancing restoration and tourism opportunities, 
as well as improving visitor experiences, on Wisconsin Point, a 
beloved local beach.
    But warming waters changes everything. When I came to Lake 
Superior 7 years ago, everyone referred to algal blooms as 
something for the lower lakes, like Lake Erie. They could not 
happen in Superior. It was too cold, too big, too oligotrophic 
or nutrient poor. But we have had three documented algal blooms 
in the last 2 years. Research tells us that storms and sediment 
plumes play a role. Research also shows that Lake Superior is 
warming faster than almost any lake on Earth, and this is 
clearly climate-driven.
    The complicated research, however, focuses on the human 
dimensions, how to communicate risk from warming waters, how to 
connect decisions made up watershed with degraded water quality 
on the coast. At Lake Superior Reserve, we are working with the 
public health community to reduce blooms by improving 
monitoring, and Milwaukee decisionmakers will have access for 
real-time early warning detections of blooms.
    These accelerating patterns of change are affecting 
everything about how we live, work, and play on all of our 
coasts. In the Great Lakes, we expect public health will 
suffer, but at-risk communities are more vulnerable to climate 
change and tribal nations especially so.
    At the Lake Superior Reserve, we are at the forefront of 
work examining the mental health impacts of solastalgia, or the 
grief and anxiety that comes from the loss of landscapes, 
place, and identity due to environmental change. We are joined 
by our colleagues and travel communities to bring the strength 
of traditional ecological knowledge and an understanding of the 
impacts of lost heritage identity and place. Sadly, their work 
is helping us see parallels with what Lake Superior residents 
are all beginning to experience in front of our eyes.
    The 29 reserves and all of our many partners will continue 
to support the monitoring and interdisciplinary research that 
coastal communities need. Thank you again to Congress for your 
investments in all of our programs. We could not have 
accomplished what we have so far without it. Yet it is critical 
that these investments continue to ensure that future science 
is focused on issues of importance to our coastal communities, 
neighbors, families, and friends.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Washburn follows:]

 Prepared Statement of Erika Washburn, Ph.D., Director, Lake Superior 
                  National Estuarine Research Reserve
    Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin, and Members of the 
Subcommittee, my name is Erika Washburn. I am the director of the Lake 
Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve, which is administered by 
the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Division of Extension. I submit 
this testimony in my capacity as director of one of two reserves in the 
Great Lakes and as a member of the National Estuarine Research Reserve 
Association, which represents 29 designated reserves around the Nation.
    I appreciate this opportunity to speak about the science associated 
with climate change from the perspective of a national network of 
coastal and estuarine places and a federal/state partnership that works 
directly with coastal communities. For 46 years, the Reserves have 
delivered science, education, and stewardship to track the health of 
estuarine and coastal systems and understand how they are changing. I 
would like to thank Congress for its vision and funding for this 
important work.
    Together, reserves encompass more than 1.4 million acres of 
locally-owned, special places in 22 states and territories. Since 2011, 
we've engaged more than 4,000,000 scientists, educators, students, and 
visitors in research, monitoring, and education. We work in a non-
regulatory, non-advocacy framework on issues that coastal communities 
care about: clean water, safety, informed citizens, abundant fisheries 
and healthy habitats. Climate change affects all of these.
    Of relevance is our unique System-wide Monitoring Program, designed 
to track environmental change and inform coastal resource management 
and science. Together, we manage 280 monitoring stations that--every 15 
minutes--take readings on water quality, pollution, habitat change, sea 
level rise and weather. We produce more than 40 million, publically 
available data points every year. Communities rely on this to plan for 
extreme weather, manage fisheries, assess storm damage, and more.
    Reserves leverage the expertise and resources of our partner, the 
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides 
the most current and advanced coastal and climate science and data. We 
collaborate with Federal and state agencies, Tribal entities, local 
governments, school districts, businesses and academic institutions. We 
address the multi-faceted needs of coastal communities, informing 
critical decisions that impact the economy, public health, and safety.
    I work on the shores of Lake Superior--the world's largest body of 
freshwater by surface area. Every day, I drive back and forth between 
Wisconsin and Minnesota over the St. Louis River, home to the largest 
freshwater port in the world. More than 35 million short tons of cargo 
pass through here annually, to cities throughout the Great Lakes and 
beyond. 23 million Americans live within the Great Lakes basin and we 
contribute more than $3 trillion in GDP with our maritime economy. Our 
economic health and the resilience of our communities is firmly 
connected to our coasts. As a social scientist, and anthropologist, I 
have worked to understand the connections between people and these 
places.
    Today I will focus on three aspects of climate science that are of 
particular importance to people in coastal communities: changing water 
levels; changing habitats, and changing water temperatures and 
chemistry.
Changing Water Levels
    My office sits 10 feet from the St Louis River Estuary and a short 
boat ride to the open waters of Lake Superior. Right now, water levels 
are 15 inches higher on average than they were between 1918 and 2017. 
April precipitation topped historic averages by at least 24 percent. 
Region-wide, we are projected to reach or exceed record high water 
levels. NOAA and others warn that, coupled with more frequent and 
intense storms, this increases our risk for severe coastal flooding 
like what is happening today in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan.
    Understanding the relationship between lake levels and climate 
change is complicated, involving regional models, ground and surface 
water, and ice cover change. Lake levels and flooding have increased 
because we are experiencing more frequent and intense precipitation 
events and more rain than snow in winter. Last month the City of 
Ashland suffered heavy rains which forced five million gallons of 
untreated sewage into Lake Superior. Last year, Wisconsin's coastal 
counties experienced multiple severe storms, one of which resulted in 
more than $3.5 million in damages. In 2012, a 500-year storm destroyed 
infrastructure, roads and businesses in the Twin Ports. Flood damage at 
our local university approached $24 million, while the Duluth area 
suffered $100 million in damage. In the past seven years, our region 
has had 9 Federal disaster declarations related to severe storms and 
flooding.
    The ability to predict and plan for changing water levels is 
critical for all Great Lakes communities. It affects infrastructure, 
property values, shipping, dredging, public health, and quality of 
life. Analysis and modeling from NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental 
Research Lab is already focused on understanding the connection between 
global warming and lake levels to project future trends. However, 
scientists agree that further research is required to prepare 
communities as they plan for the future.
    While we are grateful for past congressional support, continued 
Federal investment in reserves and other monitoring programs is needed. 
It makes good sense to forecast future changes accurately so that local 
governments have the information they need to invest in grey and 
natural infrastructure, reduce flooding, and minimize damage to roads, 
stormwater systems and businesses. The Lake Superior Reserve and our 
partners are already hard at work on these critical issues. I am happy 
to share some examples:

   Duluth residents are piloting natural infrastructure as a 
        strategy to reduce storm damage, thanks to a collaboration 
        between Minnesota Sea Grant and NOAA that developed tools to 
        visualize potential flood impacts and gauge the use of natural 
        infrastructure to mitigate flooding.

   Lake Michigan communities have access to better tools to 
        manage bluff erosion, including a new device that measures 
        bluff movement so residents can protect their property from 
        landslides. Partners include the University of Wisconsin-
        Madison, Wisconsin Sea Grant, and the University of Michigan.

    Many challenges brought about by changing water levels in the Great 
Lakes are shared by marine communities, and reserves are working with 
them to meet these head on.

   Florida's Flagler County now has access to improved modeling 
        tools to support adaptation planning and flood management, 
        thanks to our Guana Tolomato Matanzas reserve.

   Communities across the Gulf of Mexico have access to 
        enhanced sea level rise data and storm surge models that they 
        are using to assess the vulnerability of built and natural 
        infrastructure. These tools were supported by our Florida, 
        Mississippi, and Alabama reserves.

   In Texas, the City of Rockport is using a vulnerability 
        assessment conducted by the Mission-Aransas reserve to reduce 
        economic and property losses related to changing water levels.
Changing Habitats
    Coastal habitats are rich, vibrant systems that serve as shelter 
and nursery for valuable fisheries and thousands of species of birds 
and wildlife. But they are changing. As water levels increase, 
temperatures warm, water chemistry changes, and storms intensify, 
habitats are lost or dramatically altered, native species struggle to 
survive and invasive species take hold. This impacts the survival of 
the very species that drew people to settle in coastal areas in the 
first place. In the Ojibwe origin story, their ancestors traveled 
around Lake Superior until they found a place where wild rice, or 
manoomin, grew on the water. Today, changing water levels and other 
factors threaten the future of wild rice--not just in our region where 
we partner with the Fond Du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa--but 
across the upper Great Lakes. This threatens Ojibwe heritage and 
identity; children cannot be properly named without a wild rice 
ceremony.
    Essential to coastal habitat conservation and restoration are 
advances in our understanding of natural shorelines as a way to 
mitigate flooding and increase ecological resilience. Reserves work 
with many partners to understand the biophysical science behind 
replacing hardened shorelines with natural features and the social and 
economic impacts of these investments. This requires a social science 
lens and the ability to pull together builders, contractors, engineers, 
scientists, managers and local decision makers to translate the science 
and explore potential solutions. Reserves do this well. Here are two 
examples.

   Permanent monitoring stations at the Lake Superior and Ohio 
        reserves are providing data decision makers need to protect 
        water quality, species, and habitat, while reducing community 
        flooding. These stations track changes resulting from more 
        intense storms, increased sediment, and nutrient runoff.

   Enhanced recreation and tourism opportunities are improving 
        visitor experiences on Wisconsin Point, a beloved local beach, 
        thanks to an ongoing restoration project supported by NOAA, the 
        City of Superior, and the Lake Superior Reserve.

    As a networked system of 29 reserves, we know salt marshes are 
struggling to keep pace with sea level rise, and communities are 
contemplating whether to support marsh migration in already crowded 
coastal watersheds. What will they lose? What will they gain? What are 
the costs? They must balance questions like these with ones about how 
best to protect or migrate infrastructure, property, and roads. All 29 
reserves are helping communities address these questions with the best 
science, data, and information.

   Alaska's Kachemak Bay reserve supported a model of regional 
        groundwater flows that is informing decisions to protect 
        habitats for salmon, the state's most important fishery. This 
        is of value to Alaskans because Coho and Chinook salmon depend 
        on freshwater habitats that are changing due to reduced 
        snowpack, altered rain patterns, and wetland drying.

   Florida's Apalachicola reserve provides science to address 
        critical local issues, including the impact of salinity on the 
        bay's oysters, which have suffered a 90 percent decline in 
        recent years. Reserve monitoring tracks the influence of 
        upstream water diversions, land use change, climate change, 
        hurricanes, and other natural events on local water quality.

   Endangered native birds and fish have returned to the He'eia 
        Estuary as a result of restoration, supported by monitoring and 
        outreach from Hawaii's He'eia reserve. Their work removes 
        invasive mangroves, encourages natural freshwater flows, 
        restores habitat, provides food for communities, and supports 
        management as a traditional Hawaiian ahupua`a.

   The invasive marsh grass Spartina--which was threatening the 
        local oyster industry--was eradicated from Washington's Padilla 
        Bay, as a result of a combined monitoring and restoration 
        initiative. Today, regional resource managers look to the 
        reserve for information and guidance for invasive species 
        removal and control.
Changing water chemistry and temperature
    When I came to Lake Superior almost seven years ago, everyone 
referred to algal blooms as something for the lower Great Lakes, 
especially Lake Erie. They couldn't happen in Superior; it's the 
biggest, deepest, coldest, most oligotrophic (nutrient poor) Great 
Lake! Fast forward to today: there have been three documented algal 
blooms in the last two years. Why? Research tells us that storms and 
sediment plumes play a role. These events are expected to intensify. 
Even more concerning is scientific monitoring and modeling from the 
University of Minnesota Duluth's Large Lakes Observatory, which shows 
that Lake Superior is warming faster than almost any lake on Earth. 
And, the research shows, this is clearly climate driven.
    Warming waters complicate everything. They compromise water 
quality, which impacts tourism and fisheries, accelerate habitat 
change, increasing the likelihood that native species will be overcome 
by invasives and--when combined with damaging storms and floods--put 
public health at risk. Along our marine coasts, warmer temperatures are 
contributing to ocean acidification, which threatens hard shelled 
creatures, like lobsters and oysters, around which many local economies 
have been built.
    Some impacts of changing water temperatures are well understood. 
The really complicated science, however, focuses on the human 
dimensions of these problems. How to communicate risk? How to connect 
decisions made up watershed with degraded water quality on the coast? 
Social scientists such as anthropologists, economists, and 
communication experts are exploring questions like these in the context 
of climate projections.
    It is critical that Congress continue to invest in science to 
understand trends in acidification, marsh migration, sea level rise, 
saltwater intrusion, and harmful algal blooms. By doing this, our 
partners in coastal communities will be better prepared to make 
decisions that mitigate economic loss and reduce risk to public health. 
Programs across the region are responding to the need to predict and 
manage harmful algal blooms:

   The Lake Superior reserve is working with the public health 
        community to reduce algal blooms by improving monitoring 
        efforts. This summer we will collect water samples immediately 
        following storm events to better understand bloom formation.

   Milwaukee decision makers will soon have access to enhanced 
        technology for real-time, early-warning detection of blooms, 
        with support from Sea Grant. With support from NOAA and 
        partners, this technology will provide forecasts to inform 
        local governments and public health experts about risks to 
        residents and tourists.

    Through our national network, we know that coastal water 
temperatures, chemistry, and quality are in flux around the country. 
Communities are dealing with harmful algal blooms and dead zones, 
pollution from legacy industries and current events, amid the more 
basic biogeochemistry of wetlands. Here again, reserves are supporting 
their communities.

   Continuous monitoring from Florida's Rookery Bay reserve 
        demonstrated that estuaries protected by conservation land are 
        more resilient to large storms. During Hurricane Irma, reserve 
        instruments captured the storm surge, extraordinary rainfall, 
        and the subsequent dissolved oxygen crash. Fisheries monitoring 
        showed that fish left the estuary when the oxygen crashed and 
        returned as the oxygen levels return to normal.

   In Alaska, the Kachemak Bay reserve's potentially lifesaving 
        shellfish toxin alerts are provided to state officials, 
        commercial oyster farms, and thousands of recreational and 
        subsistence shellfish harvesters.
Emerging Trends
    As a social scientist, I would like to conclude with some 
observations on what all of this change will mean for people. In recent 
years, we have seen the warmest temperatures recorded, powerful storms, 
increased flooding from sea level rise and storm surge, devastating 
wildfires, and the melting of glaciers and polar sea ice. These 
accelerating patterns of change are affecting how everyone lives, 
works, and plays on all U.S. coasts. They affect businesses and 
industries, public health, and everyone's psychological well-being.
    In the Great Lakes, we expect public health will suffer due to more 
extreme heat, increased water temperatures, degraded water quality, 
reduced air quality in urban areas, changes to agricultural systems, 
and the spread of vector borne diseases like Lyme. Not all populations 
or communities will suffer these impacts equally. At-risk communities 
are more vulnerable to climate change, and tribal nations are 
especially so because of their reliance on threatened natural resources 
for their cultural, subsistence, and economic needs.
    Research to address these challenges is becoming a larger part of 
the coastal science portfolio because communities demand it. They are 
calling for us to assess the vulnerabilities of people, alongside 
environmental concerns so they can better manage risks and increase 
overall resilience particularly as they relate to vulnerable 
populations.
    At the Lake Superior Reserve, we coordinate a diverse network of 
experts to explore the human side of climate change. We are at the 
forefront of work examining the mental health impacts of solastalgia, 
or the grief and anxiety that comes from the loss of ecosystems, 
species, landscapes, and identity due to environmental change. This 
work involves natural and social scientists, public health and medical 
experts, social workers, and those serving on the front lines of 
tragedy. We are joined by our colleagues in Tribal communities who 
bring the strength of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and an 
understanding of the impacts of lost heritage, identity, and place. 
Sadly, their difficult work is helping us see parallels with what Lake 
Superior residents are all beginning to experience as the region 
changes in front of our eyes.
    The Lake Superior reserve, the 28 sister reserves that make up our 
national system, and all of our many partners will continue to support 
the baseline monitoring and interdisciplinary research that coastal 
communities need to understand how climate change is influencing their 
lives and the places in which they live. We could not have accomplished 
what we have so far without strong Federal and state investments in 
coastal science programs embedded in local communities, or without the 
Research Reserve's System-wide Monitoring Program that continually 
assesses changing water levels, water quality and habitats. Thank you, 
again, to Congress for your investments in all our programs. It is 
critical that these continue if we are to ensure that future science is 
focused on issues of vital importance to our coastal communities, 
neighbors, families and friends.
    Thank you for your time and consideration.

    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Dr. Washburn.
    We will begin with questions, and I will start here with 
just a few and then turn it over to Senator Baldwin.
    I understand the importance of investing in improved 
climate models--clearly the importance of investing in improved 
climate models. Today's models can give us pinpoint weather 
forecasts in the near term and help identify longer-term 
trends, including those caused by carbon pollution.
    I would like to see future investments that move us beyond 
studying the climate and toward solving climate-related 
problems. We need models that produce sufficiently high 
confidence forecasts farther out into the future and drive 
significant public and private investment. Those investments 
will generally fall into two buckets: mitigation and 
adaptation. We will need adaptation in the near term, 
obviously, while we ultimately solve the problem with 
mitigation efforts in the longer term.
    To aid our mitigation efforts, we need these models to be 
able to evaluate various carbon reduction and carbon capture 
technologies. We need to run various scenarios that evaluate 
the timing and magnitude of mitigation required.
    And so, Dr. Washburn, beginning with you, in your testimony 
you talked about how the magnitude and rate of climate change 
will be dependent on whatever mitigation measures are taken. 
Have you considered how these models might be able to evaluate 
the efficacy of mitigation measures?
    Dr. Washburn. So that is something where I wish I had some 
of my partners at the table to assist since I am an 
anthropologist. So I rely heavily on a lot of the atmospheric 
scientists, lake-level modelers, and others.
    I can say that the researchers will take those models. We 
provide data that ground truth some of those models and improve 
them. But we also take those models, package them up into 
information, make sure they are translated so that local 
decisionmakers and governments can actually use them and 
understand what they mean. And we do that through our programs 
and education and in coastal training with local 
decisionmakers.
    And I guess I would say that we can add both ground 
truthing local data to enhance those models and improve them. 
We can also fine-tune the resolution of the data that is 
presented in those models by adding in our own data from the 
system-wide monitoring program. So we can bring a lot of really 
local fine resolution and information that the local 
communities can use.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you.
    And then I would open that question up to anybody else on 
the panel who wanted to take a crack at that, if anybody does. 
Dr. Horton?
    Dr. Horton. Sure. Thanks.
    I mean, I think you just articulated sort of a classic, 
sort of risk management problem, how to make long-term 
decisions in the face of key uncertainties.
    One thing that is completely clear, though, is that the 
further we push the climate system by increasing greenhouse gas 
concentrations, temperatures causing changes in the ice sheets, 
for example, the greater potential for surprises, feedbacks 
that could include changes in the greenhouse gas emissions and 
carbon cycle of the planet itself.
    I think you also raised some interesting ideas about ways 
that we could test possible future scenarios. For example, 
enhancing models so that you could in a local coastal scale see 
what happens if you put in, before actually buying one, a sea 
barrier, for a major sea wall. Can we model what effects that 
might have on sedimentation rates, for example, and start to 
get at some of these tradeoffs of different adaptation 
strategies?
    I think there is also interesting work in the space of co-
benefits between greenhouse gas mitigation efforts and 
adaptation efforts. Where can we find examples of benefits for 
both and avoid situations where they appear to be going against 
each other, which obviously we do not want?
    Senator Gardner. And I think that kind of gets to my next 
question, which was the sort of reverse engineering. Can we 
reverse engineer the model, so to speak, to identify new 
mitigation technologies or strategies? And I think you just 
kind of talked about how we could approach it in that 
direction. Did I hear you correctly?
    Dr. Horton. One thing certainly to highlight is that 
climate models are not just a tool for future predictions. We 
can use those models under past configurations, different 
amounts of CO2 concentrations, for example, in the 
past to test things like how sensitive sea levels might be. The 
ice sheets might be to a given amount of warming. That gives us 
some ability to constrain the projections, but it is not 
complete because conditions are unique today.
    Senator Gardner. Dr. Abdalati, did you want to add to that?
    Dr. Abdalati. To your point, the physics are the physics. 
They behave by certain physical principles. We test the 
physics, the quality of our models against past conditions 
events against present and emerging conditions.
    So, yes, we can use models to test the efficacy of various 
mitigation strategies. We have used models to test the 
effectiveness of things like carbon capture to reduce the 
impact of carbon dioxide or the amount of carbon dioxide in the 
atmosphere. So the same physics that apply to weather 
forecasting, but tweaked for longer time scales, do apply to 
model forecasting and can be used to assess the efficacy.
    There is still, though, a ways to go in the quality of 
these models to really nail things down. And this is why it has 
become politicized is because there are costs to mitigation. 
And so the fundamental question is, is the mitigation worth the 
cost? There are costs to not mitigating. And again, the 
question is, is the not mitigating worth the cost, if I said 
that correctly?
    So all of this hinges on a robust understanding of the 
physical principles and the evolution of our climate system, 
which is why research in these areas is so important. I cannot 
stress enough the importance of de-politicizing this aspect. We 
have a challenge before us that will have consequences and that 
our approach can realize tremendous benefits, and to 
successfully meet those challenges requires understanding and 
that is what we are all pursuing.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you.
    I will turn to Senator Baldwin now and then we will come 
back.
    Senator Baldwin. So, Dr. Washburn, you talked about some of 
the extreme events that have been experienced in northern 
Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Superior. I remember traveling 
to Ashland and Iron Counties in the first few months of my time 
as a United States Senator. In response to an extreme weather 
event that I was told was either 1,000- or a 500-year event. I 
was meeting with community leaders, often town chairmen and 
other town employees, who were, first of all, dealing with the 
immediate aftermath of rescuing people who might be cutoff from 
the community. But then also, beginning to assess damage and 
prepare for emergency declarations and a process whereby they 
may become eligible for Federal assistance.
    I remember just 2 years later going to the same community 
and seeing some of the same infrastructure severely damaged; 
being told that it was either a 500-year or 1,000-year event. 
And as you note in your testimony, in the last 7 years, we have 
seen three events that might be called 500-year events.
    So just for context, these events are basically defined as 
500-year events because the old rainfall models suggest that 
they would happen only once in 500 years. But we have seen 
three in 7 years. The weather patterns clearly seem to be 
changing rapidly, and I am very concerned about our lack of 
preparation.
    So as we work to address this issue, I think the first 
thing we need to know is what is coming. Right? Dr. Washburn, 
does the scientific data tell us about how extreme weather 
events and other weather patterns are changing in the Great 
Lakes region now and into the future? And are changes happening 
faster in some areas of the Great Lakes than others?
    Dr. Washburn. Thank you.
    Yes. So the data and the models and forecasts are all 
showing across the Great Lakes more frequent and more intense 
storms, also changes in the precipitation patterns, as you 
alluded to, with more rain coming in the winter because what is 
happening is the winter temperatures are not as cold as they 
used to be. I think that in Wisconsin the projections are 5 to 
11 degrees warmer in the winters in northern Wisconsin in the 
next 15 to 20 years. That is a really short time period. That 
is a substantial shift. So the forecasts and models are showing 
regionally the upper latitudes of the Great Lakes warming 
faster, but these precipitation and intense events happening 
off the normal seasonal cycle. That has implications for 
flooding. If your soil is frozen and you have snow melting or 
rain coming at a certain time and it cannot penetrate the soil, 
then you are going to have flooding in those areas potentially 
during part of the winter as well. So, yes, there are certainly 
issues around the Great Lakes on that topic.
    I think the other thing that strikes me when I look at some 
of the data is the heat extremes projected for the region, 
something on the order of 2 to 5 weeks above 90 degrees in the 
same period in the next 20 years. That is substantial. That 
leads to all kinds of questions about vulnerable populations, 
about urban communities, and challenges to public health.
    Senator Baldwin. In dealing with these disasters, our 
communities are having trouble recovering and rebuilding to be 
safer and stronger in part due to limited resources, lack of 
resources, as well as the Federal assistance does not arrive 
immediately, as we know, in this process.
    As a community leader--and I know you are a local resource 
to our coastal communities--I want to see if you can share what 
you are seeing in the aftermath of these events. What 
challenges are you hearing from the local leaders who are on 
the front lines of responding to these extreme weather events? 
And are recovery efforts providing lasting resiliency? Or if 
not, what are you hearing is needed?
    Dr. Washburn. So on your last question, one of the 
challenges of Federal funding coming in response to these 
events, besides the length of time that it takes, is that FEMA 
will cover rebuilding up to the same design of a culvert, say, 
that was there in the first place. And what the communities 
need is to make their culverts and water infrastructure bigger 
to handle these events. So that is a challenge right there.
    Community leaders are also struggling with communicating 
risk. One of the things we have not talked about yet as a 
community is how we are going to talk about warmer temperatures 
and algal blooms. We are starting to get questions, people 
walking in the door literally and asking what is going on out 
there.
    But communicating risk related to these water levels and 
habitat and changing temperatures that is something that I 
think the local leaders and government needs to be supported by 
more. And we can do that. The reserves have a wonderful system 
of risk management trainings, really fine-tuned after Super 
Storm Sandy with the Jacques Cousteau Reserve in New Jersey. 
But that can be rolled out across the entire system, which can 
benefit Superior and Duluth and the north shore of Wisconsin.
    I think another challenge that we have learned is--and this 
is actually not related to a natural disaster flooding, but the 
Husky refinery fire. One of the things we learned is that the 
emergency management structure in western Lake Superior--it is 
not the same with necessarily the rest of the country, but in 
our region--does not include a standing body of scientists to 
respond with on-the-ground monitoring.
    So one of the things that we talked about with our partners 
up in that area, and that we are starting to have conversations 
with the emergency management world, is can we coordinate the 
science experts in that region and be that point of connection 
to emergency management to try to get more of the on-the-ground 
science done post events, whether they are flooding or 
something else.
    So there are a number of different things. There is risk 
communication. There is coordinating science and then working 
with communities on new kinds of communication about new 
threats.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Senator Baldwin.
    I will give Senator Blumenthal a little chance to settle in 
because he is up to bat if you want to take the turn here.
    I agree with the interaction you had on the issue of FEMA 
and some of the challenges we have in the western states as it 
relates to the forest fires and the flooding, a little bit 
different than other areas of the country might have. And so 
some unique challenges in how FEMA does their work and creates 
those aid opportunities. But a very good discussion I think we 
need to continue.
    Senator Blumenthal, you are up next if you would like to 
spend a few minutes.

             STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, 
                 U.S. SENATOR FROM CONNECTICUT

    Senator Blumenthal. I am happy to proceed, Mr. Chairman.
    In Connecticut, we face the kind of weather that has become 
the new normal, the super storms that demand resilience of our 
planning and our construction. I am going to hold up just one 
photo of the Connecticut shore that is the most visible sign of 
what happens. People think of super storms as happening in the 
Gulf, in Florida. But here is Connecticut, and that is what all 
of Connecticut's shoreline looked like after Super Storm Sandy. 
It was reduced to a super storm from a hurricane even though it 
hit with hurricane force along our coasts in many areas.
    So my question is, do you think that Congress has to make 
the American public and also itself act to assure that there 
are sustainable investments as a result of this infrastructure 
program that now seems on the verge of happening? There is a 
lot of bipartisan support for infrastructure and, in fact, the 
Seventh Annual Infrastructure Week began on Monday. 
Negotiations are ongoing between President Trump and Democratic 
leaders. But how important is sustainability as a feature of 
this infrastructure initiative?
    Dr. Abdalati. So if I may. It is critically important. You 
know, you have scientists here. We understand the physical 
processes. We understand the manifestation. Policy is certainly 
your domain where you have to bring in a lot of information to 
make decisions. You have to consider the economic implications 
again of action versus inaction, and both have implications.
    I had said in my opening remarks that our success as a 
society in the face of a changing climate, no matter the 
causes, depends on how big the changes are, how fast they 
occur, how well we can anticipate them, and how prepared we are 
to adapt to them. And the items you had touched on, you know, 
how big they are and how fast they come, those are mitigative 
measures and those require certain kinds of policy decisions or 
actions. I am not qualified to make recommendations in that 
area as I can only tell you what happens if we do not mitigate.
    But to your point, adapting, resilience must be built into 
the thinking, otherwise that picture is going to occur over and 
over and over again. And that comes with cost in dollars. That 
comes with cost in lives. That comes with cost in health and 
safety. So I think it is absolutely critical that we as a 
nation and you as legislators build that into your thinking. I 
cannot tell you the degree to which you do what thing. But I 
can tell you that it requires being informed by sound science, 
of which there is plenty, and taking that in consideration of 
all the other variables and parameters that come into play and 
making decisions or making policy based on that. But absolutely 
the incorporation of resilience, because you are going to face 
those situations again and again, is critical I think to the 
success of coastal communities and the same is true in the 
interior of the country in response to other threats.
    Senator Blumenthal. Thank you.
    Dr. Bronk. I wanted to add two points.
    One, as we move into the future, one reality that I think 
the Nation needs to face is we are not going to be able to 
build all the places we used to build before and probably 
should not have built in many of those places to begin with.
    And the second is when we rebuild areas that we rebuild in 
terms of the infrastructure, to look at not just what we will 
need now, not in 10 years, but in 50 or 100 years, and to 
invest in the development of new building techniques, new 
materials that are much more resistant and easier to 
manufacture, require less energy. And right now, one of the big 
gaps to getting those types of materials to market is going 
from the development phase all the way to getting it to market, 
which is kind of the trough of death, that if the Federal 
Government could look at that space, I think we could have a 
lot more solutions than we have right now to some of these 
types of problems.
    Senator Blumenthal. Thank you.
    Yes, sir.
    Dr. Horton. Thank you.
    You know, clearly the statistics of many types of extreme 
weather events have already shifted, whether we are talking 
about heat waves, heavy rain events, or the frequency and 
intensity of coastal flooding. I think I am on less firm ground 
talking about the age of some of our infrastructure, but to the 
extent that an infrastructure anyway would need repair just to 
sort of maintain a baseline, that is an additional argument 
beyond this argument of the shifting statistics of extreme 
weather for new infrastructure that is more resilient. Of 
course, there are co-benefits probably--many co-benefits for 
sure--of these types of infrastructure investments.
    I like the way you frame this around the sustainability 
issues, though, because I think we do need to think about the 
combined greenhouse gas mitigation components and greater 
resilience aspects that we can get through infrastructure 
investment.
    And to give one example of this, we are starting to hear in 
the context of this notion of managed retreat, that there are 
some parts of the country where we hear more and more it may 
not be possible to continue to invest on resilience in place. 
There may be health risks in terms of greater challenges of 
evacuation in the future. So that dialogue is beginning I think 
to well up. And infrastructure is a critical part of that. 
Right? You are starting to hear a little bit in some cases 
about sort of moral hazard maybe of infrastructure investments 
in some of those most vulnerable areas. In another context is 
some of the ability to fund some of that infrastructure 
potentially going to change in the future if we see some 
changes in asset values, as some of these risk perceptions are 
appreciated?
    So it is a complex space, and I think the kind of forward-
looking perspective on infrastructure that considers those 
climate hazards and considers the interaction between 
greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation could be really 
productive.
    Senator Blumenthal. Thank you.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you very much.
    Dr. Washburn, quickly if you would. Did you want to respond 
to that?
    Senator Blumenthal. My time is expired I know, Mr. 
Chairman.
    Senator Gardner. Yes, but if she would like to respond, 
please feel free, quickly.
    Dr. Washburn. Just very quickly. I would frame things 
through resilience more than sustainability. I think that is 
community, that is economics, that is social resilience as 
well. And I think that framing gives you more latitude to 
explore some of these challenges about moving things and 
migrating communities, coastal wetlands, et cetera.
    Senator Blumenthal. Well said. Thank you all for this very 
articulate and important hearing. And I want to thank the 
Chairman and Ranking Member as well for focusing on it. Thank 
you.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Senator Blumenthal.
    Dr. Abdalati, we are going to go another round here. I 
apologize if you thought you were going to get out early.
    Dr. Abdalati, you mentioned improvements to drought 
forecasts and forecasting smoke plumes in your comments. Will 
those models some day be able to forecast drought accurately 
enough to adjust agriculture, fire fighting plans, those kinds 
of things?
    Dr. Abdalati. I believe they will. I guess kind of not to 
parse here, but it depends by what you mean by address because 
I think they are already being taken into consideration in the 
context of farming practices. The ability to grow things is 
changing. In fact, interestingly when you, again, remove the 
political discourse or the political element out of the 
discourse and you talk to rural farmers from your former 
district when you were a Congressman, they get it. You know, 
they understand climate is changing and that they cannot grow 
things in the way they used to. And I think there is a critical 
need, and I think we are progressing toward that need to be 
able to tell the farming community what they are looking at in 
the seasonal/sub-seasonal domain and perhaps even years down 
the road. You know, as the climate has warmed, sort of the 
isotherms, the temperature lines have moved northward, you 
know, the average temperature. The same is true with moisture. 
It has changed in a changing climate.
    So certainly the models are doing a pretty good job of 
characterizing and predicting drought. There is a ways to go. 
One of the nice things about NIDIS, which interestingly was 
reauthorized during the shutdown, which was nice to see, is 
that it seeks to pull together all the information that we have 
from State sources, from universities, from Federal sources, 
provide that in an integrated way. That is the second ``I'' in 
NIDIS I think. So it already draws from what we have in ways 
that are useful.
    And it does come back too, though, to the social science 
domain. It needs to be communicated in a way that people will 
use and understand. But it is certainly within our capability. 
Substantial progress has been made, and I would expect, with 
continued investment, it would continue to move forward.
    Senator Gardner. Very Good. I remember the roundtable we 
had at the University of Colorado talking about social science 
and the impact that it had.
    In terms of forecasting capabilities, are you getting the 
cooperation you need from Federal research partners? What more 
can we do to bolster those Federal partnership efforts?
    Dr. Abdalati. So we are. The nice thing is everybody is 
working toward the same goal, the same outcome. I do think in 
the case of NOAA, there are efforts to integrate the activities 
of the National Weather Service and the Office of Atmospheric 
Research, NWS and OAR. And I think more of that would be 
helpful. There are efforts underway at NASA for data 
assimilation of the satellite data to improve forecast 
capabilities. It is how do we integrate the data into the 
models. I think all of the entities are working toward that 
outcome.
    I would say sort of like through the Weather Act, setting a 
clear goal of where we need to be and telling agencies this is 
the direction you are working toward has been and will continue 
to be productive.
    So I do not have specific recommendations, you know, if 
only you could get NASA to do this. I used to be Chief 
Scientist at NASA. So I had my chance. But I will say just in a 
general sense, every entity, Energy, NSF, NASA, NOAA plays a 
role in the research to operations and operations to research 
domain, and I think they are well structured to interact.
    One thing I do want to comment on--and I am sorry for the 
time, but there is something called EPIC, and I am forgetting 
now what it stands for. But it is the integration of activities 
at NOAA and NCAR, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, 
which is NSF-funded, really bringing together the best of both 
in the research and operational domains. And I think that is 
really something--that is a big step forward that is in 
process--that is going to move the ball down the field in 
reasserting our leadership in weather forecast and weather 
prediction.
    So efforts are underway. Everybody wants the same thing. I 
think the best way the government and legislation can 
facilitate that is by setting the clear goals and requiring 
that everybody play nicely in the sandbox together, which I 
think they do.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Dr. Abdalati.
    A quick question. When you look around the globe and you 
see other countries that are investing, you know, are other 
people leading our investments or beating our investments in 
space research, space applied research, those kinds of things 
that you need to do this job?
    Dr. Abdalati. I would say they are not beating our 
investments. There have been investments in forecasting in 
Europe that have been quite substantial and have really moved 
the ball down the field for them. In space observations, I 
think the United States continues to lead the way, but we used 
to be the big thing, and JAXA, the Japanese space agency, the 
European Space Agency, India, others have really stepped up and 
have been contributing. And what is nice about that is all 
nations benefit through the sharing and open access of data. So 
I would not say we are being surpassed in these areas. I will 
say we are being approached in these areas. But ultimately I 
think it is for the benefit of society as a whole.
    But continued investments in these observations--and as I 
said, I co-chair the decadal survey--are absolutely critical 
for the success of our Nation with regard to climate, weather, 
earthquakes, drought, you name it. We have got to watch the 
story unfold to test our models and understand what is 
happening and why and where it will lead us.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Dr. Abdalati.
    Senator Sullivan.

                STATEMENT OF HON. DAN SULLIVAN, 
                    U.S. SENATOR FROM ALASKA

    Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good to see you 
in the chair on this important committee.
    I want to thank the witnesses.
    I am going to ask a couple questions that relate--and I 
know I am going to be a little bit off topic, but we got so 
many smart people in terms of our witnesses that I am just 
going to throw these two questions out that deal with the 
sustainability of our oceans.
    So my state, Alaska, in terms of commercial fisheries and 
recreational fisheries, we constitute--almost 60 percent of all 
the seafood harvested in America comes from Alaska's waters. I 
like to use the term ``super power seafood.''
    But anyway, making sure that we have sustainable fisheries 
whether in the Great Lakes or in Alaska or all over the world 
is I think something that this committee takes very seriously. 
It needs to be focused on data. I think a lot of people view 
the Alaska North Pacific Fisheries Council model as part of 
Magnuson-Stevens is probably one of the best managed fisheries 
in the world. And so we take it very seriously.
    So two questions that I wanted to ask related to this. One 
is the issue of ocean pollution, in particular the issue of 
plastics. And Senator Whitehouse and I had a bill last year 
called the Save Our Seas Act that was signed into law by the 
President, and it is an area where there is good bipartisan 
cooperation. Democrats, Republicans, the Trump Administration, 
environmental groups, industry starting to focus on this, which 
is important.
    We are going to introduce a bill here in the Commerce 
Committee soon called the Save Our Seas Act 2.0. But I am 
wondering if any of you have any thoughts on addressing the 
challenges that we see in terms of ocean debris, plastics, 
ocean pollution. If it is not in your area of expertise, I 
apologize. But there are a lot of smart witnesses here, and I 
thought I would put that on the table because it is a very 
important issue. And there is a lot of bipartisan momentum to 
address it, and I think that is important and we need to keep 
that going.
    Dr. Bronk. So I am an oceanographer, so thank you very much 
for that question.
    Senator Sullivan. Yes. I was going to ask you directly, 
but----
    Dr. Bronk. So ocean plastics--I do not have a good answer 
for you on how----
    Senator Sullivan. The estimates, just by the way, are five 
countries, 10 rivers in Asia constitute almost 80 percent of 
all the plastic pollution in the world. So it is a solvable 
issue, very solvable. We know who the source is.
    Dr. Bronk. I know one thing we could do is we could not 
have one of these sitting next to each one of us. I know I 
opened mine. I am sorry. And I am drinking it.
    So ocean plastics--I mean, it is a real issue. Investing in 
research on how to deal with it--and yet, what most people do 
not understand is that the plastics that we see, the bottles on 
the beach, the fishing rope, that is probably 1 to 10 percent 
of the plastic in the ocean. The real problem of plastic in the 
ocean are micro or nanoplastics that we have very little 
information on.
    Senator Sullivan. They are starting to show up in the food 
chain. Correct?
    Dr. Abdalati. They are showing up everywhere. Right.
    We had a researcher, Patty Matrai, at Bigelow who studied 
microplastics, fibers in mollusks and mussels. And it turns out 
how these organisms deal with the plastic is they create 
pseudo-feces. So they package this up kind of in mucus and then 
put them out of their body. The good thing is it gets the 
plastics out of the body before you eat them. The bad thing is 
that is a very energetically expensive thing for a mussel to 
do, and that is going to cost you money if you are raising 
mussels. And so we are doing research--and it needs to be 
expanded in a number of other places--on how to deal with this 
in our seafood, how to get as much of the plastic out of the 
seafood as we can before people eat it.
    But the micro and nanoplastics--I mean, we really do not 
even have good techniques on how to count them. Right now, you 
use a hot poker in a microscope and pick them up one piece at a 
time. So finding automated techniques on how to accurately 
monitor them so we know where the concentrations are highest, 
where are they lowest, where do we need to focus our efforts. 
And then I have no good answer, and I have never heard of any 
good answers on what we do about them once they are in the 
ocean.
    So stopping the flow into the ocean and investing in--I 
think we need real innovation, real out-of-the-box thinking on 
managing plastics going into the future.
    Senator Sullivan. Well, that is going to be in large part 
in our bill.
    So, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with you and 
the Ranking Member on this issue, and hopefully we will be able 
to get some momentum on that.
    And, Dr. Bronk, thank you, and if you have any other 
thoughts on this--you or your colleagues who focus on the ocean 
sciences--please let us know.
    Dr. Washburn.
    Dr. Washburn. Yes. I just wanted to add to that.
    So microplastics are a huge topic in the Great Lakes. And 
one thing I would urge you to consider is some way of 
structured funding for wastewater treatment research and 
development to be able to find microplastics in wastewater 
treatment plants and pull them out.
    We are in a matter of days taking researchers from the 
University of Wisconsin-Superior out onto Lake Superior and in 
the estuary to sample for microplastics. It is something we 
have been doing for years. Sadly, it is showing up in most if 
not all of the beer produced in the Great Lakes, which is 
tragic for a lot of reasons. But it is in everything now. And 
so I would just reiterate the microplastics are huge.
    NOAA has a marine debris plan that is regionally based, and 
I know a lot of the other reserves are plugged into that. We 
help support the research and education about plastics, both 
large and microplastics. So that is something we are doing up 
in your state too, I believe.
    Senator Sullivan. Great. Thank you very much.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Oh, anyone else on this?
    Dr. Horton. Thank you. Yes, just to maybe extend this a 
little bit but hopefully still relevant. I think another of 
these complex problems in the context of fisheries, the 
interaction of increasing ocean acidification, changes in 
oxygen rates, which vary a lot but are changing around the 
ocean, and then especially the increase in the ocean 
temperatures. I am thinking specifically, for example, about 
Arctic sea ice where in that sort of late summer/September 
volume, we have seen a 50 to 75 percent decrease in the past 40 
or 50 years in the volume of that Arctic sea ice. It takes an 
enormous amount of energy to happen. And I think there is a lot 
we really do not know yet about what that is going to mean for 
fisheries, about how that is going to impact and relate to 
changes in ocean circulation. So it is one of these sort of 
unknowns but another example I think of where the further we 
push the system, the bigger the potential for surprises that we 
need to think about as we are considering some of these related 
hazards.
    Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Gardner. Dr. Abdalati.
    Dr. Abdalati. Yes, just very quickly. The plastics is an 
example of the kinds of greater problems we face. We have the 
plastics problem for reasons of convenience and short-term 
economics. That is why we use plastic. It is economic. It is 
convenient. People like it. People make money when they can 
access bottles of water quickly.
    It really comes down to--and this is the same as the 
broader climate question--how do we value tomorrow versus 
today. We are creating problems for the future so that we can 
benefit today. And again, I do not know the answer there, but 
there is a common thread through this, through climate change, 
through ozone, all of these kinds of things. We have these 
challenges because they are economic and convenience offerings 
in these today but come at a price tomorrow. And that is just 
the balance. And tomorrow is today.
    Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Gardner. Senator Baldwin.
    Senator Baldwin. Thank you.
    I want to try to put out some recap questions and hopefully 
also draw this hearing to a close on an uplifting note. But let 
me start with the recap.
    A number of you in your testimony talked about the data 
gaps that exist that hold us back. And I do not want you to 
repeat your testimony now, but it would be really great perhaps 
as a follow up to this hearing if you can just sort of identify 
the biggest data gaps in your expertise and help us think about 
how the Federal Government plays a role in helping you close 
those gaps.
    I want to dovetail on the issues we have been talking about 
relating to communication to the people who need this 
information and outreach and educational opportunities and not 
so much from the standpoint of what we have not done, but what 
has been working. I am going to, as usual, pick on Dr. Washburn 
first because the reserve is a place of outreach and education. 
A lot has been done. Tell me what you think is working in terms 
of public education about our changing climate and changing 
circumstances on Lake Superior and the estuary.
    Dr. Washburn. Sure. Thank you.
    So in terms of outreach and education to the public to help 
people understand what is going on, one of the highlights from 
our area is the annual St. Louis River summit. We have been 
hosting that at UW-Superior for 9 years now. It draws--actually 
we are at fire code limit now--300 people for 2 days and it is 
all of the research monitoring going on across all kinds of 
different fields in western Lake Superior and beyond. It is 
getting so big, as a matter of fact, that we are thinking we 
might have to expand to an actual conference center elsewhere. 
So that is a good thing. There is a lot of interest in it. So 
the St. Louis River summit is one of our highlights.
    I will also say that we do a lot as one of the eight 
university lab reserves. We do a lot with students with 
actually some high school students but a lot with undergraduate 
students and grad students. With the new reserve Margaret 
Davidson Fellowship, we will have additional workforce capacity 
and training that we will be able to bring to bear across the 
system. So I am excited about that.
    And one example I think--there are two examples really 
quick. One I mentioned in my testimony about algal blooms. We 
are really concerned about that, and our coastal training 
program coordinator is working with partners across the south 
shore of Lake Superior to figure out how can we develop a 
monitoring strategy starting this summer every 2 weeks to go 
out and sample for algal populations in the near shore. That is 
going to draw I know a lot of media and attention, and we are 
going to be getting the word out about that.
    And then kind of bringing it home to habitat and to some of 
our core work, one of the areas that we have--our sentinel 
site, climate change station is Pokegama Bay. And some of the 
work that we are doing there involves this invasive species 
called emerald ash borer, which is decimating ash forests in 
the upper Midwest. And we have long-term research plots there 
to see what kinds of species of trees can communities plant 
that can stabilize the sediment in these riparian areas and 
help the forest recover from the loss of ash trees. That kind 
of long-term research tied with our system-wide monitoring 
program is something that we are positioned to do really well, 
and the benefits from that will be shared with public and 
private landowners who want to manage their forests for the 
future.
    So those are some examples.
    Senator Baldwin. Great. Thank you.
    Anyone else? Please.
    Dr. Abdalati. With regard to data gaps, I would say 
satellites--you know, my own expertise--have played a critical 
role in our success in understanding our changing environment. 
There is a road map that has been provided by the National 
Academy's decadal survey for NASA, NOAA, and the U.S. 
Geological Survey, and we were very respectful of budget 
limitations. So I think the implementation of that would go a 
long way.
    With regard to what works, I think what works is the way we 
talk to people. I actually have a TED Talk on communicating 
controversial topics, and my main principles are, one, your 
adversaries are not as dumb as you want them to be.
    [Laughter.]
    Dr. Abdalati. They are sort of like if you just understood 
things, you would see it my way.
    Another is framing ideas in ways that resonate. When I talk 
about climate change with rural farmers, I talk about the 
implications for farming.
    Recognizing values that people do not come to what they 
believe because they are not smart. They have certain values. 
They may value some things in different ways than I do and vice 
versa.
    And the last is not telling people what to think. That is 
just the worst thing you can do.
    And so I think dialogue that is really open-minded--what 
can I learn from you, not I am the scientist, I have something 
to tell you--goes a long way. People feel when you are sincere 
about moving forward. So I would say what works is constructive 
engagement that respects different values and ethical 
principles.
    Dr. Bronk. So in terms of data gaps, when it comes to the 
ocean, they are huge. And part of the problem is up until maybe 
20 years ago we really were sampling the ocean from ships, or 
satellites were a huge boon for ocean science. You still had 
the ground truth those satellite measurements with ships.
    So now we have a variety of different platforms, including 
floats, which are basically tubes that slowly move up and down 
the ocean. They have got basically a cell phone in them, and 
when they hit the surface again, they beam the data that they 
have collected and their location. It is an Argo float program 
is the program that is just wonderful. It is an international 
program. There are 3,800 floats out purchased by 34 different 
countries. And it is an example of how ocean science is 
starting to fill some of the data gaps.
    But the problem is most of those floats only collect 
temperature and salinity, and that is not enough. We need all 
the biological variables, chemical, you know, what are the 
different chemical constituents, nutrients, all the things that 
control how fast the phytoplankton grow at the base of the food 
web, what types of phytoplankton are out there. That is going 
to tell you how far up you have to go till you get to a fish 
that you could commercially harvest.
    So what we have right now is fantastic compared to what it 
was 20 years ago, but it is still a very rudimentary system. So 
investment in developing the sensors to put onto these floats 
would be fantastic.
    And the other thing I wanted to call out--and this is from 
my time at the National Science Foundation when I was always 
fighting for funding for ocean sciences, and yet what I was 
consistently seeing was my social science colleagues just kind 
of getting hammered. And yet, the number of times social 
science has been brought up in these discussions--it is at the 
root of so much of how we will respond to climate change that 
this country really needs to invest in really some fundamental 
basic research on how we can help people adapt and understand 
how they will behave and their behavior will change because--my 
oceanography colleagues are going to be like what are you 
doing. But I think as a country, we really need to invest in 
social science research because that is going to drive how we 
respond as a nation to a lot of these challenges.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Dr. Bronk.
    Dr. Horton, if you do not mind, we will get to Senator 
Udall real quick and then maybe you can follow up with him.
    Senator Udall.

                 STATEMENT OF HON. TOM UDALL, 
                  U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW MEXICO

    Senator Udall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Dr. Abdalati, your research focuses on the Earth's polar 
ice cover, and obviously, I am from New Mexico, a landlocked 
state. You are from Colorado, the Chairman's state, which is 
the same situation. Why should people from New Mexico and 
Colorado be concerned about the impacts to polar ice cover and 
why is the Arctic so important to the planet? Just a brief 
answer there because I have a couple of follow-ups.
    Dr. Abdalati. Sure. Well, first of all, as citizens of this 
nation, I would hope we would care about what is happening to 
our fellow citizens in coastal regions not only from a 
humanitarian perspective but also economic. That has 
implications for the economic wellbeing of our country.
    From the standpoint of what directly hits home in New 
Mexico and Colorado, it is a little bit more removed, but in 
the simplest sense, human civilization has not known a 
seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean ever. And so we are taking a 
sledge hammer to the climate system. When we peel back that 
ice, which traps heat in the ocean, that heat is released to 
the atmosphere, changes atmospheric circulation, and ultimately 
impacts weather and precipitation patterns all over the world. 
So the disappearing Arctic sea ice cover ultimately I believe 
and many of my colleagues do has implications for the weather 
in Colorado and New Mexico, the potential for extreme. We are 
putting more water vapor in the atmosphere. We are releasing 
more heat from the ocean into the atmosphere. That perturbs the 
global climate system. So it is the opposite of Vegas. What 
happens there does not stay there. It actually propagates 
worldwide.
    Senator Udall. Very well put.
    Since you study the Arctic, you probably saw what happened 
at the recent meeting of the Arctic Council. The first sentence 
of the ``New York Times'' story about it reads--and I am 
quoting here--under pressure from the United States, the Arctic 
Council issued a short joint statement on Tuesday that excluded 
any mention of climate change.
    But that was not all. Our Secretary of State Mike Pompeo 
said, quoting here, steady reductions in sea ice are opening 
new naval passageways and new opportunities for trade. And he 
added, Arctic sea lanes could become the 21st century Suez and 
Panama Canals.
    Do you or any other panelists here think that melting 
Arctic ice is opening up new opportunities that are a net 
benefit to people of this country or of the world?
    Dr. Abdalati. Oh, I believe melting Arctic ice is opening 
up new opportunities. We cannot deny the opportunities that are 
presented. The question is, is it worth the costs that come 
with it?
    The military is concerned about the implications of 
activity in the Arctic and what that means for our national 
security. The climate implications and weather implications can 
come at tremendous economic costs. As the sea ice melts and 
exposes the shipping routes, which will save lots of money and 
create opportunities, so too is the land ice melting, which is 
causing oceans to rise, which is having tremendous impacts in 
coastal regions.
    So I sometimes challenge my community that we tend to not 
think about opportunities. There are opportunities with the 
change in climate, but there are costs. And it is the opinion 
of most in my community that these costs and these 
perturbations--and I strongly share this--far outweigh the 
opportunities associated.
    But it is incumbent upon us to understand these changes, I 
often say, so we can meet the challenges and capitalize on the 
opportunities that they do present.
    Senator Udall. Do any of the other panelists want to weigh 
in on that?
    Dr. Horton. Just to add a couple more additional examples.
    So we heard there about how loss of Arctic sea ice can have 
impacts on regional climate that extend to many different 
areas. We heard also how it can interact with the land-based 
ice, leading to interactions that could potentially increase 
both the melting of that ocean ice and the land ice, maybe even 
impact broader ocean circulation.
    Another point to highlight is that the basic climate 
sensitivity of the planet, which is essentially for a given 
amount of greenhouse gas that we add to the atmosphere, how 
much will the planet as a whole warm. Changes in Arctic sea ice 
have some potential certainly to partially accelerate that 
sensitivity. So you remove that very reflective ice surface and 
now have ocean underneath, a dark surface that can absorb more 
sunlight, it sets off a powerful feedback that then can melt 
additional ice. You add more moisture to the atmosphere. That 
is a water vapor feedback that, to some extent, is going to 
give you some more warming. So there are uncertainties there.
    But even beyond the sort of regional implications, sort of 
the basic sort of physics of how much the planet could warm for 
a given amount of increasing greenhouse gases and potentially 
longer term even a feedback where the very amount of greenhouse 
gases could potentially go up a little more as you warm some of 
that land surface, melting permafrost. That is probably not a 
rapid feedback, but it is an additional thing to think about 
that could make us a little less the arbiters of future 
greenhouse gas concentrations if we are not careful.
    Senator Udall. Mr. Chairman, with your permission, can the 
additional panelists just finish answering the question? Thank 
you.
    Dr. Bronk. So I have done nine trips up to Barrow, Alaska, 
Utqiagvik, Alaska, where I went out onto the sea ice to drill 
through to sample the ocean. I think my first trip up was in 
2012, and since that time, the loss of sea ice, which is very 
protective of the coast--if you have got sea ice in the winter 
and farther into the spring, later into the spring, it protects 
the coasts from these storms that come in. Well, now that the 
sea ice is gone earlier in the year, it is just devastating the 
community in terms of erosion. I am sure the road that we used 
is probably gone now. I have not been up there for 2 years, and 
I am sure it is gone. The rate of the erosion and what the town 
will do, I do not know.
    So, yes, there will be positive things with an ice-free 
Arctic, but there is also going to be just devastation to a lot 
of the communities up there.
    Senator Udall. Did you want to say anything?
    Dr. Washburn. Yes.
    So in the Great Lakes we, of course, are not talking about 
sea ice but lake ice. We have seen a four-decade decline in the 
extent of coverage of all five Great Lakes in the winter.
    Likewise with the marine system, we are having 
conversations with people in the shipping industry who see that 
as an opportunity for a longer shipping season, getting out 
earlier in the year and coming back later.
    But it is also contributing to complexities in 
understanding lake level change in the Great Lakes. The open 
water--there is more evapotranspiration year round. That is 
leading to a more difficult situation to understand the 
interaction between lakes, precipitation, groundwater, surface 
water. And that is going back to my original testimony of how 
hard it is for coastal communities to plan for the kinds of 
precipitation events and flooding that might occur under a 
really complex lake level change scenario.
    So we are not dealing with sea ice, but similar 
conversations.
    Senator Udall. Thank you for the courtesies, Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Senator Udall.
    And thank you to all the witnesses for being here today. I 
want to thank our colleagues for participating in the hearing.
    The hearing record will remain open for two weeks. If 
members have questions for the record, I would kindly ask the 
witnesses to do your homework, if you could, quickly and get it 
back. Questions and answers will be included as part of the 
record. So thanks to all of you.
    And with the thanks of this committee, this hearing is 
adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:30 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

                            A P P E N D I X

 Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Richard Blumenthal to 
                        Deborah A. Bronk, Ph.D.
    Issue No. 1: Need for Immediate Legislative Action on Climate 
Change. The consequences of global climate change are devastating and 
far-reaching, and both immediate and long-term. Climate change 
threatens our economy, our national security, our beautiful natural 
places, and even our lives. Still, Congress delays meaningful action on 
combating the worst effects of climate change. For residents of my home 
state of Connecticut, facing climate change is not a choice. Superstorm 
Sandy claimed 147 lives and cost billions of dollars in damage. 
Scientists predict an almost two-foot increase in the sea level of Long 
Island Sound by 2050, meaning that smaller storms could result in 
greater flooding. My constituents simply can't wait any longer for the 
United States to take action.

    Question 1. Do you agree that it is critical that the United States 
Senate consider and pass legislation to address climate change this 
Congress? [Yes or No]
    Answer. Yes. We have delayed for far too long already.

    Question 2. Given the expansiveness of climate change and its 
effects, what mechanism or strategy do you believe Congress should 
prioritize when considering effective climate change solutions?
    Answer. We need an integrated approach. To successfully address 
climate change, we must consider societal, behavioral, economic and 
environmental issues together. One problem is that experts in these 
fields seldom talk and collaborate--they too often exist in their own 
silos. The National Academies runs the most rigorous, unbiased 
scientific review and planning process I know. Support them to develop 
a national strategy and underpin it with substantial funding to 
implement through the Federal and state agencies. There are already a 
number of National Academies reports, a few noted in my written 
testimony, that can be turned to for guidance on how to move forward on 
many issues today.
    Underpinning all of this is the need for a true valuation of the 
cost of U.S. activities. For example, it would be cheaper for a given 
industry to send pollutants into the air, but if you include the 
increase in health care needed to treat the many health problems those 
pollutants caused, it makes economic sense that our government not 
allow them to do so. Likewise, industry and individuals need to make 
decisions based on the true cost of their activities with respect to 
greenhouse gases. Taxing carbon will provide an economic incentive for 
looking critically at how we live and the energy needed and the waste 
generated. This economic incentive will power innovation and new 
approaches will be found. A critical component to this approach is the 
monitoring needed to assure compliance.
    Last but not least, we desperately need political reform to limit 
the power of special interest groups. How different our world would be 
today if powerful, well-funded lobbyists hadn't been able to squash 
innovation in fuel efficiency, for example.

    Question 3. Connecticut residents are already facing the 
consequences of climate change. How can the United States Northeast 
ready itself for a warmer world?
    Answer. People need resources to transition to a more sustainable 
lifestyle. Options include low interest or no interest loans or 
subsidies to transition to green energy. There are homes on the coast 
in the Northeast that are on land that should not, and in many cases, 
should never have been, built on. As storms worsen and sea level rises, 
we need a robust plan to transition to more sustainable coastal 
properties that don't leave the tax payers holding the bill for 
rebuilding these properties after repeated floods or water damage.

    Issue No. 2: Fostering the Necessary Paradigm Shift to Mitigate 
Climate Change. This year, two landmark studies were published that 
document the extent of climate change's impacts on humans and the 
planet--the Fourth National Climate Assessment and the Global 
Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Both 
reiterate in great detail what we have known for decades: climate 
change is real, humans are causing it, and we must act boldly now. 
These reports note that our options to mitigate the worst effects of 
climate change--through domestic policies and international 
agreements--are insufficient to meet the scale and rate of our changing 
climate. We need ``fundamental, system-wide reorganization across 
technological, economic, and social factors, including paradigms, 
goals, and values.''

    Question 4. How can Congress foster the fundamental, 
transformational changes needed to save human lives and biodiversity in 
the face of powerful opposition and inertia?
    Answer. We have to level the playing field. I support comprehensive 
campaign finance reform. Let decisions be based on science and the will 
of the people, not a small number of wealthy individuals or industries. 
Also, support citizen science programs. The financial investment is 
nominal but could allow this country to collect many types of data that 
would be cost prohibitive if it had to be done by professionals. The 
added benefit is that involving citizens in the collection of 
environmental information will educate them on the issues and empower 
them to support wise stewardship of our resources.

    Issue No. 3: The Need to Invest in Sustainable Infrastructure. As 
Congress considers a major infrastructure package, we cannot ignore the 
risks of climate change. Fundamentally new approaches to infrastructure 
investment are needed, including a focus on clean energy 
transportation, efficient travel, grid upgrades, and sustainable 
materials and design. In addition to ensuring that the built 
environment helps instead of harms humans and the planet, Congress 
should invest in green infrastructure, including healthy natural 
spaces. Connecticut's state economy is reliant on the myriad ecosystem 
services provided by coastal ecosystems, including estuaries, marshes, 
and open water. I would like to make Connecticut home to the thirtieth 
National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR), and I have led efforts to 
encourage the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to move 
quickly to approve the proposed Connecticut Reserve. Mitigating climate 
change's effects on green, blue, grey, and other types of 
infrastructure is essential for our health and wealth, and deserves 
Congressional attention.

    Question 5. What are some of the most important investments that we 
can make to ensure our Nation's infrastructure is more resilient or 
adaptive to the variety of hazards posed by future climate conditions?
    Answer. Support robust climate modeling and forecasting at the 
national and regional level. Models are our most powerful tool in 
understanding how our environment is likely to change but they have 
never been financially supported at the level needed to answer the 
questions we face. Then we need programs that support two-way 
communication between the modelers and scientists creating these 
programs and the local and regional managers that will use them to make 
decisions. A closer relationship across this spectrum will inform 
modelers of the most pressing issues and the type of information needed 
to address them and educate local and regional managers on model 
limitations and data needs.

    Question 6. How does the preservation of coastal habitat--such as 
those in the NERR system--help mitigate the effects of climate change 
on infrastructure?
    Answer. Marsh, mangroves, coral reefs and barrier islands all 
protect the land that lies behind them by dissipating energy from wind, 
waves, and water during storms. For example, filling in marshes and 
building on them has created vulnerable low-lying land and removed 
valuable protection for the inland communities adjacent to it. It has 
also eliminated space for water to go during storm surges without 
damaging infrastructure because homes are now built where the marsh 
used to be. Preservation and restoration of these natural protective 
barriers should be part of any plan to protect our coastal communities 
going forward.
                                 ______
                                 
   Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Edward Markey to 
                        Deborah A. Bronk, Ph.D.
    Question 1. What Federal investments and/or initiatives are 
necessary to support the sustained ocean and climate observations and 
modeling needed to fill our gaps in climate understanding?
    a. Are there existing programs that should be supported or 
expanded?
    b. Are there new programs or partnerships that should be created?
    Answer. The answer is yes to both. To assure that investments are 
impactful and cost effective, a critical first step is establishing a 
long-term plan for ocean observations.
    To address both of the questions, I direct the senator's staff to 
the following report noted in my written testimony and have copied an 
excerpt of the Summary that directly addresses this issue:
    National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. 
Sustaining Ocean Observations to Understand Future Changes in Earth's 
Climate. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/
10.17226/24919.
         NATIONAL COORDINATION, PLANNING, AND FUNDING CHALLENGE
    Although the interagency bodies described above have 
responsibilities to coordinate activities associated with ocean climate 
observing, the committee has not been able to identify a clear national 
leadership position for this intersection of ocean, climate, and 
observing. Neither has the committee been able to identify a national 
plan to sustain and expand this critical ocean observing system for 
climate change. Although Congress recognized the need for sustained 
ocean observations in the ICOOS Act, the annual budgets have not 
matched the costs of sustaining the current system in terms of 
workforce, infrastructure, and data management. The absence of an 
overarching long-term (e.g., 10-year) national plan with associated 
resource commitments and lack of strong leadership presents a challenge 
for sustaining U.S. contributions to ocean observing, by inhibiting 
effective coordination and multiyear investments in the many components 
of the observing system.

    Finding: The continuity of ocean observations is essential for 
gaining an accurate understanding of the climate. Funding mechanisms 
that rely on annual budget approval or short-term grants may result in 
discontinuity of ocean climate measurements, reducing the value of the 
observations made to date and in the future.

    Conclusion on Planning: Because of the extended time frame required 
for climate observations, a decadal plan for the U.S. ocean observing 
system would be the most effective approach for ensuring that critical 
ocean information is available to understand future climate. 
Consistency of the decadal plan with the Framework for Ocean Observing 
would optimize U.S. investments relative to contributions of the 
international community, with plan updates likely required to align 
with international activities during the 10-year period. Elements of a 
decadal plan include identification of requirements, assessment of the 
adequacy of the current system, components to be deployed over the 10-
year period, potential for technological advancements, and an estimate 
of resources necessary to implement the plan. The National Ocean 
Research Leadership Council (NORLC) has the mandate under the ICOOS Act 
to oversee development and adoption of a long-term plan and NORLC could 
be responsible for its periodic assessment and update, possibly 
utilizing the IOOC and the Ocean Research Advisory Panel. Progress in 
implementing the plan would depend on the engagement of the broader 
stakeholder community and coordination with international partners in 
the global ocean observing system.

    Conclusion on Partnership: An Ocean-Climate Partnership (OCP) 
organization described further in Chapter 5 would be an effective 
mechanism to increase engagement and coordination of the ocean 
observation science community with nonprofits, philanthropic 
organizations, academia, U.S. Federal agencies, and the commercial 
sector. Through their shared interests in the observational data and 
associated products, the OCP members could work together toward the 
goal of sustaining the ocean climate observing system.

    Question 2. How can Congress help ensure that climate science is 
fully funded, especially to forecast local impacts that allow 
communities to prepare and respond to disasters?
    Answer. As I noted above, we need to support robust climate 
modeling and forecasting at the national and regional level. Models are 
our most powerful tool in understanding how our environment is likely 
to change but they have never been financially supported at the level 
needed to answer the questions we face. Then we need programs that 
support two-way communication between the modelers and scientists 
creating these programs and the local and regional managers that will 
use them to make decisions. A closer relationship across this spectrum 
will inform modelers of the most pressing issues and the type of 
information needed to address them and educate local and regional 
managers on model limitations and data needs.

    Question 3. How has the Trump administration's attitudes and 
directives regarding climate science affected your work and the 
scientific community?
    Answer. For the leader of the country with the largest per capita 
greenhouse gas emissions to be a climate change denier is terrifying to 
anyone who knows what's at stake. It is also demoralizing that the 
leader of this great country is so ignorant and misinformed on the 
great challenge of our time.
    Science is also an international activity that was largely led by 
the United States. The Trump administration has been devasting to our 
global reputation and leadership in science. In terms of long-term 
impact of Trump on how we will address the climate challenge, my most 
immediate concern is immigration. The United States was a science and 
innovation leader because we welcomed the best and the brightest from 
around the world. We brought people from different backgrounds and 
cultures and perspectives, who think differently and so expanded what 
we could have ever done alone. Now we are making it harder and harder 
for students to come here and to stay once they are trained. This is 
all happening at the very time that China is opening its arms to the 
world. I want the best and the brightest here. I want their brainpower 
and passion serving our republic as we tackle climate change. We need 
them.
                                 ______
                                 
 Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Richard Blumenthal to 
                         Erika Washburn, Ph.D.
    Issue No. 1: Need for Immediate Legislative Action on Climate 
Change. The consequences of global climate change are devastating and 
far-reaching, and both immediate and long-term. Climate change 
threatens our economy, our national security, our beautiful natural 
places, and even our lives. Still, Congress delays meaningful action on 
combating the worst effects of climate change. For residents of my home 
state of Connecticut, facing climate change is not a choice. Superstorm 
Sandy claimed 147 lives and cost billions of dollars in damage. 
Scientists predict an almost two-foot increase in sea levels around 
Long Island Sound by 2050, meaning that smaller storms could result in 
greater flooding. My constituents simply can't wait any longer for the 
United States to take action.
    Question 1. Do you agree that it is critical that the United States 
Senate consider and pass legislation to address climate change this 
Congress? [Yes or No]
    Answer.
   Yes.

    Question 2. Given the expansiveness of climate change and its 
effects, what mechanism or strategy do you believe Congress should 
prioritize when considering effective climate change solutions?
    Answer.
   Congress should consider convening a broadly representative 
        Commission on Climate Change Adaptation tasked with drafting 
        and proposing the funding priorities and national policy 
        framework required to support mitigation and adaptation efforts 
        across the Nation. Much of the needed work concerning the 
        development of a vision, stakeholders and leaders involved, 
        adaptation practitioners, and public and private sector roles 
        and engagement are outlined in detail elsewhere, for example, 
        in the comprehensively written Kresge Foundation Report, 
        ``Rising to the Challenge, Together.'' This is attached as an 
        appendix to this statement.

   In sum:

   Adaptation work should include the development of an 
        adaptation vision and practice, the identification of shared 
        values, and clearly articulated priorities that are regional, 
        sectoral and cross-cutting in nature.

   Reaching this vision and implementing this practice will 
        require funding for knowledge generation and transfer, skill 
        development and tools that the Nation as a whole can deploy to 
        meet adaptation goals.

   The mechanisms to be developed include but are not limited 
        to best practices for information sharing, learning, 
        collaboration, advocacy and communication. These mechanisms and 
        practices must be deployed at all scales and in all 
        communities.

   A national policy and funding framework should be directed 
        from national to regional scaled efforts, be based on the best 
        available science while continuing to make critical research 
        investments, and provide Federal agency directives to engage.

   A funding framework should be institutionalized so that 
        resources and investments are coordinated and sustained. 
        Critically, any strategy should involve innovation in 
        technology, private investments and extensive cost sharing 
        among all the stakeholders benefiting from risk reduction. 
        Identifying zones of shared risk is critical to both the 
        evaluation of the effectiveness of strategies, and identifying 
        beneficiaries. Negotiation of the best strategy and getting 
        agreement on cost sharing is a difficult process and Federal 
        funds should be used to incentivize stakeholder participation.

   The Commission must specifically include plans to address 
        non-urban areas and socially vulnerable populations including 
        the poor, elderly, communities of color and indigenous 
        communities, focusing efforts on building social cohesion and 
        equity. This is in recognition of the fact that communities of 
        color, the socioeconomically challenged, and the rural areas or 
        small towns will continue to bear the brunt of climate change 
        impacts and the challenges of effectively engaging in an 
        adaptation strategy.

    Additional and specific mechanisms and actions:

   Reinvigorate successful efforts like the State, Local and 
        Tribal Leaders Task Force

   Improve access to and use of important Federal data and tool 
        portals to help communities understand, prepare for and adapt

   Continue investments in research to management on the 
        ecological and economic impacts of green infrastructure as 
        strategic solutions

   Strengthen support for the practice of ecosystem service 
        assessments as decision support tools for the tradeoffs 
        communities will be faced with making in a resource-constrained 
        future

   Strengthen and support interagency research and monitoring 
        efforts on climate change and impacts on public health and 
        wellbeing

   Invest in programs that can strategically acquire and 
        conserve coastal land, for example, the Coastal and Estuarine 
        Land Conservation Program or the National Estuarine Research 
        Reserve Purchase, Acquisition and Construction program.

    Perspectives: NERRS

   Leverage the existence of, and strengthen investments in, 
        federal-state partnership networks like the National Estuarine 
        Research Reserve System which can develop, test and deploy 
        solutions to coastal community and ecosystem challenges in a 
        way that strengthens economic, ecological and social 
        resiliency. The reserves are test-beds can be used to rapidly 
        develop, deploy and replicate solutions to adaptation 
        challenges at the local and regional level while collecting 
        baseline information about status and monitoring trends over 
        time. For example, the NERR System piloted a first-in-the-
        nation assessment (report attached) of marsh resilience 
        comparing the Atlantic and Pacific coasts finding that the 
        tidal marshes in New England were among the most vulnerable to 
        sea level rise and without mitigation and adaptation measures, 
        would lose their ability to provide protection to coastal 
        communities for flooding.

   The Reserves are also at the forefront of innovative and 
        impactful training programs supporting local and regional 
        decision makers charged with developing and implementing 
        adaptation and mitigation strategies in their communities. The 
        trainings are driven by community needs and requests and the 
        science provided is geared towards addressing questions that 
        respond to the community needs. These training programs can be 
        used to fast-track information sharing, technical data and best 
        practice for adaptation solutions. These strategies include 
        deployment of green infrastructure and acquisition of areas 
        sensitive to climate change through the NERRS Purchase, 
        Acquisition and Construction grants.

    Question 3. Connecticut residents are already facing the 
consequences of climate change. How can the United States Northeast 
ready itself for a warmer world?
    Answer.

   Knowledge is power. Universities often provide an extensive 
        source of capacity for relevant knowledge (Climate and Ocean 
        Science, Law, Engineering, Planning, Communications, Geology, 
        Natural Resources) and connections to local stakeholders. 
        Considerable and strategic thought about the role of 
        universities in building a resilient society can be reviewed 
        through Old Dominion University's Resilience Collaborative 
        Archive, a summary of which is attached in the appendix.

   The National Estuarine Research Reserves are sources for 
        information about climate change impacts, adaptation strategies 
        and mitigation measures. They are also a trusted community 
        voice with proven capacity for localized training and community 
        engagement. Fostering collaborations within and among these 
        groups can represent a powerful tool to address changes that 
        can be difficult yet necessary

    Issue No. 2: Fostering the Necessary Paradigm Shift to Mitigate 
Climate Change. This year, two landmark studies were published that 
document the extent of climate change's impacts on humans and the 
planet--the Fourth National Climate Assessment and the Global 
Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Both 
reiterate in great detail what we have known for decades: climate 
change is real, humans are causing it, and we must act boldly now. 
These reports note that our options to mitigate the worst effects of 
climate change--through domestic policies and international 
agreements--are insufficient to meet the scale and rate of our changing 
climate. We need ``fundamental, system-wide reorganization across 
technological, economic, and social factors, including paradigms, 
goals, and values.''

    Question 4. How can Congress foster the fundamental, 
transformational changes needed to save human lives and biodiversity in 
the face of powerful opposition and inertia?
    Answer.
    Federal Commitment to Funding Innovations in Partnership with the 
States

   Congress should provide clear signals about what Federal 
        support for adaptation funding will look like for projects that 
        are critical in states and towns. Many leaders are hoping that 
        Federal funds will reduce the need for local spending. Any 
        programs that are administered by states that provide funds for 
        forward looking adaptation through competitive grants that cost 
        share in the 30-60 percent range would motivate near term 
        action. These programs should push innovative solutions and 
        multiple benefits. These programs should be run through State 
        agencies since there are local political and environmental 
        policies and traditions that must be respected if effective 
        consultation and negotiation is to occur.

    Congress should provide leadership and leverage good, existing work

   Make use of the foundations laid over the decade through 
        such things as interagency and White House Office of Science 
        Technology and Policy (OSTP) led efforts on ecosystem services 
        as a framework to use for all Federal science investments.

   Leverage trusted place-based programs like the National 
        Estuarine Research Reserves and their Coastal Training Programs 
        to facilitate town halls, listening sessions, and hearings in 
        the states and regions to seek out leaders, ideas and 
        innovations. The Reserves help to educate and train local 
        officials on developing adaptation strategies and train and 
        educate all members of society in environmental literacy.

   Invite all sectors of society to participate in this effort, 
        with specific outreach and engagement to Tribal nations, 
        indigenous communities, communities of color, the poor, the 
        elderly and youth.

   Engage with the artistic community and storytellers in the 
        creative economy who can help us to build common and positive 
        narratives of living with a changing planet, intentionally, 
        with equity and respect, and within our limits. Challenge this 
        community to help Americans dream big, re-envision and innovate 
        in a future that will look very different than what humanity 
        has known.

   Engage the networks and professions of first responders and 
        healers and find leaders in those communities. Rapid climate 
        change will continue to lead to loss of human life, of the 
        planet's species, habitats, special places and whole 
        ecosystems. These losses will, and already are, causing real 
        grief and anger which have consequences for the mental health 
        of individuals and the public health and wellbeing in 
        communities. This loss needs to be explored, grieved and 
        remembered in a way that promotes healing and hopefully, a 
        better future. At the Lake Superior Reserve, for example, we 
        are launching climate change healing circles with the 
        leadership of clinical social workers and Tribal leaders.

   Engage and empower youth in place-based education
    Every year, programs offered at the Lake Superior Reserve and the 
        28 other Reserves attract more than a half a million students, 
        educators, and visitors. Reserves educate approximately 85,000 
        students and 3,200 teachers nationwide each year. Since 2011 in 
        Wisconsin and Minnesota, the Lake Superior Reserve's 
        educational programming has reached 52,898 learners.

   Promote and support training for decision makers
    Reserve programs help sustain more than 10,000 jobs, provide 
        training to more than 13,400 people. Decision makers from more 
        than 2,500 cities and towns and 570 businesses benefit by 
        Reserve-based science and technical expertise nationwide each 
        year. At the Lake Superior Reserve, we provided training to 
        hundreds of staff from cities, counties, the state, for profit 
        companies and Non-Governmental Organizations each year on 
        topics such as variable Great Lakes water levels, green 
        infrastructure, and nuisance algal blooms. In New Jersey, the 
        Jacques Cousteau Reserve-led Getting to Resilience community 
        planning tool was cited in the Northeast Chapter of the 
        National Climate Assessment as a powerful tool to help 
        communities prepare for extreme storms and flooding.

    Issue No. 3: The Need to Invest in Sustainable Infrastructure. As 
Congress considers a major infrastructure package, we cannot ignore the 
risks of climate change. Fundamentally new approaches to infrastructure 
investment are needed, including a focus on clean energy 
transportation, efficient travel, grid upgrades, and sustainable 
materials and design. In addition to ensuring that the built 
environment helps instead of harms humans and the planet, Congress 
should invest in green infrastructure, including healthy natural 
spaces. Connecticut's state economy is reliant on the myriad ecosystem 
services provided by coastal ecosystems, including estuaries, marshes, 
and open water. I would like to make Connecticut home to the thirtieth 
National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR), and I have led efforts to 
encourage the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to move 
quickly to approve the proposed Connecticut Reserve. Mitigating climate 
change's effects on green, blue, grey, and other types of 
infrastructure is essential for our health and wealth, and deserves 
Congressional attention.

    Question 5. What are some of the most important investments that we 
can make to ensure our Nation's infrastructure is more resilient or 
adaptive to the variety of hazards posed by future climate conditions?
    Answer.

   Consider the points and recommendations from the September 
        2019 report from the Global Commission on Adaptation (Adapt 
        Now: A Global Call for Leadership on Climate Resilience)--
        particularly the cases made for the economic return on 
        investments for early warning systems, infrastructure, water 
        and crop resources, and protection for key habitats such as 
        mangroves, wetlands, etc. This report is attached in the 
        appendix.

   As the Kresge report ``Rising to the Challenge, Together'' 
        details, investments must be made to support proactive and 
        preventative, mitigation measures in communities. This will 
        entail eliminating barriers to such work and increasing 
        opportunities for regional collaborative action.

   Adaptation efforts should also be focused on policy, the 
        role of professional societies and the establishment of 
        standards affecting climate-sensitive structures and 
        activities. An example of this is eliminating the barriers on 
        FEMA funding to reconstruct stormwater infrastructure to the 
        previous state, rather than right-sizing infrastructure 
        proactively to handle heavier precipitation loads.

   Investments that promote green infrastructure or living 
        shorelines and those targeting water infrastructure overall 
        will be critical. For example, resources will be critical for 
        mapping and supporting wetland migration corridors, and for 
        facilitating planning processes that focus on citing and 
        relocating infrastructure to safer locations. The public-
        private partnership, Living Shorelines Academy provides a great 
        example of training and resources on this topic. Many of the 
        National Estuarine Research Reserves lead on this as well. For 
        example, Florida's Guana Tolomato Matanzas Reserve leads the 
        regional Ecological Engineering of Living Shorelines team 
        focused on solving complex coastal issues through engineering.

   Support the Digital Coast Act. This platform has the 
        potential for use by all local planners and can save 
        communities tremendous resources while educating the general 
        public. This user driven resource is supported by a partnership 
        fop eight NGOs and NOAA, so the information is designed to 
        reflect user needs.

   Develop policy that recognizes and respects the biophysical 
        and ecological functioning of watershed systems--regardless of 
        political boundary crossings, and start to expand the 
        definition of what constitutes a `coastal community.' Congress 
        can rely on and re-authorize the Nation's only land use 
        planning document, the Coastal Zone Management Act, as a first 
        step.

   Funding frameworks for infrastructure investments should 
        coordinate between the public and private sector in close 
        collaboration with the philanthropic resources so that 
        complicated gaps can be tackled.

    Perspectives: National Estuarine Research Reserves and Integrated 
Ocean Observing Systems

   A fundamental benefit the NERR system provides is the built-
        in capacity for monitoring key environmental parameters that 
        can be used in many capacities in adaptation and mitigation 
        strategies. The Reserve System maintains more than 280 water 
        quality and weather monitoring stations. Every 15 minutes, 
        these platforms collect data to manage hazardous spills, 
        shellfish industry operations, and emergency response to storm 
        surge and flooding. That's 42 million data points each year 
        tracking the changing health of our critical coastal systems. 
        The measurements taken and data products provided span a 
        national scope but detail impacts at local scales--which is 
        necessary for discriminating the sensitivities of impacts. This 
        network capacity should be expanded and could easily be done 
        given the tools and technology already in place.

   Similarly, increased investments towards the US Integrated 
        Ocean Observing System and regional associations are needed to 
        provide increased capacity of warnings and long term monitoring 
        of environmental indicators.

    Question 6. How does the preservation of coastal habitat--such as 
those in the NERR system--help mitigate the effects of climate change 
on infrastructure?
    Answer.

   It is well documented that coastal habitats provide critical 
        buffering capacity from the landward effects of storms and the 
        expected impacts of things sea level rise. The continued 
        efforts to both preserve and restore these habitats are 
        essential components in any strategy to mitigate effects of 
        climate change.

   The wetlands in the NERR System make their coastal areas 
        more resilient in the face of increased and intensifying storms 
        and flooding. Nationally, wetlands, like those Reserves 
        protect, provide $26.25 billion in storm protection each year. 
        Salt marshes can reduce a community's storm damage by 20 
        percent annually. Marshes reduce risk of flood exposure by 50 
        percent for those living within two thirds of a mile--they also 
        reduce property loss in upstream communities. Reserves overall 
        protect more than 1.3 million acres of coastal and estuarine 
        lands around the country. States, communities, and people 
        depend on these estuaries to protect them from flooding, keep 
        water clean, sustain and create jobs, support fish and 
        wildlife, and offer outdoor recreation. By increasing Federal 
        funds in the NERRS Purchase, Acquisition and Construction 
        grants, communities can be strategic in their purchase and 
        conservation of high quality coastal habitat.

   Coastal wetlands are nature's most effective carbon trapping 
        machines--inch for inch they capture more carbon than any other 
        habitat on earth. They also protect water quality, stabilize 
        shorelines, reduce storm surge, and provide habitat for 
        fisheries. Unfortunately, since 2005 alone, the U.S. has lost 
        80,000 acres of wetlands, and the cost of restoration is often 
        beyond community reach. Restoring degraded wetlands has the 
        potential to be an effective climate mitigation strategy with 
        rapid rewards. Voluntary blue carbon markets can help pay for 
        wetland restoration and conservation. Communities, businesses, 
        and individuals can sell carbon offsets and invest the proceeds 
        in projects that capture carbon and provide other important 
        ecological and economic benefits. Through the National 
        Estuarine Research Reserve (NERRS) network, knowledge gained 
        through the Bringing Wetlands to Market project in New England 
        is catalyzing blue carbon initiatives around the country.
                                 ______
                                 
   Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Edward Markey to 
                         Erika Washburn, Ph.D.
    Question 1. Low income neighborhoods and communities of color 
disproportionately bear the brunt of climate impacts. How can Congress 
support and incorporate social science to ensure that adaptation 
planning is equitable and protects frontline communities?
    Answer. Congress needs to provide an equitable and collaborative 
adaptation planning process. This process includes:

   Ensure Federal funding programs require engagement and 
        demonstrated support beyond state and municipal partners (e.g., 
        neighborhood-scale/community-based organizations) to advance 
        equitable (and often more integrated, systemic) adaptation 
        planning initiatives.

   Provide funding opportunities for organizations advancing 
        holistic regional adaptation planning processes in communities 
        of color around the Nation (e.g., The Climigration Network) and 
        increase Federal support for collaborative planning efforts 
        that are supported by staff with professional facilitation 
        experience who can equitably balance the needs of competing 
        interests. Cognizant of the capacity requirements and 
        additional burden grant writing often places on already 
        disadvantaged communities, these Federal funding opportunities 
        should be simplified to the minimum necessary, be coordinated 
        as much as possible with other funding streams or be funneled 
        through and coordinated with other funding opportunities 
        through streamlined regional grant-making organizations, and 
        involve technical assistance for those writing funding 
        proposals and administering Federal funds.

   Restructure Army Corps of Engineers efforts to generate, 
        evaluate and implement coastal and inland risk management 
        strategies (e.g., shoreline protection, surge gates) to provide 
        real and meaningful stakeholder engagement and dialogue with 
        all stakeholder groups, but especially with low income 
        neighborhoods, communities of color and Indigenous communities. 
        Create provisions, including adequate staff, funding, technical 
        support, and training opportunities and support strategic 
        partnerships with organizations that have relevant outreach and 
        engagement expertise (e.g., NERRs, Regional Integrated Sciences 
        and Assessments Program, the National Sea Grant College 
        Program, U.S. Department of Agriculture climate hubs, and other 
        existing professional networks such as Urban Sustainability 
        Directors Network,, American Society of Adaptation 
        Professionals, etc.) to ensure two-way dialogue and a complete 
        community understanding of the short-term and long-term 
        implications of implemented strategies including visual, 
        access, residual risk and cost factors.

    Congress needs to ensure that adaptation planning is equitable and 
protects frontline communities, which are already experiencing the 
impacts of climate change and include such places as coastal and low-
lying river and tributary communities, communities subject to intense 
heat waves and droughts, communities with persistent water scarcity, 
and communities on the leading edge of new vector borne diseases.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Congress could assist with ensuring that frontline communities are 
protected by:

  1.  Ensuring that Federal grant program and other federally supported 
        efforts aimed at advancing adaptation planning for climate 
        change explicitly integrate consideration for disparity in 
        vulnerability to impacts from climate change for different 
        socioeconomic groups as part of all adaptation planning 
        projects and programs. Further, increase support for projects/
        programs that aim to directly study and integrate social 
        science considerations for adaptation planning.

  2.  Continue supporting programs that seriously consider long-
        standing, systemic and persistent environmental justice issues.

  3.  In recognition of the fact that there can be a concentration of 
        low income neighborhoods in urban settings and that often low 
        income earners are renters of property in urban settings, 
        ensure that realtors and landlords are educated about potential 
        impacts from climate change. Work with the real estate sector 
        and landlords to educate renters about potential climate change 
        threats. For example, heat health impacts can be huge in urban 
        settings and heat-related threats will be a main impact of 
        climate change. Ensuring that cooling centers, tree planting 
        programs etc. are supported in these urban settings could be 
        very important and help to save lives.

  4.  Support programs that enable homeowners and owners of rental 
        properties to retrofit their homes to address structural 
        vulnerabilities to storms and other risks that could be 
        exacerbated by climate change. Incentives should be staggered, 
        i.e., larger for those with low and lower incomes than for 
        wealthier home owners, and they should be accompanied with 
        simplified application procedures and technical assistance so 
        as not to perpetuate the commonly observed pattern whereby 
        wealthier, higher-capacity property owners have greater 
        capacity to apply for and ultimately receive financial 
        assistance for retrofits.

    Perspectives: National Estuarine Research Reserves Related Studies/
Projects

   The Research Reserves are increasingly tackling this 
        challenge. For example, a capacity building study led by 
        Waquoit Bay Reserve in Massachusetts focused on working towards 
        coastal resilience for underserved/hard to reach community 
        members on Cape Cod. This Reserve also recently developed an 
        innovative program meeting the needs of vulnerable audiences 
        focused on the deaf and hearing impaired. More information 
        about this NERRS Science Collaborative funded Watershed Action 
        for Deaf Education (WADE) is attached in the appendix. While 
        this project did not explicitly address climate change it shows 
        a successful process used to engage and serve an underserved 
        audience. Additional information is available on page 11 of 
        this NOAA Education Accomplishments Report.

    Other relevant work by active adaptation players

   The Movement Strategy Center has developed a guide for 
        adaptation/resilience planning that is sensitive to community-
        concerns and illustrates a fully community-engaged adaptation 
        process. We attach it and consider it a model for others to 
        follow.

   The National Association for the Advancement of Colored 
        People, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Urban 
        Sustainability Directors Network and US Water Alliance have 
        also developed a series of relevant guides that illustrate how 
        equity-centered resilience building, preparedness planning, 
        rebuilding after disaster and so on should be done to address 
        historic patterns of injustice and inequity. Many examples from 
        these groups are attached in the appendix.

   Look to great examples in the Nation such as the work being 
        done by the Community Resilience Initiative in Oakland, 
        California, which has successfully demonstrated a process to 
        improve equity actions by state and local agencies. Likewise, 
        explore the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities 
        initiative for more examples.

   Engage a full range of social scientists and associated 
        human dimensions data and information into the debates, 
        structures and proposals for a national adaptation policy and 
        associated funding mechanisms. Do this leveraging agencies, 
        Federal agencies, programs (some with regional arms) such as 
        all US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) agencies, 
        especially the Department of Commerce/NOAA funding programs 
        (e.g., Regional Integrates Science And Assessments Program, 
        Sectoral Applications Research Program, National Sea Grant 
        College Program, etc.), USDA (e.g., Cooperative Extension, 
        Forest Service), the National Science Foundation, Environmental 
        Protection Agency, and Department of Interior (with the U.S. 
        Geological Survey, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park 
        Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, etc.), National Institutes 
        of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Housing 
        and Urban Development, the Census, Bureau of Labor, and place-
        based interdisciplinary programs like the NERRS and others.

   Professional societies such as the American Society of 
        Adaptation Professionals, the American Planning Association, 
        American Society of Civil Engineers, American Psychological 
        Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Medical 
        Association, and other professional societies representing 
        relevant areas of research and academic expertise, such as the 
        American Association of Geographers, the American 
        Anthropological Association, Society for Applied Anthropology, 
        American Sociological Association and many others can all 
        support this.

    Question 2. What Federal investments, programs, or partnerships are 
needed to meet our Nation's social science needs for understanding the 
human dimensions of the climate crisis?
    Answer.
    Federal investments, programs and partnerships that engage and 
leverage social science towards understanding the human dimensions of 
the climate crisis and providing guidance on best practice for 
adaptation, will be critical in the following: ensuring climate 
justice, tracking progress towards successful adaptation, facilitating 
cross-jurisdictional coordination, and supporting the relocation of 
communities/domestic climate refugees. Applied social science will be 
critical in tracking and sharing lessons learned in adaptation across 
our Nation at all scales, and this will further require enhanced 
investment in the social science workforce.
    Climate justice as a cross-cutting guiding principle: Given that 
low income communities and communities of color have contributed the 
least to the climate change problem, are expected to suffer the most 
absent concerted effort, and have--left to their own devices--the least 
resources to prepare for and protect themselves from the impacts of 
climate change, climate justice should be a cross-cutting concern or 
principle in all federally-funded adaptation efforts.

  A.  Establish a Climate Justice Advisory Board. Create an 
        environmental justice advisory committee at the highest level 
        to provide input into the planning and implementation of 
        adaptation initiatives. Consider the model of the NYS Climate 
        Leadership and Community Protection Act which creates a Climate 
        Justice Working Group responsible for setting the criteria for 
        identifying disadvantaged communities and advising on the 
        implementation of the Act.

  B.  Add climate justice requirements to Federal funding. Develop 
        language for and require attention to climate justice in all 
        Federal funding programs.

    Adaptation success/progress: Set up a standing cross-agency working 
group or task force (including at least all USGCRP agencies, but also 
relevant others, see Question 1 above) to scan the horizon on how to 
measure and track national-level indicators and metrics of adaptation 
progress and success. Considerable work was done beginning with 3rd 
National Climate Assessment, and has continued somewhat but mostly 
outside of Federal agencies within universities and programs such as 
the NERRS with development of adaptation indicators and metrics.

  A.  Continue and strengthen work on adaptation indicators and 
        progress. Building on the work done to date within and outside 
        Federal agencies, the USGCRP should develop a set of 
        scientifically credible and decision-relevant, actionable 
        adaptation progress indicators. These indicators are to be 
        considered in the quadrennial National Climate Assessments, be 
        included in the Federal government's Resilience Toolkit, and 
        help inform and guide future climate preparedness investments. 
        These indicators should pay particular attention to what extent 
        progress is being made addressing climate justice and in so 
        doing, reducing social vulnerability of these historically most 
        disadvantaged groups. Indicators should be crafted that can 
        track the success of adaptation initiatives with this in mind.

  B.  Invest in the development and deployment of regional networks and 
        tools to collect baseline information about frontline coastal 
        communities concerning social, cultural, economic and health 
        data. This would result in real-time tackling of community 
        social vulnerability. Tracked over time and at a granular 
        enough scale, this data would describe a community's 
        resiliency, health and wellbeing and would be useful to 
        decision makers weighing investments, policies and adaptation 
        strategies to deploy. Limited examples that could be built upon 
        include NOAA's Digital Coast social vulnerability index, and 
        New York Sea Grant's Coastal Resilience Index, which engaged 
        social science to develop a post-flood recovery visioning 
        initiative to identify gaps and barriers to adaptation, which 
        included a flood inundation mapping package and online mapping 
        tool.

    Cross-jurisdictional coordination: Adaptation will require much 
greater communication and collaboration across jurisdictions and scales 
than is currently done. Funds should be made available through such 
things as the Department of Commerce's Economic Development 
Administration, in support of these cross-jurisdictional communication 
and collaboration mechanisms. One critical way this could be 
institutionalized is to expand funding for Sustained Assessment 
specialists.

  A.  Cross-jurisdictional communication. Host regular regional 
        facilitated dialogues with participants across scales (e.g., 
        neighborhood, municipal, regional, state, federal) and within 
        scales (e.g., regional convening of state and Federal program 
        staff to share challenges, needs, opportunities) to understand 
        the real and perceived barriers to climate adaptation with an 
        emphasis on meeting targets for disadvantaged communities. 
        NERRS would be logical hosts for conversations of this nature.

  B.  Cross-jurisdictional partnerships. Supporting new and innovative 
        partnerships such as partnerships between state and local 
        programs working to better understand human dimensions of 
        climate change and support communities with adaptation planning 
        efforts, with local groups that serve the needs of the most 
        vulnerable in the community. (E.g. Partnerships with Service 
        Centers, Faith Communities, Business Community, Realtors and 
        Chambers of Commerce)

    Getting out of harm's way: getting out of harms' way involves, 
avoiding getting into it and--once in it--helping people relocate out 
of it. This speaks to various Federal efforts, policies and programs:

  A.  Review Federal insurance programs. This would ensure they reflect 
        the actual risk; moving toward the place where insurance rates 
        and premiums reflect current and future risks.

  B.  Require forward-looking climate science in infrastructure 
        planning. Require that all Federal infrastructure funds 
        consider scenarios of future risk over 30-, 50- and 100-year 
        time frames and that infrastructure is planned and built to be 
        adaptive, given uncertainties about the exact extent of future 
        climate change; the process used by Federal programs and 
        agencies should be consistent with procedures practiced at the 
        General Services Administration.

  C.  Discontinue investment and development in at-risk location. 
        Review any other Federal investment and incentive programs that 
        encourage people to move into high-risk areas and phase out 
        those programs or ensure that they redirect development and 
        people's movement toward safer locations.

  D.  Improve buyout programs. Invest heavily in the restructuring of 
        Federal buyout programs, support the development and growth of 
        state buyout programs and improve the overall buyout process--
        which is not meeting national needs at many levels. Adjust 
        administration and create flexible funding structures to 
        dramatically decrease wait times for real estate transfers, 
        support high quality temporary housing in safe locations and 
        create robust support services that make this transition rapid 
        and comfortable. Offer meaningful financial support and other 
        assistance to renters interested in relocating. Offer financial 
        and other incentives to communities safe from flooding to 
        encourage reception of homeowners in transition. Provide 
        necessary outreach and engagement with homeowners in transition 
        to ensure they do not repurchase a new property in an area of 
        high flood risk.

    Continue and expand place-based research and facilitate lesson 
sharing nationally

   Continue to support investments in federally funded place-
        based, solutions-oriented, stakeholder-engaged programs such as 
        the NOAA funded National Estuarine Research Reserves, the NERRS 
        Science Collaborative competitive grant program, the National 
        Sea Grant College Program and Coastal Zone Management Program, 
        EPA funded National Estuaries Program, and USDA funded 
        Cooperative Extension. One NOAA funded program attached to the 
        NERRS, the Science Collaborative, specifically funds research 
        that is aimed at addressing community needs and use a 
        collaborative model that increasingly incorporates social 
        science approaches in engaging different audiences. Using this 
        collaborative research approach has been shown to be very 
        successful and benefits communities. It is important, however, 
        to extract generalizable lessons to foster accelerated learning 
        and spread effective solutions to other locations. The 
        quadrennial National Climate Assessments and the sustained 
        assessment process should be used to extract generalizable 
        lessons so that adaptation practice and solutions are more 
        readily implemented elsewhere.

    Perspectives: National Estuarine Research Reserves

   The reserves support research on partnering with faith 
        communities to address climate change. Waquoit Bay Reserve in 
        Massachusetts supported an effort called `NERRS as common 
        grounds: towards a holistic science approach to research, 
        education, and outreach with religious communities to enhance 
        climate and environmental literacy' the findings of which are 
        attached in the appendix.

    Workforce development: In recognition of the needs to be further 
training of the next generation of adaptation professionals--in 
whatever fields they find themselves--it is essential to invest in 
education, trainings and accelerated professional development. A number 
of tracks must be pursued:

  A.  Develop professional standards. Given that adaptation is a high-
        risk endeavor with millions of people's lives and well-being 
        and trillions of dollars at risk in coastal areas alone, 
        adaptation, preparedness, and resilience-building should be 
        conducted in appropriate ethical, technically skilled and 
        economically sound manner, informed by the best climate and 
        social science. Currently there are no professional standards, 
        but various professional development efforts underway. The 
        Federal government should consider initiating a process whereby 
        relevant standard-setting institutions are brought together to 
        consider ongoing professional development and set minimum 
        standards in professional skills and conduct.

  B.  Build the pipeline. While many think of adaptation as a technical 
        matter, the range of skills for effective adaptation is much 
        broader. Training in the relevant social and applied sciences 
        and topics (e.g., planning and policy-making processes, 
        communication, vulnerability assessments, economic assessments, 
        finance, law, physical and mental health) is required across 
        the board. There is also a need to increase awareness of social 
        science fields as important career options required to meet the 
        climate change crisis. Partnerships with colleges and 
        universities as well as professional societies are essential, 
        but efforts must be made to reach deeper into the K-16 school 
        system to help educate young people about the role of social 
        science in helping to address societal issues like climate 
        change that will be with us for a long time. This is a very 
        long term view but recognizes the need for further training of 
        career professionals working on climate change issues. This 
        topic is further expanded in `Rising to the Challenge, 
        Together' attached in the appendix.
                                 ______
                                 
                   Appendices and Links to Resources
    Climate Resilience

   Adapt Now: A global Call for Leadership on Climate 
        Resilience. Global Commission on Adaptation

   Rising to the Challenge, Together: A Review and Critical 
        Assessment of the State of the U.S. Climate Adaptation Field. 
        Moser et al., Kresge Foundation.

   Change Adaptation: An Action Toolkit. National Association 
        of Climate Resilience Planners.

   Institutionalizing Resilience in U.S. Universities: 
        Prospects, Opportunities, and Models. Foster et al.

   Mapping Now: A Blueprint for Thriving in the Face of Climate 
        Disasters. Apen.

   Pathways to Resilience: Transforming Cities in a Changing 
        Climate: Kresge Foundation, Movement Strategy Center, Movement 
        Generation, The Praxis Project, Reimagine!, RP&E

   Community-driven Climate Resilience Planning: A Framework. 
        National Association of Climate Resilience Planners.

   Our Communities, Our Power: Advancing Resistance and 
        Resilience in Climate

   Bounce Forward: Urban Resilience in the Era of Climate 
        Change. Kresge Foundation & Island Press.

    Social Equity & Justice

   Watershed Stewardship in Action: Deaf Students on the 
        Estuary. NERRS Science Collaborative.

   Working Towards Coastal Resilience for Underserved/Hard to 
        Reach Community Members on Cape Cod. Waquoit Bay National 
        Estuarine Research Reserve.

    An Equitable Water Future: A National Briefing Paper. US Water 
Alliance.

   A Guide to Equitable, Community-Driven, Climate Preparedness 
        Planning. Urban Sustainability Directors Network.

   Climate Change Through an Intersectional Lens: Gendered 
        Vulnerability and Resilience in Indigenous Communities in the 
        United States. Vinyeta et al., USDA

   Unleashing the Power of the People: Lessons on Public 
        Engagement for Environmental and Climate Justice. National 
        Association of Climate Resilience Planners.

   Equity in Building Resilience in Adaptation Planning. 
        National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

   In the Eye of the Storm: A People's Guide to Transforming 
        Crisis & Advancing Equity in the Disaster Continuum. National 
        Association of Climate Resilience Planners.

    Wetlands & Climate Resilience

   NERRS Blue Carbon: Putting Wetland Restoration & 
        Conservation in Reach. NERRS

   Rising to the Challenge: Will Tidal Marshes Survive Rising 
        Seas? Wasson, Raposa, et al., NERRS

   National Estuarine Research Reserves (NERRs) as common 
        grounds: towards a holistic science approach to research, 
        education, and outreach with religious communities to enhance 
        climate and environmental literacy at Waquoit Bay, Cape Cod, 
        Massachusetts, USA. Greber et al.

    Web Resources for Senator Blumenthal's Office
    Connecticut institute for Resilience & Climate Adaptation. An 
excellent resource for a range climate-related science, policy, and 
initiatives, including:

   Green Infrastructure:

     MetroCOG--Designing Resilience: Living Shorelines for 
            Bridgeport

     Milford--Developing and Implementing a Restoration and 
            Management Plan to Combat Threats and Challenges to Coastal 
            Dune Resiliency in Urban Landscapes

   Critical Infrastructure:

     Municipal Resilience Planning Assistance for Sea Level 
            Rise, Coastal Flooding, Wastewater Treatment 
            Infrastructure, & Policy

   Inland Flooding:

     RiverCOG Lower Connecticut River Valley Regional 
            Council of Governments--Regional Long Term Recovery-Land 
            Use Resiliency Plan

   Coastal Flooding:

     Jarvis Creek Sea Level & Flooding Variability

   Policy/Planning:

     Connecticut Physical Climate Science Assessment Report

     Developing Location-Based Communication and Public 
            Engagement Strategies to Build Resilient Coastal 
            Communities

   Sea-Level Rise:

     Advancing High Resolution Coastal Forecasting and 
            Living Shorelines Approaches in the Northeast

    Connecticut Sea Grant Resilient Communities

   Beaches & Dunes:

     Hazard Guide for Property Owners

   Resilient Communities

     Climate Adaptation Academy

    Sea Level Rise Effects on Roads & Marshes: University of 
Connecticut Center for Land use Education & Research
    CT Dept of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP):

   Public Act 12-101, An Act Concerning the Coastal Management 
        Act and Shoreline Flood and Erosion Control Structures

   Sea Level Rise Scenarios

   CT Climate Change

    Office of the Governor:
    Executive Order on Climate Change Mitigation

                                  [all]