get started so good morning everyone i'd like to welcome our witnesses today's hearing we look forward to hearing your views as you know last week the science technology committee held the first hearing in congress on the just released report of the intergovernmental panel on climate controlled i p c c that hearing provided a useful glimpse into the current scientific understanding of climate change it's clear that the advances in our scientific understanding of climate change or critically dependent on the data collection and modeling enabled by our investments in the earth science research and applications know and nasa in addition those investments play a crucial rol in proving the accuracy of our weather forecast monitoring land use and managing our natural resources in short this nation needs to continue to invest in robust systems of environmental satellites to witnesses over the two years ago one of today's witnesses dr moore stated that the in a report of the national academies to cable survey had concluded that the nation system of environmental satellites  at risk of collapse that was a sobering assessment now that a cable survey is finished and we will be hearing their findings and recommendations to day one of those finding in particular is troubling and once again i quote in the short period since the publication of the interim report budgetary constraints programmatic difficulties at nasa have greatly exacerbated this concern at a time of unprecedented need the nation observation satellite programs once the envy of the world are in disarray i don't think the national academies could be clearer than in voicing its concern so i did a hearing i want to get answers to the following questions when the cable survey panel says that the nation's earth observation satellite programs are in disarray what does that mean in specific terms what is the impact of that d and why does it matter and what needs to be done to fix this situation of course in these times of tight budgets some look at the academy's recommendations and simply say we can afford them more than we are now however the simple fact of the matter is that our nation is getting ready to spend a lot of money to deal with climate change in the coming years both public dollars and private dollars we will continue to need good data to make sure that those investments are wise ones and they were getting the intended results i'm worried that we're going to be flying blind if we don't ensure that the nation's environmental satellite system is up to the task of collecting critical climate science data and a cable survey is sounding the alarm that unless we take steps to reverse the current trend or decline we are going to have the satellite system we need in the coming decade and we've got a lot to discuss today national academies this report which provides strategic advice to the government on the scope and goals of future earth observing missions especially those flown by nasa and the law well the great help grafting the first ever such report could not have been easy but i'm certain it's community is stronger and i thank you for and perhaps more cohesive as a result and i hope you will tell your friends and colleagues that we are grateful for their very hard work  governor thank you for taking time from your busy schedule today to describe how remote sensing data and products are used by industry and government i would add parenthetically that in my state of texas and for many residents in the western states monitoring and major draft conditions is rapidly gaining importance in the last congress i was able to work with my friends here in the house draft and pass a bill a stab machine the national integrated drought information system and i'm glad the president agreed to sign it into law but having said that to many in this room weather forecasting products are about all we understand government we look forward to your testimony and those of you who ran your governments about the numerous other applications of remote sensing information beyond articulating the science questions and missions of survey challenges the government to reassess the amount of funding dedicated to earth science it argues government to increase investment in natchez or sciences program by five hundred million a year about a thirty three percent increase over current levels this presents the administration congress with a funding should be increased and i strongly prefer the latter i think that's what we have to do we have to increase the funding put also recommends new missions for a number of that would total five hundred sixty five million over the next ten years effects of changes to irish weather systems and unfortunately in the current budget climate i fear we cannot fully implement the recommendations and then that vein i intend that card questions today about which of the recommendations and missions are most sensenbrenner is objection so ordered we are fortunate to have three distinguished witnesses at today's hearing chairman good morning it's my privilege to introduce to dr richard anthony's today he's the president of the university corporation for atmospheric research otherwise known as you car a nonprofit consortium of sent seventy member universities that in atmospheric and related sciences he's the co chair of the national research councils earth science to cable survey dr auntie's is a highly regarded atmospheric scientist author educator and administrator contributed considerable research to the field he's published over one hundred peer reviewed articles and books and participated on or chaired over four hundred scuse me forty different u s national committees dr anthony is currently president of the american meteorological society has many research contributions involve the particular areas of tropical sigh clones and mesoscale meteorology including the development of the first successful three dimensional model of the tropical sigh clo earth oceans and space at the university of new hampshire welcome our third witness is former wyoming governor dr jim rather jim gehringer governor gehringer has been very active in the last four earth observations and he was the force behind the western governors association called for a national integrated drought information system and welcome each of you and look forward to your testimony you will each be given five minutes for your spoken testimony your written testimony will be included in the record for the hearing with my friend mr obama's indulgence i will say that will try to be liberal with your five minutes because this is very important and we want to hear from you thanks for inviting us to testify here today i'd like this is one of my favorite rooms in the whole world because of that statement where there is no vision the people perish from proverbs twenty nine eighteen i think that is what we need to keep our eye on not the individual observations not the individual dollars that we really do need a vision for science and applications from space and i just love that saying it's perfect perfect lead in our vision from our to cable survey is carried over actually from the from the interim report and i want to read it to you i think it's very important i believe in it deeply understanding the complex changing planet on which we live how it supports life and how human activities affect its ability to do so in the future is one of the greatest intellectual challenges facing humanity it's also one of the most important challenges for society as it seeks to prosperity health and sustainability so this is the do message do a vision of our report understanding the earth is one of the most exciting intellectual challenges we can we can think of is also critically important for applications of neediest and long term benefit to humanity as detailed in our report and further emphasized by the latest issue of the i p c c which came out a couple weeks ago our society is faced with a number of profound scientific challenges including climate change and all of the aspects of the climate change that is occurring at an unprecedented rate and yet at the time when the need has never been greater we're faced with an earth observation program that will dramatically diminish in capability over the next five to ten years as you mentioned already our interim report said that the system of u s environmental satellites was at risk of collapse this judgment was based on the observed precipitous decline in funding and the consequent cancellation disco begin to lay of a number of critical missions and instruments either way i'm going to jack here deviate from my prepared talk a little bit this is not primarily about money and decreasing budgets it's primarily about doing the job that needs to be done for society and the modest investments that are required will pay themselves many times over so please focus on the benefits to society the intellectual challenges and what we're proposing is a balance system rather than the declining budgets so i've been asked you know what will we lose if we don't do what the cato survey mentions and i think my colleague dr moore will give some examples but i mean just give you some examples which are not really in the in the in the survey weather forecasting warnings may start becoming less accurate we've seen a tremendous run up of increased accuracy in weather forecast warnings over the last thirty years primarily because of earth observations from space the hurricane katrina forecast was incredibly accurate saving perhaps one hundred thousand lives one of the few bright spots in that whole tragic episode but we are actually in danger if the observations continue to decrease of losing that that including weather forecasts and warning capability very serious earth is warming because of a small imbalance in radiation between the sun and the earth very small difference between two very large terms what's coming in from the sun huge number what's going back out to space we need to measure that small imbalance very accurately we need to measure what's coming in from the sun and what's going else from the earth so that we know  going to warm up faster whether it's going to slow down it's warming up and finally when we reach a new equilibrium and there's no more change climate models have been pretty steadily over the past years but they're far from perfect they don't do very well on regional scales which is what we're really interested in is the drag dryness in the west going to continue our hurricanes because going to become more frequent are more intense those kinds of things so we need the observations to improve the climate models we can never rely on models without observations sea levels rising in the earth ice around the earth is melting but how fast it's going to accelerate these things going to accelerate or decelerate slow down we've got to measure sea level and the ice around the earth especially in greenland mentioned there's there's controversy about whether the frequency and intensity of tropical storms or hurricanes is going to increase or decrease we simply don't know and without observations we won't be able to resolve that that critical issue and finally earth sciences is built fundamentally on observations not theory and not models and it was impossible for me to sit here and predict what discoveries won't be made in the next twenty years we don't have observations i can't do that but i can surely say that if the as well as restoring some of the capabilities that are lost on imposing goes our recommendations for nasa can be implemented in a cost effective manner i think my colleague dr moore will talk about this we were merely to do the required program and the risk to the people of our country in a world of natural hazards of all kinds they will support more efficient management of natural resources including water energy fisheries ecosystems that support the economy and our lives and so that the cost of this program is repaid many need has never been greater we're faced with an earth observation program that will dramatically diminish in capability over the next five to ten years and we can ask why did this occur simply state budget to call in real terms by a third from the year two thousand to now and as you well know technical and managerial difficulties and post program offset the budget and regardless of where or whether the brain is placed we're still the same situation that's where we are the survey set forth a strategy for a strong balance national program and there are science to reverse t of recommended fifteen new missions to nasa and they seem large numerically but we believe that you focusing on smaller missions and avoiding large multi instrumented platforms robust strategy for the future of our science can be achieved with reasonable investments as we can't is just said the program could be restored if we could just simply get back to the year two thousand less i'd like to call attention to what happened it's in my written testimony to show this up thirty three percent heidi in real terms for two thousand to the present what about the future is the president's f y r weight budget adequate preparing us for the future in short no president's budget provides only a brief or spite to a dramatically diminished and observational system response lasting and until twenty ten dogs allow us to move forward with plans to measure global rainfall the global precipitation mission and general and cover characteristics to the lancet but my twenty twelve the budget  earth science with nearly fifty percent less buying power in comparison the year two thousand and nine able to pursue the critical topics just described by my colleague  and twelve who put us at a twenty year low in real terms for science nice budget also appears to be inadequate to solve the cost of growth within the end posing goes our programs and to mitigate some of the c era and realizing an operation operational active radar based on measurement of sea surface winds can anything be done now about the committee's recommendations for the next decade definitely yes instance the survey presented a set of guidelines for managing the implementation of the new missions that included early investments in technologies this is an opportunity for the new decade starting dow consider investing ten million dollars per year per mission across the first half of the fifteen missions that takes it and invested of seventy million dollars with that investment we could actually begin to implement the  it would also send a message that we're proceeding to develop the needed and recommended earth observing program these events would have brought technological surprises that have plagued other programs and i think that in itself hall noted i believe it's because of the benefits program reliable forecast of infectious diseases the devastation of active falsehood the monitoring of customer movements to improve probability in code designs that earthquake prone regions that are weather forecasts particularly for severe storms climate predictions based on better understanding of carbon source business sinks ocean temperature ice sheet volume changes and as we noted the inputs from the sun and the thermal response of the earth enhance precipitation and drought forecasts to improve water quality management and water resource and protect the elderly and other populations at risk thank you very much that i'll be happy to answer any further questions i served as governor of wyoming also represent the alliance for earth observations which is a group of people who are interested in and observation system of a totally integrated type that includes academia non profits non governmental as well as  industrial members my past includes time as a egg producer farmer and used earth observation information for several years and also work on the unmanned space program launching among other things the global positioning satellite system that we knew as navistar at the time i deeply appreciate what doctors more answers have put together through their committee i serve on the mapping science committee also under the national research council not associated with their activity but  very well understand the quality and rest the reports that this don't just happen it takes a lot of effort my role here i believe is to speak from the practical point of view those who have to do something with the information for all the college degrees that there might be the best there is a master's in a ph d s i think mine is more relevant as the bt the been their degree as a former governor ag reduce or my staff used to say it doesn't take a rocket scientist to be governor but it helps one example i would give us what congressman paul really brought up the national integrated drought information system my part of the rocky mountain west is still suffering from a significant drought i know that we would certainly like to balance out what new york is getting right now god can last longer next in across larger areas and hurricanes tornadoes floods earthquakes that causes hundreds of millions of dollars in losses and it certainly has our hopes and dreams and when the thousand western governors got together and said we would like to support the use of satellite another observation information to lessen droughts impact on our region we requested the night a system as it is called because rather than spending billions of dollars federal dollars in particular on drought assistance after the fact we would rather spend more on avoidance before the fact the strongest case for night is in extending on to the broader earth observation activities is to enable risk management by individuals to make better job judgment and policy decisions by business by government and shifting from my practice a reaction in restitution to one of prediction and mitigation but the cable survey goes far beyond just climate change it highlights many other earth science areas of practical benefit looking at what's happening with increased populations located in high risk zones such as earthquake faults or near sea coast the shortage of clean and accessible fresh water a shortage of water as a disaster better just as aster management so all of those are even beyond the climate change issues that are already been raised there's also a concern and i would bring to you that the lack of access to and the relevance of remotely sense data frustrates a lot of users we need to devote more time asking the users what they need and help them find it many times it's available they just don't know it's there we need to streamline the process for accessing remotely sense data by the public policy makers educational communities as well as industry in terms of three broad areas a recommendation i would bring to you based on the cable survey number one unable to best possible personal and policy decisions the best information for all kinds of people providing our citizens with information technology and tools to monitor and respond in their own way to our changing world protecting their lives livelihood and property remember to provide an integrated earth observation system otherwise known as  assure the u s competitiveness our american competitiveness is slipping without the projects in the missions described by the two cochairmen here number three designate clear leadership responsibilities to resolve the issues and attain the goals identified in the decadal study our united states private sector capabilities lead all other nations today with activities such as google earth microsoft yahoo our own product in the us are i providing online mapping sites using remotely synced imagery that the public now takes for granted other private sector companies such as geo eye and digital globe well known in colorado provide high resolution imagery for tourism real estate insurance companies to use development decisions there are so many sources that are brought to bear in addition to satellite imagery to mitigate respond to catastrophic events i was also asked to specifically address how earth observations are used in the agricultural sector first let me address how they are not current earth observations are highly fragmented with different systems that were set at different times by different organizations by different congresses for different reasons and few if any of them are cross correlated coherent integrated system to deliver each of the products so that we can tell their relationships and their interrelationships satellite remote sensing indeed though is broadly used in sustainable agriculture forestry responsible natural natural resource stewar both in the public and the private domain monitoring foreign and domestic yearly yields on harvested food and fiber to predict where the balance isn't in balance as might occur measuring soil erosion from when the water evaluating the impact of climate change detecting the presence of invasive species plants animals insects and diseases that affect a wide range of agriculture detecting and measuring contamination of soil water and air resources looking at landscape health measuring resources involved with the development of biofuels and certainly with the shift from food production to biofuels being able to monitor that so i'm only since observation supports entire agriculture values training for monitoring detecting change identifying solutions taking action and then finding out in return what the result of those actions were there are many uses of agriculture in such as hyperspectral imagery it's by individual farmers arrangers all the way up to what you're doing on this committee mr chairman and members the committee whatever the user is they want objective timely and accurate information and timeliness is by far the most important because a value of information is the highest when uncertainty is highest and it certainly  uncertain is certainly common in agriculture one of the statements in the report says that satellites and i quote satellite observations have spatial and temporal resolution limitations and hence alone do not provide a picture of earth system that sufficient for understanding all of the key physical chemical and biological processes in quote what we need is a system of space ground airborne and ocean based sensors both public and private that can gather complimentary information and can be integrated with a addition we need a national network of web based information integration of our collective efforts and i had proposed in the appendix attached to my written remarks how we could integrate that through a spatial enabled information system so to sum up we can build on that the cable study results by ensuring that the u s has long term earth observation capability and then it's maintain certainly what we heard this morning is we're not even maintaining addressing the void in leadership and how the vision can pull it all together addressing a single point of contact or program office with an office of science and technology policy improving our research the operations efforts across all agencies establishing a common integrated information infrastructure readily available through web quarterly portals to the public and policy makers alike implement the u s integrated earth observation system u s which is part of the global earth observation system of systems or g i s and then begin a dialogue with the private sector industry academia non governmental organizations to assure that all observation assets respond to the needs of all of our various sectors as well as to consume new technology solutions a high level commission includes the private sector non governmental and governmental representatives particularly state and local printer examine develop an integrated plan demonstrates that really the systems have been hit with a double whammy one is the reduction in funding and secondly just the ineptitude it is you know the waste of money there is so disheartening that is a major priority for this committee under chairman boehner he did his best to to try to get a handle on that and i don't think that we've got good information he i think he would concur with that i have talked both with the secretary of commerce as well as the president c e o boeing they tell me they're on top of this now and it's going to be a party so i hope we're going to see the ball back into line but let me  what i'd like to ask you about is you mentioned there were seventeen replacement missions although none of those are in the budget for two thousand and eight and it's if history is  lesson to us it is certainly i think we can we can assume that all seventeen won't be in the future in very possibly none so can you tell me can you break that down in terms of what we're going to lose in terms of just status quo if we don't have these seventeen missions versus what we're going to lose in terms of keeping up with the state of the art  adequately with the sunlight dependent nation so we have to have a follow on that uses lasers that's not in the budget issue of hyperspectral for instance inter meeting disease outbreaks this is something we've tried to and so as a percent of g d p as a percent of the nasa budget as a percent of household income that would be lower in the future that it was the year two thousand and the year nine hundred ninety six at that time this country not that these measurements were important had we just gone down the slide and i think that struck me that yes we could achieve this robust program if we could just simply get the budget restored back to what was the year two thousand thank you chairman yes there are several features of this proposal in particular the the ones that call for innovation and creative approaches and i think form a planning and a program office such as through the o s t p to pull everything together to consolidate a vision into revenue and in a practical way put a process together to work and be administered to phase it and make it work and governor as a republican western governor who as you say seen this  firsthand could you again tell us what you think if you know we've all seen the ad about pay me now pay me later i mean in terms of  money public and private dollars in terms of suffering folks just at least in wyoming in the west what is your opinion of what kind of price we're going to pay for we don't do this for the price you pay is it's tough to quantify but in terms of just what we nabl other people to do i guess my my focus would be on not the dollars are spent but the frustration of individuals who know what they could do if they had the tools and the information to make decisions to manage the risk to make their own business work we have five children ten grandchildren they're all interested in what they might do and instead of expecting a job we would like them to go out and make a job well how do you make a job if you don't have the information required to play in your industry to manage the that the decay of surveys you know recommends an increase of five hundred million per year nasa has earth science budget to implement the surveys recommendations but we're told and what we hear and what we raid and what seems to be every most everyone's understanding is that we're not lack plea to see that large an increase in that says budget in time in the near future given the limited funding situation which of the missions recommended by the decay to say made you believe are the most important for the federal government to implement german congressman hall the i don't know that i would pick out any one but i would pick out an approach i guess is the best way to put it the recommendation in this is not a mission in particular but it's a recommendation really where o s t p both together everything i think is one of the lowest cost and probably a very significant cost avoidance recommendation so we can put together a plan to achieve in sustain i think the first concentration needs to be done to sustain what we expect to be out there look at the predictive capabilities particularly storm here in d there that can be used with sub orbital sensors to detect changes in the atmosphere a major density relatively low cost mission that could be accomplished with existing satellites complemented with a marginal increase in funding i particularly like one of the commendations says that the three agencies principal agencies nasa know and u s g s should pursue innovative approaches i think we need to cut them loose let them pursue some innovative approaches that's one of the things that has always been a fitted our economy and our competitiveness let's not be so rigid let's give them the tools military and the funding to make it work in creative ways i'll ask one other question of dr doctor and you made statement that i agree with you said we want to get back to where we were and we're in the second month of that this year i want to get back to where we were prior let me ask you this explain to us with some kind of concrete example how the missions recommend in the decadal survey it's going to improve weather forecast and are we talking about more observations and just on the record that question i think this gives me an opportunity to talk about what we need is a system of observations it's not we don't have a silver bullet out there to improve weather forecasting it's very much like that when you go to the doctor for a checkup you don't just ask he doesn't just ask you she ask you have like you weigh or how tall you are or what your blood pressure is or what your cholesterol level is or how fast you can do a treadmill not what your heart condition is a good lung condition is you need to know all of these things about the body so you need many different kinds of observations if number one you're going to understand the health of the body and number two if you're going to make any kind of projections about what your prognosis is for the future so weather forecasting is kind of like that we don't need just temperatures in the atmosphere or just ocean temperatures are just wins or just cloud cover we need it all because they all contribute independent information so what we're suggesting is this balance set  recommendations which includes winds temperature water vapor ocean temperature these are going to improve all aspects of weather forecasting from the two week forecasts by the way i did a hearing at the senate just just a week ago i got back to the hotel i looked at the long range forecast and i said to my colleagues here tuesday is going to be a big storm event in the east watch out that's seven days in advance that's not bad we stand to lose that but that was unusually good we need to get every hurricane forecast hitting heading for the gulf coast east coast that accuracy so it's not just a negative thing about forecasts getting worse if we don't get more if we lose on divisions there's a positive benefit here of getting a balanced set of observations and improving our forecast of tornadoes hurricanes are extending the warnings of severe events and right into the inner seasonal variability of climates  of tests that all of us can understand any of them individually would not gather how long would it take until the nice average citizen would see these improvements and daily operational weather forecast and in fact you see as your main thrust expectation grows as the actor he gets better so what we take for granted now is a three is a good three day forecast we're now expecting that at six days or seven days and so the expectations rises the accuracy by just however people to really look at this and depend on it for an economic living no they keep track of the scores accuracy increases and so because they're making decisions based on probabilities and so the people who really needed to make quantitative decisions are doing this right now for you and me the public it'll be so gradual that you know you'll wake up ten years now and we'll have a good two week forecast instead of good week for gas but it's gradual for the public it's very valuable and well monitored for the decision maker i thank all three recommendations that over one hundred proposed missions and you all distilled it down to seventeen with the idea that they're there integrated and i'm sure there were some tough tradeoffs there but i think it's important th committee understand that the general public that this is not just a wish list this is a very focused effort to identify where we have the maximum return on our investment if i could in that spirit i want to talk about the opportunity cost explorer that if we do not maintain a robust earth observing system as i understand it we need continuity in earth observing data over long time periods to improve a smaller scale regional climate projection models and it seems to me that we're going to need better regional information that would allow us to be better prepared for changes in climate that are likely to occur even if we stabilise greenhouse gas emissions and then also if we can i should say if i want to say when we adopt measures to limit greenhouse gases we'll need to verify that the measures we adopt are in fact resulting in reduced emissions and lower concentrations of greenhouse gases so what really would the earth observing system you're proposing play in fulfilling those needs and is it going to be more difficult or take longer to accomplish these two things without an earth observing system and we start doctoring at these in the dock and where you could follow on program we are proposing is an integrated set of observations and we think we need them all for exactly the reasons that you you iterated not to let me just  points first of all as you know stabilization of great house gas emissions is going to be a very real challenge but a challenge we must meet stabilization of the missions does not lead to a stable concentration in the atmosphere stabilization of emissions is a step towards stabilizing the concentration the atmosphere but stable missions would lead to a constant growth of c o two for instance in the atmosphere so that means that we have to face this question of climate change head on one of the missions that we recommend for the early time phrase focuses on soil moisture perhaps one of the key ingredients in climate models as well as in terms of what's really important to people who live in areas based thought agriculture but also means if you live in an area that is a floodplain think that's a key issue and the third is that the kind of missions that we recommended for instance on c o two i probably look for sources and sinks of carbon dioxide any kind of management system of great house gases is going to require to them changes in natural systems due to climate change and the river of ice sheets and the sea level rise and therefore other identified challenges can we address those challenges if we don't don't mean tienen earth observing system and maybe you could provide an example or two it would illustrate to our ability to respond to these challenges will be limited by the lack of information from earth observing systems if we don't have those up in place well there's precise measurements of the earth's gravity field we could tell that the agreement was losing mass at a far faster rate than the models of ice melt would indicate what apparently is happening and i'm not a glaci than we were predicting a few even a few years ago so if we suddenly stop measuring the earth's gravity or suddenly stop measuring how fast the ice is melting we don't know whether that's an anomaly you know that happened to  the anomalies over the last couple of years of a rapid ice melt and is going to go back to a slow melt are going to continue to accelerate and so what we might be thinking is one hundred year problem might suddenly become a twenty five year problem we don't know but these are the kinds of questions and  that we really need to stay on top of because we're going to have surprises like a doctor in the general times but let's recognize for five minutes thank you very much as you in quality data for making decisions as to how we need to move in the future relative to to this ethanol thing if we don't have the additional programs that you all are encouraging essentially addresses i've mentioned in my testimony the precipitation mission and the land set up lads satellites this will be fundamental for monitoring agricultural regions absolutely fundamental you need a high resolution if you're determined what type of crop unscrewing and so this whole issue of biofuels will be very dependent upon the land census so that i think that necessarily a good job getting it back on track public policy people are going to be caught in the horns of a dilemma clearly greenhouse gases are implicated in the increased temperature and that's the big environmental concern  all of life on earth is dependent on about the upper denture is the topsoil if you can't grow food you're not here and as we take this land out of reserve and put it in production we're going to be losing more greater of those two evils and my concern is that we will need more not less information for making those decisions and i just like to get on the record my concern in terms of a great many people that go to environmental concerns here that are kind of intention and you know which way are we going to go and i think that will be likely depends on the quality of the information we get and so on very real sense this is more than just a an academic exercise it will affect each one of us not only by the call of the air we breathe but potentially by the a volume of crops that we're able to grow having been in politics for a number of years i'm struck by how in the absence of information we make decisions anyway anecdotes serve us well don't say it's easy to make a judgment based on an anecdote from a story back home absent any other information so let me turn it around and see if we we had better information such as what lance sent five lancet seven started but are not going to continue and certainly the gran  in the detail that we need today just to make individual decisions in agricultural production for individuals and then to take that beyond and say what has been the impact of increasing or other renewable fuel production as an offset to say food supply or the loss and erosion of topsoil what are the practices that that happen how do we know that they're happening other than anecdote if we don't have a broader view that only satellite imagery can provide as well as ground  am on a leave of absence from my medical school which has now gone on for approximately well we're approaching the end of the third decade course that was after getting a lot of great and i'm told i'm sure that if i just said good my diet mistake could let me back in because the admissions committee there never makes mistakes but this is a question curiosity if you gentlemen if meteorologist friend of mine said years ago that at five days the forecast is random you might as well just throw it against the wall that was a few years ago at what point does your forecast or any meteorologist forecasts just kind of go random these days and then i'm just kind of curious that's an excellent question years ago there is some theory done on nonlinear systems which accurate ever beyond more than a couple of weeks right now or have pretty good scale out to seven to ten days seven to ten days ok my blackberry gives me six days so it's more than that margin yeah  serious question the chairman referred earlier to the end post program and my understanding is that because of the cost issues cost overruns that various instruments have been sort of thrown off the bus and they they tend to be the climate instruments and dr moore you mentioned earlier that sort of sort of race your is a very very important  factor to track for climate change purposes and that also is the case the head of military is very interested in store for for other reasons  instruments which were tossed off the end post for budgetary reasons and i just want i'm just asking you all if you are familiar enough with that if you could identify the order in which you would bring the castoff instruments back if you're not familiar with the hardware and at least the data streams that you would like to see the cavalry coming the the data that you would like to see from logical satellites right now given the fact that that was big the scoped we called for the preservation of sea surface temperatures and winds and then we offset the loss of the soil moisture by recommending a nasa mission for sort of moisture and i must say that that there are a lot of very important measurements for instance climate measurements were lost on n toes and i think that perhaps the best strategy is the program or we're recommending to ask if you're pushing whether nasa is that realistic given the budget crunch over on that side of the house if you will necessary to actually come up with something that does not totally depend what i considered to be a trending issue of the day which is climate change  overall you've made your arguments that including climate changes as a reason but you want lined you're you know you're you're basically the benefits that will derive even if even if we don't have a global warming scenario you've outlined the need for the type of observation that you're advocating and let me also note and it's unfortunate that we lost i guess was a three billion dollar overrun for and some of this talking about it's three billion dollars let me know mr chairman what could we do with three billion dollars we could implement everything  being fed the day the request basically did is let's make up for the failure of enviros that's basically what we're saying is that's a six year where they're asking for five hundred million dollars a year with his back and schedule and three billion dollars in just the overrun cost let me add there are some questions as to reason why and pose failed and some of the reasons i know people are going to want to hear this but some of the reasons are additions to and post things that were added on then votes that were designed to true climate change which helped the failure of input so there is a cost when people go after things that maybe trying to stampede the public into spending more money for climate change that ends up a dramatic cost to other aspects of what we'd like to achieve i  especially interested in the fact that this does measure sun and so we're activities which i believe are the basis for a lot of the rather than human activity and carbon put  earth let me ask this about you know we again you've given me a lot of information and by the way i just get and i thank you for that because i was listening intently and i talking we're not you're not talking about contributing just knowledge you're talking about contributing something you can change people's way of life for the better and again i think you made your arguments today  and and i must say because of the observational record being particularly bad before the advent of satellites in the seventy's we have maybe seventy years eighty years ninety years of an incomplete  observations from space so that we know whether trends of of intensity is increasing or not because i don't think the evidence is conclusive yet i will i will not say i sat through hurricanes when i was younger when i lived in north carolina when i was in like why is it would why do you see the necessary to have a satellite system that gives an overall view for example agricultural production don't we have enough computerization and records being kept  throughout the states and by the federal government based on just the number of farmers and the type of product efforts that we make don't we not accurate enough to see how many acres of corn  jermyn congressman rohrbacher the we do accumulate a lot of information in one of the points i made is that we don't know how to discover and serve that information in a useful way so that's part of the answer the other part of it is we don't know the extent and i'll give you a different example it's not even in our country there is a consortium of countries that have put together a satellite constellation called the disaster monitoring constellation it's the united kingdom algeria china nigeria i l g area and nigeria and turkey now they launch these constellation of low cost satellites to monitor for disaster prediction and mitigation but what they've done is they've started monitoring opium production  afghanistan and they don't have quite the statistical reporting system that we have in the united states on opium production but they have shown that in one year from two thousand and five to two thousand  that the opium cultivation grew by about sixty percent in afghanistan that affects us it doesn't affect agriculture affects everybody now how do we truth what is reported on the ground through statistical reporting services the soil condition erosion the loss of forces things like that how do we treat that up with what's recorded on the ground with what the satellites look at the most satellite is one of the key satellites that we use for that kind of information in addition the land set so there's again i think you've made your case and i appreciate good suggestions by the way as well not just making the case for the expenditure but suggestions on how we can manage the system and do a better job and be more effective for what we do s both ways so it's not just to prove that it could be also to disprove it the gentle lady from texas ms johnson thank you very much and thanks to the goodness is for being here it's been interesting i guess i a twenty year cycle and you miss seven years of that cycle you're not going to be able to tell what that cycle really is if you're missing seven years out or twenty so so so that's one reason another reason is a gap at the end of a record in other words stopping a measurement is the worst gap of all because you don't know whether the last little uptick the last little downturn is continuing for the you know into the future or not you look at any recognised he just kind of thing if you stop at this point when you're going down and the gap starts you don't know what it turns around and starts coming up again or continue to go down the gaps are very important problem in terms of understanding cycles and trends of whatever it is sea levels temperature water vapor precipitation drought frequency whatever when you have great reductions in the i think one of the challenges and i believe the governor noted this also is the question of sustainability of the observational system and that actually carries with it some  require us instruments don't last forever and that's why we have gaps one of the problems is that if you're measuring something right temperature and it's increasing slowly maybe the do it shows temperature increasing even more rapidly is that because it's a new instrument or is that because of what temperatures to be so the issue of sustainability is a is right at the core of what we much of the reason and start to correct that where do we go from here i went over and looked at the results of the tsunami and as we returned to the ladies room comes next i mean we can observe and we can predict and i know that we lot we have saved a lot of lives by predicting but we haven't done very well with property and i don't know what we concentrate on making sure that lead is a strong lead that we concentrate on changing something in the environment where we can to grow it some of the destruction if we  if we had an idea of what we need to do i can answer that a little different way i was visiting with the executive of king county washington about a week ago and he's he's taking an approach that if something does happen based on climate change and causes the sea level to rise  what could be causing that it could be the greenhouse gases so they're taking an approach from two different angles one is to reduce the amount of carbon that they use in king county which includes a significant part of seattle redmon you know those were some of those companies are that we hear about reduce the amount of carbon at the same time based on the prediction of sea level rise by two thousand and fifty raise our levees to where the wind will be no flooding you know with the carbon that they have offsets that becomes a revenue raiser for king county they can sell and trade carbon credits so they're doing two things one is are decreasing the total amount of greenhouse gas and just repeating that they're still going to be a rise in sea level and over time of course and the idea is that  strategy on air emissions we had grossly underestimated evaporative emissions and we couldn't figure out what where all it was coming from until we figured out it wasn't come out tailpipe my interest here is what you're proposing has given us the tools to be able to  develop and execute good policy and govern and i think you're pointing out the remote sensing gives us the ability to monitor where we may not have records in a good example is is that the third row so many people say the third world is not a major factor here it's because we don't have any air indexing and the third world and remote sensing may be the only way for us to detect what's going on there  totally ignore it but i think that we've got to remember that when roger revelle talked about global warming twenty years ago some people want to ignore him to those are does the remote sensing that we're proposing here give us ability to at least monitor maybe the effects of global dimming and how particulate suspended particulates may be affecting or moderating the the climate change at this time yes it does congressman it directly addresses the question and you're absolutely correct in noting that the question of global dimming is fundamental to climate change it's also fundamental to public  e which i think would address some of the questions that major urban cities are going to have as to how much of the pollution is local and how much it is transcontinental ok and that's essential that i appreciate just bringing that you  know point that out because one of the problems i've had with federal policies on a lot of these issues was like the ocean and mandate they thought it was good within twenty four months california knew that the federal option than date was an environmental negative not a positive and hopefully i think it's essential mr chairman that this issue will affect the total strategy i think a lot of people are saying just do something about global warming well we could be doing exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time if we don't get the right facts and fact right now in california we're moving strategies ahead that assumes that the dirtiest technology should be the first three are limited but that may be the worst thing we do so hopefully you will be able to give us the information so that we not only i well intentioned but we're smart and the way we apply that's and that's what scares me to death is this rush to do anything could end up creating more problems than an informed santas let me say i've we shouldn't you're talking about the tropical storm issue because like my scientists at scripps say it's interesting that last year global warming caused all of the big hurricanes but this year nobody talked about  must be global cooling because we didn't have any and i appreciate the fact you keep things on a balance scale here because it hurts the credibility of scientists when politicians start throwing around your data without having the facts  but i have a question for you i come from the state of california hurricanes and tropical storms have been historically been a problem for us because of the cold water magma change in the future but you brought up the issue of being able to attack earthquakes and other related sized mattick activity that normally isn't and remote sensing isn't a big deal out except maybe observation how do you propose to use remote sensing to predict there and of course also then monitor he's when they actually occur because of the change of the ocean level dr we're going to have a vote pretty soon so if you don't mind we're going to i think we should move on you know i just don't know how you going to this area i think it's a very important area i was intrigued by dr anthony comments that some of the work some of the missions will be to to identify the small difference between radiation pointed questions about what do you know how exactly how much of the carbon dioxide in your its atmosphere was created by human activity and i know that's a very complicated question and the balance  issue between science and politics is a tricky issue and it's our responsibility to sort of a responsible pathway between those and i think this is exactly one way that we can move forward to answering those kinds of very difficult and detailed questions so one of the things i want to know is a sunni opportunity in private and international partnerships to help us move forward  rock earthquakes that's another great example of where we could collaborate internationally european colleagues have a great advances with synthetic aperture radar and so this would be another because these are g common i would make is if we don't keep up if we lose our edge and competitiveness we lose two things with international cooperation such as to the global earth observation system of systems we develop relationships so we can understand and trust what we're getting back otherwise we could be excluded and the competition and leads the way who do you rely on to obtain information we have no capacity to produce so we need that kind of participatory opportunity as seriously i can't believe this physicist just made this comment i read a concerned about and he talked about that in response to some other questions i'm very worried  about the removal of some of the climate centers and clearly we are not going to be not going to have an optimized system they're being removed simply because the cost of the project got too great and we had to cut somewhere and we've talked to better dr murray in fact just mention in the last question the international work what efforts are being made or what do you think should be made to try to get more international ensure gresley pursue the possibility of getting assistance cooperation and money from other nations and would we be likely to succeed in that effort we should any comment you have probably i could argue i'm making better use of the observations that we take and we're making them ourselves and this gets to the governor's comments about it's more than just observations it's how you use the observations international cooperation a two edged sword it can save money and distribute resources more equitably and cooperation sharing all that but there are other issues that make these international programs hard to manage about transferring technology to foreign countries so yes i agree we should pursue it aggressively probably it's not a substitute for having our own robust program but we should try to leverage the international partners wherever we can study consider these issues did you come up with any particular recommendations on international cooperation and how we should proceed with he said basically what you just said that we should  try every single opportunity we can try to reduce the deuces overall cost but i think he's going to national partners and we didn't go any further than that we didn't say mission number thirteen should be an international one but all of them should be considered and if the i like that it's not a matter who is willing to share it's a matter of whether you physically can't or the technology isn't there to extract or transform the where you can use the data so that the minimum we can do is establish standards and protocols and that's where the  observation system was intended to head with the international cooperation just having the data in the point where you can use it is a simple step the other problem is getting all the data done and lies quickly and properly that's observation satellite programs once the envy of the world are in disarray i have a more general question what impact does this have you seen as having impact on american competitiveness do you think it has resources water resources supporting agriculture so there's an efficiency issue here that we can become as a nation more efficiently if we have the better weather forecast seasonal outlooks we know how to buy  energy stored for the for the cold spells coming up and so i think you can make a very good case that these observations of the environment do that in a positive way the u s economy world approach and let me please encourage you to continue to be active in these issues i understand that everyone who has wanted to have questions has done so mr hall once again another good hearing