# Presentation: 694627

## Weather & Water Goal

**Weather & Water Goal**

** ****George Smith, Goal Lead**

**NOAA Leadership Seminar **
**August 28, 2007**

## Presentation Outline

- Mission Vision
- Programs
- National Imperatives
- Themes
- Hurricane/Inundation
- Drought/Water Resources
- High Impact Events
- Approaches
- Innovation and Service Delivery

## Weather and Water Goal Team Mission/Vision

**Together, we monitor, enhance, and deliver environmental information, science, and services to save lives, protect property, and support environmental stewardship.****   **

## Slide 4

## Benefits(from NOAA’s Economic Statistics - April, 2006) 

- Weather and climate sensitive industries, both directly and indirectly, account for about one-third of the Nation’s GDP ($4 trillion in 2005 dollars) ranging from finance, insurance, and real estate to services, retail and wholesale trade and manufacturing
- Industries directly impacted by weather such as agriculture, construction, energy distribution, and outdoor recreation account for nearly 10 percent of GDP
- Average annual damage from tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods is $11.4 billion of which:
- hurricanes average $5.1 billion and 20 deaths per year
- floods account for $5.2 billion, and average over 80 deaths per year
- tornadoes cause $1.1 billion in damages
- During 1980-2003, the U.S. sustained 58 weather or climate related disasters, with damage and costs exceeding $1 billion per event.  Total inflation adjusted direct losses from these events were more than $350 billion.

## Strategies

- Ensure Program infrastructure is maintained and sustainable in order to support the reliability of current services
- Strengthen forecast and warning services in support of high impact events such hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fire weather, poor air quality, solar storms, and tsunamis
- Explore the viability of advanced observing technologies such as Phased Array Radars (PAR) and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)

## FY10-14 W&W Strategic Issues

**National Research Council, NOAA SAB, Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meteorological Services, Western Governors’ Association, FAA, DHS, DoD, local first responders and emergency managers **
**Specific capability gaps:**
**Current Service Reliability**
**Automated Surface Observation System (ASOS) processors**
**Updating WSR-88D radars to polarized radars,**
**Increase bandwidth and processing power of AWIPS,**
**Update Weather Radio and Weather Wire Systems**
**Increasing fuel costs for airborne observations**
**Replacement of SOHO CME data, stewardship of all SW data**
**Accelerate R&D and implementation for high impact event services, and implementation of new science and technology**
**For hurricanes, by 2014, operational forecasts which**
**reduce the average track and intensity errors by 50% (cut in half) at days 1 through 5 **
**provide uncertainty information (probability density function) for all of the errors in the system.  **
**Prototype warn-on-forecast severe weather system **
**Prototype fire-weather support system**
**R&D for next generation observing systems (PAR, UAS)**

**FY10-14 W&W Strategic Issues**

**Notes:**
Most of the gaps are operational infrastructure gaps.  W&W are not specific about which of these options address which of these gaps, however, options 2-4 all address operational infrastructure with the same $26M... presumably this addresses the same operational gaps in each option, but are we to assume that this figure will fill all of the gaps identified?

## Hurricanes & Related Inundation

**Hurricanes & Related Inundation**

**Reduced Deaths, Injuries, and **
**Economic Losses**

**Better Forecasts and Information/Tools to Improve Resilience**

**Observations**

**Modeling**

**Research**

**Forecasting**

**Info & Tools**
**for Planning**

**Outreach & Education**

**Notes:**
Observations—Satellites, radar, aircraft, buoys, ASOS
Research—Physics of intensity change, modeling research, quantitative precipitation forecasts, socioeconomic, historical record
Modeling—High-resolution tropical-cyclone model coupled with ocean, dynamic storm surge, hydraulic, ensembles
Forecasting—Predictions of all hazards
Info & Tools for Planning—Inundation maps for typical scenarios, framework and tools for Coastal Community Resilience Index
Outreach & Education—National Hurricane Conference, workshops with and training for emergency managers and community planners, information for the public

## Drought and Water Resources Management

**Drought and Water Resources Management**

**Precipitation**
**Snowpack**
**Soil Moisture**
**Land use/cover**
**Surface storage**
**Streamflow**

**    ****Sound Decisions**

**Community Modeling and Service Delivery**

**Notes:**
NOAA’s integrated services enable the balanced use of our finite water resources.

From observations providing data for our community modeling, forecasting and product delivery activities, to our ecosystem based management practices, 
NOAA services and information contribute to multiple water resource benefits.

Everything is connected through the integration of NOAA’s services and our community partnership with other federal and non-federal entities:
 Satellites,
 Fisheries,
 Meteorology,
 Hydrology,
 Hydropower, and
 Navigation.

The Columbia River Basin provides an example of the balanced use of our finite water resources.  Through integrated services, short- to long-term water resource and ecosystem management practices benefit:
Fisheries,
Power generation, and
Navigation.

## High-Impact Events

***Science & Technology***

***Situational Awareness ***
***&***
***Response***

***Integrated Services***

***Tactical Decision Assistance***

## Approaches

**Strengthen cooperation with academic community**
**Leverage private sector, other agencies activities **
**Combine functions with other NOAA components to achieve economies of scale**
**Observing systems**
**Modeling**
**Service delivery**
**Tailor approaches **
**Regional and/or local**
**Multidisciplinary**

## NOAA Innovation & Service Delivery

**NOAA Innovation & Service Delivery**

**Observe**

**Collect data**
**/Assimilate**

**Model**

**Analyze**
**/Decide**

**Disseminate**

## Questions?

**Questions?**

**Additional Background:**
- Weather and Water Programs
- National Imperatives
- Strategic Challenges

## Air Quality

- Program provides policy-relevant scientific information** ** to environmental decision-makers and air quality forecast guidance that helps the public minimize their exposure to unhealthful levels of air pollution.

## Hydrology

- Program delivers flood watches; river and flash-flood warnings, and river, lake level, water resources, and water quality forecasts through River and Weather Forecast Office

## Local Forecast and Warnings

- Program observes atmosphere, assimilate observations into numerical models, producing numerical forecasts, providing local warning and forecast services to communities, local and national customers through dissemination technologies, and educating customers.

## Space Weather

- Program ingests and processes data, performs research and transitions results into applications, provides timely and accurate operational space weather forecasts, warnings, alerts, and data to end users.

## Tsunami

- Program is part of an international cooperative effort to monitor global seismic activity and issue Tsunami warnings.

## Coasts, Estuaries, and Oceans

- Program is chartered to ensure that complex land-sea interface of observations, analyses, and forecasts, which affect critical decisions that impact lives, property, and resources, are provided in a timely and accurate manner to decision makers and the public.

## Environmental Modeling

- Program provides models and model-based estimates of both the current and future states (at all time scales) of the environment based upon observations and scientifically-based modeling techniques. It both operates and maintains a suite of operational models providing model guidance, and a research and development program to improve and extend the capability and performance of the operational and research model suite.

## Science, Technology, and Infusion

- Program improves NOAA's Weather and Water services by meeting short-term, while conducting long-term research that leads to breakthrough advances in services. ST&I performs state-of-the-art research and works with NOAA's service programs to infuse new science and technology via prototyping, evaluation, acquisition, and training.

## National Imperatives

**Hazard resilient communities **
**Coastal storms (hurricanes, mid-latitude storms..)**
**Severe events (winds, precipitation, lightning, heat..)**
**Flooding**
**Solar storms**
**Air quality**
**Tsunamis**
**Maintaining a healthy population and vital economy**
**Air and Water quality and resources**

## Strategic Challenges

- Weather and Water information is the foundation of many decisions by individuals, industry, and those charged with preparing and responding to high impact events whether natural or man made.
- Populations increase along the Nations coasts and extend urban development into what were formerly wild land forests.
- Severe weather and flooding impacts are increasing as urban and suburban areas increase and encroach into risk-prone flood plains and sprawling regions formerly in farms and pasture.
- storms along the east and west coasts,
- fire outbreaks caused by lightning or human activities and exacerbated by shifting drought patterns,
- tornado outbreaks throughout the mid-west and south, and
- wide spread flooding along major river systems are but a few examples.
- Each year the Nation spends hundreds of millions of dollars on illnesses related to poor air quality.  This situation could worsen as the nation struggles to keep pace with energy requirements and switches to alternate fuels such as ethanol.
- Growing dependence on wireless and space-based communications technology and rising demand for electricity has increased our vulnerability to disruption from solar storms more than ever before.
- Although major tsunamis are infrequent compared to other weather phenomena, they have and can cause extensive damage and loss of life along our coasts and well as those of nations around the globe for which we share tsunami-warning responsibility.
- Sustaining and maintaining our infrastructure and operations is critical to providing these critical services to our users to save lives, property and protect the economy.**  **