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S. HRG. 114–561 

IMPROVEMENTS IN HURRICANE FORECASTING 

AND THE PATH FORWARD 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OCEANS, ATMOSPHERE, 

FISHERIES, AND COAST GUARD 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, 

SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

MAY 25, 2016 

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

( 

(II) 

SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JOHN THUNE, South Dakota, Chairman 

ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi 

ROY BLUNT, Missouri 

MARCO RUBIO, Florida 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

TED CRUZ, Texas 

DEB FISCHER, Nebraska 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

DEAN HELLER, Nevada 

CORY GARDNER, Colorado 

STEVE DAINES, Montana 

BILL NELSON, Florida, Ranking 

MARIA CANTWELL, Washington 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota 

RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut 

BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii 

EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts 

CORY BOOKER, New Jersey 

TOM UDALL, New Mexico 

JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia 

GARY PETERS, Michigan 

NICK ROSSI, Staff Director 

ADRIAN ARNAKIS Deputy Staff Director 

REBECCA SEIDEL, General Counsel 

JASON VAN BEEK, Deputy General Counsel 

KIM LIPSKY, Democratic Staff Director 

CHRIS DAY, Democratic Deputy Staff Director 

CLINT ODOM, Democratic General Counsel and Policy Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OCEANS, ATMOSPHERE, FISHERIES, 

AND COAST GUARD 

MARCO RUBIO, Florida, Chairman 

ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

TED CRUZ, Texas 

DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

CORY BOOKER, New Jersey, Ranking 

MARIA CANTWELL, Washington 

RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut 

EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts 

BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii 

GARY PETERS, Michigan 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on May 25, 2016 ............................................................................... 1 

Statement of Senator Rubio .................................................................................... 1 

Statement of Senator Booker .................................................................................. 3 

Statement of Senator Nelson .................................................................................. 5 

Statement of Senator Schatz .................................................................................. 20 

Statement of Senator Blumenthal .......................................................................... 21 

Statement of Senator Markey ................................................................................. 27 

WITNESSES

Dr. Richard Knabb, Director, National Hurricane Center, National Weather 

Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce ............................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 9 

APPENDIX

Response to written question submitted to Dr. Richard Knabb by: 

Hon. John Thune .............................................................................................. 31 

Hon. Marco Rubio ............................................................................................. 31 

(1) 

IMPROVEMENTS IN HURRICANE 

FORECASTING AND THE PATH FORWARD 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 2016 

U.S. SENATE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OCEANS, ATMOSPHERE, FISHERIES, 

AND COAST GUARD, 

COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:20 p.m. in room 

SR–253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Marco Rubio, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Rubio [presiding], Ayotte, Booker, Nelson, 

Blumenthal, Schatz, and Markey. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARCO RUBIO, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA 

Senator RUBIO. We’ll call this hearing to order. 

I want to thank all of you for being here. I apologize for the 

delay. We had another meeting that ran over a few minutes. 

I wanted to convene this hearing one week before the official 

start of the 2016 hurricane season. As the hearing title suggests, 

we will be focusing on improvements in forecasting, and we will 

discuss how track and intensity forecasts can be further enhanced. 

Ninety years ago, Florida was hit by a Category 4 storm that was 

later named the Great Miami Hurricane, but it not only devastated 

Miami but crossed the Gulf of Mexico, inflicting damage to Pensacola Bay. This was a time of little meteorological data or capabilities, and, thus, alerts to Floridians came too late. 

The National Hurricane Center reports that Coconut Grove experienced a 15-foot storm surge, and people mistakenly left their 

homes as the storm’s calm eye centered overhead. It is unclear how 

many people perished, as the Red Cross estimates 373 souls lost 

their lives, but the count cannot be certain as more than 800 people were missing. 

Although my home state of Florida has not seen a hurricane 

make landfall in almost 11 years, we must never sit idle and succumb to hurricane amnesia. 

Innovation is the key to ensuring lives and property are spared 

by accurate forecasting. This hurricane season, there are two new 

tools that will be at the disposal of our researchers and forecasters. 

The first is called the Coyote. It is a small unmanned aerial system deployed directly from the P–3 hurricane hunters. This drone 

is able to fly into weather conditions that are otherwise impossible 

2 

for manned aircraft, while capturing atmospheric observations and 

relaying that data in real time to the Hurricane Center. 

While this technology has been in testing since 2014, I hope it 

will be fully utilized in upcoming storms. 

The second involves tools for storm surge, which is critically important as water is responsible for 90 percent of the deaths associated with storms. The storm surge watch and warning graphic, 

while still in the experimental phase, will provide watches and 

warnings to coastal residents similar to those issued for tropical 

storms or hurricanes, but will focus solely on the risks associated 

with high water. In response to these risks, it will issue guidance 

for evacuations in the areas impacted. 

The potential storm surge flooding map, which began testing during 2014, will finally become operational this season. This map will 

highlight areas where storm surge could inundate areas and estimate the height at which waters could reach. 

One only needs to look at Hurricane Katrina to realize how devastating storm surge can be. Not heeding storm surge warnings 

could be the difference between life and death. 

I applaud the National Hurricane Center for its work on this 

new tool, and I stress the importance of educating people on the 

dangers of storm surge. The need for timely and accurate forecasts 

cannot be overstated. Indeed, advancements in forecasting have 

made great strides as technology and research have intersected. 

As our witness notes in his written testimony, the National Hurricane Center’s five-day track forecast is about as accurate as the 

three-day forecast was just 20 years ago. 

This improvement in modeling not only allows more notice for 

evacuations, which will help especially in the Florida Keys, but appropriately provides for proper planning and damage mitigation to 

be conducted prior to a storm. 

Also, increased confidence in the center’s track and intensity 

forecasts will lead to the public’s trust in heeding those warnings. 

Last year, along with my colleague Senator Nelson, I introduced 

the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Act. This bill would require 

NOAA to improve guidance for hurricane track, intensity, and 

storm surge forecasts. It is modeled after NOAA’s Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project, which has laid the groundwork for coordinating and improving research. 

This program has a worthy goal of reducing errors in storm 

tracking. And with continued research, it is my hope a reduction 

in the loss of life, injury, and economic harm will result. 

Now is the time to continue the momentum for research and 

technology to drive our forecasters to better track storms, not cut 

millions of dollars from the project, as the administration’s Fiscal 

Year 2017 budget suggests. 

I had hoped my legislation, which was adopted in Chairman 

Thune’s larger weather bill, would have made it to the President’s 

desk by now. But, unfortunately, it has been tied up due to unrelated issues. 

Nonetheless, I will continue to push for its passage and support 

the center’s work for better forecasting. 

I must note that Senator Nelson has been a good partner in 

these efforts. I know he will be here in a few moments to speak 

3 

to us as well, and I look forward to continuing that partnership so 

that this does, indeed, get signed into law. 

In closing, Floridians will always remember the year 1992 as the 

year Hurricane Andrew changed the landscape of our state forever. 

Known as the third largest hurricane to hit the United States, Andrew produced a 17-foot storm surge, was responsible for 23 

deaths, and caused $26.5 billion in damage. For the terrible destruction the storm inflicted on Florida, it also shed light on the 

need to be prepared. 

Last week, our Nation recognized Hurricane Preparedness Week. 

Our witness, Dr. Knabb, took part in many activities throughout 

the gulf coast to increase awareness. Education coupled with strong 

support from State and local partnerships is the key to ensuring 

families and have a hurricane plan in place. 

At the end of the day, the most important function of storm forecasting is, indeed, to protect the lives of those we love. 

Floridians are incredibly resilient, but as we enter this year’s 

hurricane season, which I hope will not be active, I urge everyone 

to assess the risk and develop a plan and be prepared. 

On a side note, two weeks ago, I visited the National Hurricane 

Center in Miami, and I saw firsthand the good work that is being 

done on this front. 

Again, I thank Dr. Knabb for appearing before us today. 

Now I recognize Ranking Member Booker for his opening statement. 

STATEMENT OF HON. CORY BOOKER, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY 

Senator BOOKER. I want to thank Chairman Rubio for having 

this very important hearing. It is an honor to sit between two Florida Senators. It is also very appropriate, given how many people 

from New Jersey are retiring in Florida. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator BOOKER. This really reflects the demographics of his 

state. 

This is a very important hearing, but it is also a very timely 

hearing, as the National Hurricane Center prepares for the upcoming hurricane season, which starts just next week. 

I would like to thank our witness, Dr. Richard Knabb, the Director of the National Hurricane Center. I really thank him for his 

testimony and his dedicated service to our Nation. 

On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall in southern 

New Jersey. It, too, as was discussed earlier by the Chairman 

about Andrew, changed our state forever. 

By the time it had dissipated, it had claimed 159 lives and left 

more than $70 billion in damage along its path. Sandy affected the 

entire eastern seaboard from Florida to Maine with its gale force 

wind gusts as far west as the western Great Lakes. 

Hurricanes wreak havoc, bring devastation, and bring pain and 

agony to families. They also bring devastation and pain to our 

economy. 

There are 30 coastal states that border the Atlantic, the Pacific, 

the Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes. Nearly 40 percent of 

4 

Americans live and work in coastal regions, contributing to over 

half of our Nation’s economic productivity. 

Rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures are causing more extreme weather events. Scientists are telling us that we can expect 

the frequency of the most intense storms to increase substantially 

in some areas, including the Atlantic basin. 

Manmade climate change, I believe, is real. Manmade impacts on 

our climate system are real. 

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 

manmade global warming by the end of the 21st century will cause 

hurricanes globally to be more intense, on average of up to 11 percent stronger. Those sound like abstract percentages, but that 

equates to significantly more damage to our communities. 

Just last year, we had a record-setting storm with Hurricane Patricia. It reached sustained winds of 215 miles per hour, the strongest recorded hurricane in history. 

Accurate hurricane prediction is absolutely vital for all levels of 

government when we are making emergency management decisions 

and keeping the public out of harm’s way. Those at the National 

Hurricane Center, under the leadership of Dr. Knabb, are making 

exceptional progress in their efforts to increase observation and develop products that improve the forecasting accuracy. 

This coming hurricane season, NOAA will deploy up to eight 

Coyote unmanned aircraft, which will fly above and through future 

hurricanes to better measure critical data within storms. In addition, the center’s new potential storm surge flooding map will become fully operational this hurricane season and will provide critical evacuation and emergency management information, potentially saving many lives. 

In New Jersey, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab (GFDL) is 

conducting research on the gaps in data linking extreme weather 

events and climate change. Scientists at the GFDL use high-performance computing to develop models and simulations to improve 

understanding and prediction of the behavior of the atmosphere, 

the oceans, and climate. 

This research can be used to understand the causes of unusual 

and destructive events such as Sandy and Andrew, and lead to improved hurricane predictions. 

We must do more. We must do more to connect our global climate models with our regional hurricane models. What is ultimately needed is a unified prediction system that pushes the 

boundaries of forecasting from hours to years so that we can save 

more lives. 

We cannot prevent future hurricanes from happening, but we can 

certainly prevent future lives from being lost. It is imperative that 

we increase our funding for R&D in this area. 

Again, I want to thank the Chairman for his leadership on this 

issue and for holding this hearing. I look forward to hearing from 

our witnesses. Now, I imagine I would like to hear from the other 

Senator from Florida. 

Senator RUBIO. The senior Senator from Florida and the Ranking 

Member on the Commerce Committee, Senator Nelson. 

5 

STATEMENT OF HON. BILL NELSON, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA 

Senator NELSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Knabb, I hope you have a very boring job all the way up 

through the end of November. 

We have been lucky for 10 years, but we weren’t so lucky in 1992 

with Hurricane Andrew. Then there was Katrina and Rita and 

Wilma in 2005, which covered Florida. So I hope you have a boring 

job. 

As Senator Rubio and I know as native Floridians, hurricanes 

are a way of life. It used to be that way. It hasn’t been that way 

for the last 10 years. 

When I was a kid, a hurricane was an excuse to get out of school. 

When I was a bachelor, a hurricane was an excuse to have a party. 

But now these things are deadly. We know what Andrew did to 

Florida’s homeowners’ insurance marketplace. We know the 26 people who were killed by Andrew. And you can go on and on. 

What Senator Booker was talking about, this UAV called a Coyote. We had it here yesterday. It is about that long. You eject it 

from the P–3 through a hole in the underside of the airplane, and 

it is like a canister instrumented like a normal sonde, like the 

sondes that are about that long, that big around that we eject out 

of the G–IV that flies at 45,000 feet over the hurricane. But the 

P–3 goes right in. 

Then this thing comes out of the airplane. It opens up the wings. 

It opens up the tail. It opens up the propeller. It can go out there, 

get into the eyewall and loiter where the fiercest winds are, taking 

all of these measurements to help folks like Dr. Knabb more accurately predict the hurricane’s track, its intensity, and its winds. 

That means saving a lot of lives and a lot of property. 

Senator Rubio and I have been looking at this and filing legislation to codify the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project. We 

simply have too much at risk. 

So I am looking forward to the head of the Hurricane Center’s 

testimony. 

Senator RUBIO. Thank you. I am going to defer my questions. Actually, let’s begin with our distinguished witness today, Dr. Knabb, 

who is the Director of the National Hurricane Center. He received 

his Bachelor’s Degree in Atmospheric Science from Purdue, and his 

Master’s of Science and Doctorate of Meteorology from Florida 

State University. 

I was going to make a joke because I’m from Florida, but Florida 

State is great. We talked about it when I went to visit you. 

Dr. KNABB. You can make a Rutgers reference, if you like. 

Senator RUBIO. He didn’t go to Rutgers. 

But I was just commenting, when I was visited there, a lot of the 

forecasters, Florida State was well-represented in the Hurricane 

Center. 

He completed his postdoctoral work at the University of Hawaii, 

and he has served as Director at the National Hurricane Center 

since 2012. 

We appreciate you appearing before us today, and we look forward to your testimony. 

6 

STATEMENT OF DR. RICHARD KNABB, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL 

HURRICANE CENTER, NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE, 

NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION, 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE 

Dr. KNABB. Good afternoon, Chairman Rubio and Ranking Members Booker and Nelson, and members of the Subcommittee. It 

truly is my honor to testify before you today on the state of the 

United States hurricane forecasting capabilities. 

I will also focus on the partnerships between NOAA and other 

Federal, State, and local government agencies that make effective 

use of these forecasts and to whom we provide decision-support 

services, and our public outreach and education efforts in collaboration with numerous public and private partners to prepare our citizens well in advance of the next hurricane. 

We at NOAA welcome your interest, support, and the opportunity to discuss these important topics. 

NOAA’s National Weather Service has the best forecasters and 

technical experts in the world that enable us to provide critical lifesaving forecasts, warnings, products, and services. The National 

Hurricane Center is one of nine centers of expertise in the National 

Centers for Environmental Prediction, known as NCEP. That is 

part of the National Weather Service as well. 

The Hurricane Center mission is to save lives, mitigate property 

loss, and improve economic efficiency by issuing the best watches, 

warnings, forecasts, and analyses of tropical weather, and, importantly, by increasing the understanding of these related hazards. 

The Hurricane Center also conducts an extensive outreach and 

education program, and it is a very visible component of building 

a weather-ready Nation. 

The United States has not experienced a landfall of a major hurricane defined as Category 3 on our Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind 

scale since Wilma in October 2005. Wilma was also the last hurricane of any intensity to strike the state of Florida. 

Nevertheless, several other hurricanes and tropical storms have 

come ashore in the United States and resulted in major impacts 

and loss of life in this country. Many of those impacts and losses, 

including Sandy in New Jersey, have been due to water, with 

storm surge causing fatalities and extensive damage in coastal 

areas, and deadly and damaging freshwater floods caused by heavy 

rain extending well inland. 

We continue that hurricanes and tropical storms are not just 

coastal events or just a problem for people with beachfront property. 

Our recent studies have documented that during the past half 

century, nearly nine out of 10 fatalities, as Senator Rubio mentioned, in the United States from the direct forces of tropical cyclones have been due to water. Wind can be dangerous and destructive, of course, but people often do not realize just how heavy, powerful, damaging, and deadly water can be. 

In addition to the lives we lost at the beach and on boats, 25 percent of these fatalities have been caused by rain-induced flooding 

that is the most frequent cause of death, meaning that it has taken 

lives in more tropical cyclones than any other hazard. 

7 

But the deadliest hazard overall, however, taking the largest 

number of lives overall in far fewer events, has been storm surge. 

Storm surge causes about half of the direct tropical cyclone fatalities in the United States. 

So motivated by the desire to reduce storm surge fatalities, we 

have placed a heavy focus on storm surge in our tropical cyclone 

product development during the past several years. That work is 

coming to fruition. 

A potential storm surge flooding map is operational beginning 

this hurricane season. Developed over several years in consultation 

with social scientists, emergency managers, broadcast meteorologists, and others, this map shows in a game-changing way, I believe, where the storm surge flooding could occur; how far inland 

from the immediate coastline the flooding could go that could be 

miles in some locations, in some scenarios; and how high above 

normally dry ground storm surge floodwaters could reach in a 

given community. 

So emergency managers will be able to more clearly identify 

areas that they must decide to evacuate. And our media partners 

will be much more on the same page, conveying a consistent message on storm surge. 

And the map will first be disseminated when we issue a hurricane watch or tropical storm watch, and when storm surge poses 

a threat for any portion of the Gulf or East Coast of the United 

States. 

Then, in 2017, we plan to issue a new National Weather Service 

storm surge watch and warning for tropical cyclones. While it is 

not an actual watch and warning for 2016, we will this year experimentally issue a prototype storm surge watch/warning graphic for 

tropical cyclones for the gulf and east coast of the United States. 

This graphic, like the actual warning will be in 2017, will depict 

those areas that have a significant chance of a life-threatening 

storm surge. 

The goal of both, the potential storm surge flooding map and the 

storm surge watch and warning, it is to increase the chances that 

when people are instructed by their emergency managers to evacuate, they go. 

The effectiveness of our partnerships with the emergency management community at the Federal, State, local, and tribal levels 

are as high as ever. NOAA, FEMA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Federal partners in the National Hurricane Program provide evacuation decisionmaking training and tools to State 

and local emergency managers. The jointly run Hurricane Liaison 

Team at the Hurricane Center then supports real-time decisionmaking by facilitating the rapid exchange of critical information regarding tropical cyclone hazards and their potential impacts between NHC and emergency managers at all levels. 

Our advances in communicating these individual wind and water 

hazards are taking advantage of the tremendous progress NOAA 

has made in tropical cyclone predictions. We have reduced tracked 

forecast errors by about half during the past 15 years in our 5-day 

track forecast today, about as accurate as the 3-day forecast was 

about 20 years ago. 

8 

In addition, tropical cyclone forecasts were recently extended 

from 2 to 5 days, the tropical cyclone formation forecasts. 

Work is also well underway to develop the capability to issue 

Hurricane Center forecasts and Weather Service tropical storm and 

hurricane watches and warnings even prior to the formation of a 

tropical cyclone, with a potential debut of the capability experimentally in 2017. 

This change would enable us to issue even more timely watches 

and warnings for storms that form close to the U.S. coast, including 

storm surge watches and warnings starting in 2017. 

The new supercomputers that Congress appropriated have allowed us to run more complex and sophisticated forecast models, 

including the new Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast, or 

HWRF, model. The HWRF represents a significant step forward in 

our operational prediction of hurricane structure and intensity. 

This research and development has been a joint effort between 

NOAA, primarily involving the Weather Service and NOAA’s research division, OAR, and our academic partners as part of the 

Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project, HFIP. 

HFIP continues with a multiyear, multimillion dollar effort to 

improve hurricane forecasts intending to improve tracking and intensity forecasting accuracy by 50 percent in 10 years. We are already meeting the 5-year HFIP goal to reduce hurricane forecast 

track and intensity errors by 20 percent. 

Recent enhancements that have been made to the operational 

HWRF have made it our best performing intensity forecasting 

model during the 2013 to 2015 period. 

Operations continue to benefit from and rely on aircraft reconnaissance, both the WC–130J aircraft of the U.S. Air Force Reserve 

from the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, 403rd Wing, in 

Biloxi, Mississippi, and the NOAA G–IV jet, and NOAA P–3 stationed at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. 

We are also excited about the launch of the new GOES–R satellite scheduled for later this year. Its technological advances include improvements upon existing data, such as dramatically increased spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions for Earth monitoring, and new observations such as lightening data. 

I am convinced that all of the data forecast technology, products, 

warnings, evacuation decisions and plans will not achieve their full 

potential if individuals, families, and businesses do not prepare 

now, well in advance for the next hurricane. People need to know 

ahead of time what they will do during an actual hurricane event, 

so that they can survive the event and recover quickly in the aftermath. 

Many things that we all desperately need to do, including myself 

and my family, to prepare are far more difficult, expensive, or even 

impossible to do if we wait until a hurricane is on our doorstep. 

We battle mightily against public complacency and a lack of preparedness as certain parts of the country have gone for years, or 

even decades in some places, since their last significant hurricane 

impact. We work hard to explain that overall hurricane activity has 

almost no relationship to hurricane impacts in any one community. 

We remind everyone that it only takes one. In 1992, that hurricane season was below average, overall, and Andrew was the one 

9 

that struck South Florida as a Category 5 hurricane. There was a 

tremendous difference between how busy the season might be overall and how bad it could be where you live. We all must prepare 

for hurricane season the same way every year. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I’m happy to take 

any questions you might have. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Knabb follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. RICHARD KNABB, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL HURRICANE

CENTER, NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC

ADMINISTRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

Good morning Chairman Rubio, Ranking Member Booker, and Members of the 

Subcommittee. It is my honor to testify before you today on the state of United 

States hurricane forecasting capabilities, the partnerships between the National 

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other government agencies 

that make effective use of those forecasts, and our public outreach and education 

efforts to prepare our citizens well in advance of the next hurricane. We at NOAA 

welcome your interest and the opportunity to discuss these important topics. 

NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment, 

from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage 

our coastal and marine resources. As a mission-driven, operational agency, NOAA 

is responsible for global satellite observations, atmospheric and oceanic research 

(both in-house and collaborative research with our valued external partners), operational weather and water forecasts, and the delivery of critical products and services. 

The National Weather Service (NWS)—a line office within NOAA—is a sciencebased service organization that works closely with NOAA’s other line offices in carrying out its mission. NWS has the sole Federal responsibility for issuing weather 

and water warnings to protect lives and property in communities across the country 

and in U.S. territories. NOAA provides environmental information and forecasts to 

American citizens, businesses, and governments to enable informed decisions on a 

range of issues and scales—local to global and short-term to long-term. NOAA provides a suite of products and services to the American people, including the reliable 

and timely delivery of public weather warnings that help safeguard lives. To do so, 

we work closely with the larger community of state, local, and tribal emergency 

management officials, other Federal agencies, and the commercial weather industry 

to deliver the best possible information that science and technology can provide. Put 

simply, NOAA provides critical information that saves lives and enhances our national economy. We also work with the external community to continually conduct 

weather and water research to improve our forecasts and warnings. 

The NWS has the best forecasters in the world providing critical, life-saving products and services. However, to take weather prediction to the next level and ensure 

that the U.S. becomes a Weather-Ready Nation in the face of increasing weather 

and water threats, the NWS must evolve. To ensure that forecasts are better used 

by a diverse group of decisionmakers, we are striving to provide more accurate and 

consistent forecasts through a fully integrated field office structure. We are organizing ourselves internally to ensure our forecasters have strong and effective relationships with decisionmakers at the Federal, State, local and tribal levels. The success of NOAA’s mission in this area depends on four integrated pillars: observations; 

supercomputing; research; and our forecasters. 

The NWS National Hurricane Center (NHC) is one of nine NWS National Centers 

for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). NHC’s mission is to: save lives; mitigate 

property loss; and improve economic efficiency by issuing the best watches, warnings, forecasts and analyses of tropical weather, and by increasing understanding 

of related hazards. NHC has a vision to be America’s calm, clear and trusted voice 

in the eye of the storm and, with our partners, to enable communities to be safe 

from tropical weather threats. NHC maintains a continuous weather watch, and 

issues analyses, forecasts and warnings of weather and ocean conditions over millions of square miles of the North Atlantic, including the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, and the eastern North Pacific. It communicates its products through multiple methods, including the media. NHC also conducts an extensive outreach and 

education program as a very visible component of building a Weather-Ready Nation. 

NHC’s operational, outreach, and other supporting activities are conducted by extensively collaborating with the local NWS Weather Forecast Offices, other NCEP centers, other line offices within NOAA, the emergency management community and 

10 

other agencies at the Federal, State, local and tribal levels, the media, other private 

sector entities, academia, like-minded nonprofit organizations, and numerous international meteorological services and other organizations. 

Over the past few years, NOAA has made noteworthy progress supporting the 

hurricane program. Funding provided in the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 

2013, referred to as the ‘‘Sandy Supplemental,’’ has provided NOAA significant 

funding for ocean observing, hurricane related research, coastal monitoring, upgrades to the two NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft, accelerating our hurricane related storm surge prediction capabilities, and providing a critical historic enhancement in operational high-speed computing leading to higher resolution computer 

models. 

The Hurricane Challenge 

The United States has not experienced landfall of a major hurricane (defined as 

Category 3 or stronger on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale) since Wilma 

in October 2005. Wilma was also the last hurricane of any strength to strike the 

state of Florida. Nevertheless, several other hurricanes and tropical storms have 

come ashore and resulted in major impacts and loss of life in this country. Many 

of those impacts and losses have been due to water, with storm surge causing extensive damage in coastal areas and freshwater floods extending well inland. Storm 

surge from tropical storms and hurricanes poses a great threat for large loss of life 

in a single day, and has always been a factor even prior to more recent notable 

storm surge events including Ike (2008) and post-tropical storm Sandy (2012). 

NOAA is developing new tropical storm surge products and warnings that are 

scheduled to be implemented operationally during the next couple of years. Work 

also is underway to develop the capability to issue tropical warnings even prior to 

the formation of a tropical cyclone, with potential debut of this experimental capability in 2017, which will enable even more timely watches and warnings to be 

issued for storms that form close to the U.S. coast. 

An important strategy in our operational communications, development of new 

products and warnings, and outreach and education efforts is to lessen the focus on 

the category of the hurricane and increase attention on the individual impacts from 

wind and water hazards that could occur in each community—namely winds, tornadoes, storm surge, inland flooding, and ocean waves and rip currents. We continue 

to emphasize that hurricanes and tropical storms are not just coastal events or just 

a problem for people with beachfront property, as evidenced from post-tropical storm 

Sandy. 

Since the establishment of the NHC in the 1950s, NOAA has built collaborations 

with emergency managers, the media, and the research community—collaborations 

that have helped reduce U.S. hurricane-related deaths by two-thirds. We have recently published statistics that reveal how much work remains to be done to further 

reduce the loss of life from tropical cyclones in this country. During the past half 

century, we have lost almost as many people to ‘‘indirect fatalities’’ as we have to 

‘‘direct fatalities.’’ Indirect fatalities are casualties that, while not directly attributable to one of the physical forces of a tropical cyclone, would have been unlikely 

to occur in the absence of the storm. These indirect fatalities include, among others, 

deaths attributable to carbon monoxide poisoning, cardiovascular failure, vehicle accidents, electrocution, falls, and fires in residences caused by open flames. 

Direct deaths are defined as fatalities attributable to the forces of the storms and 

their remnants. The most common examples of direct deaths from tropical systems 

are drowning as a result of storm surge, storm-driven waves, rip currents, or freshwater floods from rain. They also include physical trauma incurred from wind-borne 

debris or structural failure induced by wind (including hurricane-spawned tornadoes). Almost 90 percent of deaths from land falling tropical cyclones are attributable to water. Storm surge incidents accounted for about half of the deaths, while 

inland flood events caused by excessive rainfall took close to one quarter of the lives. 

After adding the many people who also lost their lives at the beach due to rip currents or waves, or while boating, that leaves only about 10 percent of direct fatalities being due to wind. 

Storm surge from tropical cyclones remains a great threat for a large loss of life 

event from a single-day natural disaster. Recognizing this situation, our product development during the past several years has placed a heavy focus on storm surge 

from tropical systems, and that work is showing good results. In 2014, NHC began 

experimental production of a Potential Storm Surge Flooding Map, which will be 

operational beginning this hurricane season. In 2017, the NWS plans to issue tropical system-related Storm Surge Watches and Warnings for the East and Gulf Coast 

states, actions designed reduce the number of storm surge fatalities. We have also 

significantly increased our outreach and education efforts on tropical storm surge 

11 

and on water hazards overall, since the public generally tends to misunderstand and 

underestimate their risk due to water. The hurricane challenge is exacerbated by 

an increasing vulnerability as coastal populations and infrastructure grow. NOAA’s 

public outreach messaging is not only about the hurricane hazards themselves, but 

also about what people should be doing to get ready, starting well in advance of the 

next hurricane, and about resiliency in the face of the hazards that could occur 

where they live. 

We battle mightily against public complacency as certain parts of the country 

have gone for years to decades since their last significant hurricane impact. That 

fact motivates us to be innovative and leverage partnerships to increase the reach 

and effectiveness of our outreach and education efforts. The introduction of new 

tropical storm surge products and warnings during the next couple of years will also 

serve to increase public and partner focus on preparing in advance for that hazard. 

We work hard to explain that overall hurricane activity has almost no relationship 

to hurricane impacts in any one community. Many people have the perception that 

our hurricane risk has declined in recent years, especially in comparison to the very 

active and destructive seasons in the U.S. in 2004 and 2005. We remind everyone, 

however, that there is a significant difference between how busy a given year or a 

particular decade might be overall, versus how bad it might be where you live. The 

year 1992 is one of the best examples of this, since it was overall a below-average 

year for hurricanes in the Atlantic basin, with only one major hurricane forming, 

but that one was Andrew that struck South Florida as a Category 5 hurricane. 

Improvements in Hurricane Forecasts and Observations 

In recent years, NOAA has extended tropical cyclone forecasts from three to five 

days, watches out to two days and warnings to 36 hours, and tropical cyclone formation forecasts from two days to five days. NOAA has reduced track (storm location) 

forecast errors by 50 percent over about the past 15 years. We are taking advantage 

of several opportunities that now enable us to take predictions to the next level. 

We take very seriously our annual efforts to verify our forecasts. Verification enables us to assess our progress in making forecast accuracy improvements and provides statistical information that drives our suite of probabilistic products that responsibly convey forecast uncertainties in real-time. NHC issues an official forecast 

of the cyclone’s center location and intensity (the maximum surface wind speed) for 

all operationally designated tropical or subtropical cyclones in the Atlantic and eastern North Pacific basins. Forecasts are issued every six hours and contain projections valid 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, 96, and 120 hours (five days) after the forecast’s initial 

time. At the conclusion of the season, forecasts are evaluated by comparing the projected positions and intensities to the corresponding post-storm derived ‘‘best track’’ 

positions and intensities for each cyclone. 

We have made tremendous progress in hurricane prediction. Our five-day track 

forecast today is about as accurate as the three-day forecast was 20 years ago: 

This forecast improvement has resulted in a reduction in the coastal area that 

needs to evacuate, if all other factors, such as storm size, are considered equal. The 

new supercomputers for which Congress appropriated funds have allowed us to run 

more complex and sophisticated forecast models, including the new Hurricane 

Weather Research and Forecast (HWRF) model. The HWRF model represents a significant step forward in our prediction of hurricane structure and intensity. The research and development has been a joint effort between NOAA (primarily NWS and 

NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR)) and academic partners 

as part of the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP). This advancement 

highlights the importance of the research and operational entities working hand-inhand to transfer promising research techniques into operations. Another joint effort 

between NWS and OAR, the Joint Hurricane Testbed (JHT) is a virtual environment for cutting-edge technology testing and demonstration funded by the U.S. 

Weather Research Program (USWRP). The JHT connects the tropical cyclone research community with forecast operations. This year, eight JHT research and development projects focused on improving the transition of new applied research from 

universities and Federal laboratories directly into NOAA operations in the areas of 

improved tropical cyclone and hurricane analysis, modeling, and forecasting techniques. A new tool available to the forecasters helps identify the probability of tropical cyclone genesis as far as five days in advance. This method was initially developed for the North Atlantic basin, but work is underway to expand the tool to other 

hurricane-prone ocean basins. Since its inception 15 years ago, the JHT has supported nearly 100 projects and demonstrated great success by transitioning about 

70 percent of them into NWS operations, resulting in improved NOAA services for 

the public. 

12 

HFIP is intended to improve track and intensity forecast accuracy by 50 percent 

in 10 years. HFIP continues with a multi-year, multi-million dollar effort to improve 

hurricane forecasts. We are meeting the five-year HFIP goal to reduce hurricane 

forecast track and intensity errors by 20 percent, and to extend the useful range 

of forecasts to seven days. Recent enhancements that have been made to the operational HWRF have made it our best-performing intensity model over the 2013–15 

period. HFIP is also supporting promising work to help identify and adjust for biases in the primary track and intensity models. In addition, HFIP continues to support some new product development and evaluation. We remain on schedule with 

our progress toward implementation of the new tropical storm surge products and 

warnings. 

Operations continue to benefit from, and rely on, aircraft reconnaissance. Ten 

WC–130J aircraft are specially configured and operated by the U.S. Air Force Reserve from the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, 403rd Wing, located at 

Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. When flying a hurricane mission, military air crews fly directly through the eye of the storm several times each flight. 

They collect data and transmit it in near real time by satellite directly to NHC so 

forecasters can analyze and predict changes to the hurricane’s path and strength. 

This refining of storm track models saves U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars. The 

NOAA Gulfstream-IV and Lockheed WP–3D Orion are part of NOAA’s fleet of highly specialized research and operational aircraft. These aircraft are operated, managed and maintained by the NOAA Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, based 

at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. The G–IV flies at high altitudes 

around and ahead of a tropical cyclone, gathering critical data that depict the atmospheric steering flow, and that data feed into and result in improved accuracy 

from hurricane forecast models. The P–3s are NOAA’s hurricane research and reconnaissance aircraft. These versatile turboprop aircraft are equipped with an unprecedented variety of scientific instrumentation, radars and recording systems for 

both in-situ and remote sensing measurements of the atmosphere, the earth and its 

environment. These two aircraft have led NOAA’s continuing effort to monitor and 

study hurricanes and other severe storms, and other non-hurricane-related missions 

in their ‘‘off season.’’ 

In 2014, NOAA successfully deployed a small unmanned aircraft—the Coyote— 

from a hurricane hunter aircraft into the eye of Hurricane Edouard. NOAA plans 

to expand the use of this unmanned aircraft in 2016. Planned flights will measure 

the strongest winds and collect critical continuous observations at altitudes in the 

lower part of a hurricane, an area that would otherwise be impossible to reach with 

manned aircraft. Data will be sent in real-time to forecasters at the NHC. We anticipate data from new technologies such as this will contribute significantly to improved understanding of tropical cyclone processes and ultimately to improvements 

in track and intensity predictions. 

Data from satellites are the most critical component of NOAA’s observation network. NOAA has managed the operation of polar-orbiting operational environmental 

satellites (POES) since 1966 and geostationary operational environmental satellites 

(GOES) since 1974. Over the decades, these systems have supported weather and 

environmental monitoring programs that are relied upon by users in the U.S. and 

around the world. Satellites provide more than 95 percent of the data assimilated 

into NOAA’s operational numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. These NWP 

models are used to forecast the weather seven or more days ahead, and, in particular, the NWP models are essential to forecasting the development of extreme 

weather events, including hurricanes. 

Data from GOES satellites are vital for observing and tracking tropical cyclones, 

and their precursor disturbances when a few hours, or even minutes, matter. We 

are excited about the launch of the new GOES–R satellite, scheduled for later this 

year. Technological advances of GOES–R include improvements upon existing data, 

such as increased spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions for Earth monitoring, 

and new observations, such as lightning data. Many of the GOES–R products are 

aimed at monitoring hurricanes and their environment and are expected to lead to, 

more timely, accurate, and actionable warnings. The resolution of visible satellite 

images will be down to 1⁄2 km, and we will be able to receive images (pictures) every 

minute. The one-minute images will allow us to see the hurricane ‘‘breathe.’’ We will 

see things and learn on a scale that we have not ever before had available to us. 

The Japanese Himawari satellite, which has the same imager as will be on GOES– 

R, has produced amazing data. 

New and Planned Operational Public Products and Warnings 

Our strategy for developing new public products and warnings in recent years has 

been to focus more on the individual hazards posed by tropical cyclones and less on 

13 

categorization of the cyclones themselves based on the strength of the sustained 

wind speeds generated at the (i.e., Saffir-Simpson scale using wind strength to describe hurricane intensity ‘‘CAT’’ 1–5). This year we will be issuing a Potential 

Storm Surge Flooding Map that will clearly and concisely depict the risk associated 

with the storm surge hazard from a tropical cyclone. Developed over the course of 

several years in consultation with social scientists, emergency managers, broadcast 

meteorologists, and others, this map shows: 

• Geographical areas where inundation from storm surge could occur 

• How high above ground the water could reach in those areas 

Areas of possible storm surge flooding for a given tropical cyclone are represented 

in different colors on the map based on water level, as shown in this example: 

We are also developing a tropical cyclone surge watch and warning product to 

compliment the flooding graphic depicted above. We believe this new watch/warning 

product will increase awareness of the potential life and property impacts from 

storm surge and flooding. Work is also underway to be able to issue tropical storm 

warnings even prior to the formation of a tropical cyclone, with potential debut of 

this experimental capability in 2017. 

Federal Support of Hurricane Evacuation Decision-Making 

The effectiveness of our partnerships with the emergency management community 

at federal, state, local and tribal levels is as high as ever. 

The NWS, along with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, directly support the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) National Hurricane Program 

(NHP), which provides state and local governments with resources to inform their 

hurricane planning and response actions. This NHP support is accomplished by conducting hurricane evacuation studies, providing access to the HURREVAC 

(www.hurrevac.com) software program as a common platform to view hurricane 

forecast information and evacuation timing guidance, and providing real-time technical assistance to state and local emergency managers to support their hurricane 

evacuation and response decisions. In addition, the NHP partners provide comprehensive hurricane preparedness training to emergency managers each year. In 

the past 25 years, more than 1,500 emergency managers have participated in the 

week-long hurricane workshops at the NHC, co-hosted by FEMA. 

NWS has also partnered with FEMA to provide another venue of Federal support 

for state and local governments through the Hurricane Liaison Team (HLT). The 


525KNABB1.eps
14 

HLT concept was piloted during the active 1995 hurricane season and formalized 

the next year following a request from the Governor of Florida. The HLT supports 

response operations by allowing rapid exchange of critical information regarding 

tropical cyclone hazards and potential impact between the NHC and Federal, state, 

local and tribal emergency managers. The HLT facilitates daily video briefings with 

NHC, FEMA leadership, and other senior Federal officials. The HLT includes NWS 

meteorologists, emergency managers, and FEMA Regional Hurricane Program Managers that have technical knowledge of local and state hurricane evacuation plans 

and trusted relationships with state, local and tribal emergency managers in the affected area. 

These trusted relationships begin long before hurricane threats develop each year. 

The combined efforts of the HLT and NHP ensure that the Nation works together 

to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, mitigate, protect 

against, and respond to hurricanes. 

Public Outreach and Education 

Our outreach efforts serve to get the public and our partners ready far in advance 

of the next hurricane, so they know what they will do when we issue our forecasts 

and warnings for the hazards they might face in a real-time tropical cyclone event. 

NOAA has conducted an annual Hurricane Awareness Tour (HAT) for more than 

30 years, alternating between the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts. The tour now coincides with the presidentially-declared National Hurricane Preparedness Week. As 

part of its efforts to build a Weather-Ready Nation, each year NOAA’s hurricane experts typically tour five U.S. coastal cities to raise awareness about the importance 

of preparing for the upcoming hurricane season. The tour typically includes a U.S. 

Air Force Reserve WC–130J or NOAA P–3 hurricane hunter aircraft and the NOAA 

G–IV aircraft. This year the tour partnered with the nonprofit Federal Alliance for 

Safe Homes (FLASH) with the ‘‘#HurricaneStrong’’ campaign to re-energize and inspire hurricane resilience by increasing public awareness and action before the next 

storm strikes. The tour visited San Antonio, Galveston, New Orleans, Mobile, and 

Naples. The public and media toured the aircraft and met forecasters and aircraft 

crews. Staff from local emergency management offices, FEMA, non-profit organizations, such as the American Red Cross and FLASH, and several local NWS Weather 

Forecast Offices joined various stops on the tour. 

The Weather-Ready Nation (WRN) Ambassador initiative is NOAA’s effort to formally recognize its partners who are improving the Nation’s readiness, responsiveness, and overall resilience against extreme weather, water, and climate events. 

To be officially recognized as a WRN Ambassador, an organization must commit 

to: 

• Promoting Weather-Ready Nation messages and themes to their stakeholders; 

• Engaging with NOAA personnel on potential collaboration opportunities; 

• Sharing their success stories of preparedness and resiliency; 

• Serving as an example by educating employees on workplace preparedness. 

Building a Weather-Ready Nation requires more than government alone. It requires the private and academic members of ‘‘America’s Weather Enterprise’’ to provide information for better community, business, and personal decision making, and 

innovative partnerships across all segments of society. We must involve everyone in 

an effort to move people—and society—toward heeding warnings, taking action, and 

influencing their circles of family, friends, and social network to act appropriately. 

The WRN Ambassador initiative is the connecting hub of a vast network of federal, 

state, local and tribal agencies,, academic researchers, the media, the insurance industry, nonprofit organizations, the private sector, and many others who are working together to address the impacts of extreme weather on daily life. Together we 

will inform and empower communities, businesses, and people to make pre-event decisions that can be life-saving and prevent or limit devastating economic losses. We 

are a nation of many communities, and it is only through connected communities 

that we will achieve this goal. 

International Collaborations 

The hydrometeorological services of the Caribbean, Central America and North 

America have a long history of effective collaboration, strong relationships, and a 

shared focus on learning from one another and improving our collective service to 

the citizens of our respective nations. As NHC Director, I chair the World Meteorological Organization’s Regional Association IV Hurricane Committee, which was established in 1978 and includes nations with meteorological interests in North and 

Central America and the Caribbean. This committee seeks to improve tropical cyclone prediction and coordination in the region by bringing member countries toVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:45 Feb 15, 2017 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\24174.TXT JACKIE
15 

gether on an annual basis to address issues such as data collection requirements, 

operational and technical coordination, research priorities and transition to operations, forecast practices and procedures, outreach, and training. The committee 

meeting is a tremendous opportunity for us to gain a greater understanding of how 

our evolving meteorological and hydrological services will operate each year, to enhance the benefits of our shared data, forecast information, and training efforts, to 

learn key lessons from the impacts in the previous year, and to update our regional 

procedures and plans so we can perform together during the upcoming hurricane 

season to the best of our combined abilities. 

Conclusion 

Expectations from those NOAA serves are high, and we strive to exceed those expectations. All of the technologies we apply to issuing the best possible forecasts will 

live up to their full potential only if communities, families, and individuals also prepare far in advance. We all must dedicate ourselves to taking steps now to be ready, 

long before the next hurricane strikes. NWS forecasts, warnings, and communitybased preparedness programs are vital to enhancing the economy and saving lives 

and property. It all starts with a commitment to environmental observations, research and improved forecasts and warnings, and our people (forecasters, modelers, 

technicians and managers). It culminates with striving to become a Weather-Ready 

Nation in which businesses, governments, and people are prepared to use those forecasts to mitigate impacts. In spite of our best efforts, hurricanes and tropical storms 

will still cause loss of life and significant damage. We recognize that there is always 

room for improvement. I believe NOAA and the NWS are government at its best. 

But I need each of you to know that we can do better. Even more of these impacts 

could be mitigated with more timely, accurate, and focused forecasts, watches, and 

warnings. The impacts and lives lost from the recent tropical disasters experienced 

over the past few years would have been far worse without NOAA’s observations, 

research, forecasts, people and the extensive work of our federal, non-federal, academic and commercial partners to improve the Nation’s preparedness for these 

events through education and outreach. 

The protection of the American people from the devastation that weather and 

water can bring is a sacred trust and duty given to the NOAA and NWS by Congress. Together, we must ensure our services and operations live up to this trust 

and duty. We have come a long way, but there is more we need to do to become 

a Weather-Ready Nation—to be ready for the event, to be responsive, and to be resilient. Remember, as Hurricane Andrew proved in 1992, it only takes one. 

Senator RUBIO. Thank you. 

I’m going to defer the beginning of the questions to the Ranking 

Member, Senator Booker. 

Senator BOOKER. Thank you very much. 

I really appreciate both your written testimony as well as the 

words you spoke. You’re right. I was Mayor when Hurricane Sandy 

hit, and we lost people because of the water, that storm surge that 

came in so suddenly; in one case I will never forget, a person 

drowned in their car. 

We had waves as high as 32 feet. We had storm surges at about 

10 feet. Sea levels are continuing to rise now just because of climate change. 

After hearing what you just said about this incredible new technology that is really looking at some of these storm surge products 

and warnings, can you give us an idea about what we can do to 

try to expedite these tools coming online? 

Dr. KNABB. I am very excited to report to everyone about the potential storm surge flooding map going operational this year. That 

is many years in the making with a lot of social scientists and partners involved in the development of that product. 

It has been thoroughly tested. We have gone through exercises 

with the emergency managers. We really think that is going to be 

a game-changing tool for their evacuation decisionmaking and communicating the hazard to the public this year. 

16 

We just sent out the service change notice today that that product is going operational today, so that is very exciting. It really is 

going to get everybody on the same page. 

The storm surge watch/warning also is more than a decade in the 

making. Even though it is going to be 2017, next year, when that 

warning goes operational, the public, everybody, will see a prototype storm surge watch/warning graphic this year that will, in no 

less of an important way, convey where we, as National Weather 

Service forecasters, think there is a significant chance of lifethreatening storm surge. 

So in many ways, we are already there in terms of dramatically 

enhancing how we communicate the storm surge hazard in real 

time. 

We do want to continue to enhance these products. The purpose 

of another experimental year with this prototype storm surge 

watch/warning graphic is to get a little more feedback from our 

partners and factor that into what goes operational with the storm 

surge warning in 2017. 

Senator BOOKER. Dr. Knabb, if I may, and if I can correctly interpret the Chairman’s thoughts on this as well, I have some concerns 

that we are not investing enough in R&D, and there is this urgent 

need to significantly increase our research and development in this 

area. 

Could you give me an idea of how increased R&D funding would 

help, in terms of expediting our forecasting capabilities? 

Dr. KNABB. Sure. So, again, just to reiterate, the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project is ongoing, and it is leading to changes 

that are being implemented every year. The new HWRF model enhanced through HFIP over 2013 to 2015 is our leading intensity 

model during that period. 

If we want to continue to improve our track and intensity forecast, it has involved and will continue to involve having the correct, 

most useful data from inside the hurricane and in the environment; 

advanced computer models that leverage research data and other 

knowledge to increase our understanding of hurricanes and incorporate that knowledge into the models; assimilation schemes that 

allow the models to take advantage of all those data; and faster 

computers in order to run these more advanced models, along with 

the staff to do the technical work to get us to the next stage. 

Senator BOOKER. So, yes or no? Do you believe that if Congress 

and the administration were to invest more in R&D in this area, 

that it would significantly help in our preparedness, could potentially save many, many lives and help us avert significant economic 

damage? 

Dr. KNABB. Yes, I think that the last several years of HFIP show 

us that investing in research and development, and computer modeling, and data simulation capabilities, that allows us to utilize 

things like various types of aircraft data that we collect. 

Senator BOOKER. So really quick, my last question. 

NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, GFDL, based 

in Princeton, New Jersey, has developed cutting-edge climate modeling that for the first time has successfully reproduced the observation year-by-year variations in Category 4 and Category 5 hurricanes. We are very proud of that in our state. These results highVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:45 Feb 15, 2017 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\24174.TXT JACKIE
17 

light the potential use of climate change modeling for long-term, 

season-by-season hurricane prediction, which could really help the 

U.S. prepare for storms. 

How could increased funding, specifically for the research and development of high-performance computing, improve NOAA’s ability 

to provide long-term forecasting of extreme weather? 

Dr. KNABB. Yes. More computing power has already allowed us 

to run more advanced models for our 5-day forecasting. It is part 

of how we are, through Sandy supplemental funding, helping out 

with the supercomputing capabilities, allowing us to run the storm 

surge model in real time fast enough to generate that new potential storm surge flooding map and guidance for the storm surge 

warning. 

Likewise, if anyone is going to make progress in forecasting future hurricane activity over the long haul, more advanced models, 

faster computers, are part of that equation. 

But, of course, at the Hurricane Center, our focus is on the 

supercomputer power and the modeling capabilities that allow us 

to improve the accuracy of our track and intensity forecast in the 

5-day period. Again, HFIP has shown that investing in that capability can lead to improvements, as it has, and that project is ongoing. We are going to hopefully continue to see some benefits from 

that. 

Senator BOOKER. Dr. Knabb, thank you for that. I may have to 

step away, but please understand that, on behalf of my whole entire state, we really do appreciate the important work that you are 

doing. The growing sophistication and capabilities is really making 

a difference. 

And my hope is that we as a Congress will recognize how much 

investments here can produce overall returns for this country as a 

whole. 

So I am grateful for your leadership, grateful for your work. I 

hope that we can continue to support you in more robust ways. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator RUBIO. Thank you, Senator Booker. 

Senator Nelson? 

Senator NELSON. Did you really get 32 feet of sea level rise surge 

in Hurricane Sandy? 

Senator BOOKER. Waves as high as 32 feet in the storm surge. 

Senator NELSON. Did that cover up a good part of the coastal 

New Jersey? 

Senator BOOKER. Oh my gosh, the devastation, I’m sure you remember, looking at our state, it was catastrophic. Even in a city 

like Newark, when I was Mayor, the surge came in so dramatically 

that it swept away homes, moved them off their foundations, swept 

away businesses, and, unfortunately, resulted in the loss of life. 

Senator NELSON. In the monster Hurricane Andrew in 1992, we 

had a 17-foot storm surge. It was a hurricane that now they think 

was well into a Category 5 with winds in excess of 160 miles per 

hour. That is why it tore up so much of Homestead, Florida. 

I will never forget flying over in a National Guard helicopter; 

there were only two buildings left in downtown Homestead. One 

was the bank, which was very well constructed. The other one, 

Senator Rubio, was an old Florida cracker house that had been 

18 

built back in the old days that withstood the winds and everything 

else. 

Of course, that caused a revolution in Miami-Dade County in 

building codes, much for the better, because under the old codes, 

places were just wiped out completely. 

Senator BOOKER. You will have to tell me one day what a cracker 

house is. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator NELSON. The old-line Floridians, like Senator Rubio and 

me, used to be referred to as crackers because they would drive the 

cattle to Punta Rassa, which is now near Fort Myers. And they 

would put those cattle on the cattle drive on a boat going for Havana. The way they drove them was through cow whips, crackers. 

So that is why we are Florida crackers. 

Senator RUBIO. Then my ancestors would receive them as they 

came to Cuba. It is all kind of intertwined. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator NELSON. There you go. 

All right, I have just a couple quick questions. I’m going to make 

it very quick. 

Senator BOOKER. By the way, that is a term I will never use, 

cracker house. We don’t have those in New Jersey. 

Senator NELSON. Oh, you might have a different kind house in 

New Jersey. 

Senator BOOKER. No, sir. No, sir. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator NELSON. OK, you have two P–3s, and you have one G– 

IV. Now if they were down, you would be in a world of hurt, would 

you not, on estimating the track and intensity, and so forth? 

Dr. KNABB. Yes, Senator. Then NOAA G–IV jet is an operational 

resource that we utilize when the gulf or east coast of the U.S., or 

Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands, are threatened by hurricane. The 

G–IV jet flies in the environment of the hurricane in a pattern that 

we designate to drop the sondes, provide vertical profile data over 

the data-sparse oceans, go into the computer forecast models, and 

in so many past cases have shown to enhance the accuracy of the 

model track forecast and, therefore, operational track forecast. 

The NOAA P–3s are research laboratories that we also receive 

the data from in real time. They have also been ideal platforms for 

many years for developing new technologies that have made their 

way onto the Air Force WC–130J aircraft. 

So, yes, the NOAA G–IV and P–3s are extremely important to 

our operations and our future developments based on that research. 

Senator NELSON. So if you had an accident or a maintenance 

problem, and you were down with the P–3s, you do have backup 

with the Air Force? 

Dr. KNABB. Yes, it’s important to emphasize that the Air Force 

WC–130J aircraft, there are 10 of those stationed at Biloxi, Mississippi, at Keesler Air Force Base. They are the operational workhorse. We task them routinely into everything from a developing 

tropical disturbance trying to become a depression or storm up to 

Category 5 hurricanes. 

Senator NELSON. Can they drop the sondes? 

19 

Dr. KNABB. They could. 

Senator NELSON. They drop the bigger sondes that we are talking about, the Coyote? 

Dr. KNABB. Right. The benefit of the NOAA G–IV jet, it flies at 

higher altitude and much faster speed than either of the P–3s or 

the C–130. So we really need the G–IV to do the environmental 

surveillance missions to get the data into the models, track forecasting, and the P–3s are obviously vital to what the hurricane research division and others are doing to conduct their field program 

to advance the science, which is what instrumentation like the Coyote is promising to do. 

Again, we see some of these data in real time. Occasionally, we 

see the data from the Coyote in real time. It is not a core part of 

our operations yet, but it has the potential to augment the heavy 

manned aircraft from the P–3s and the C–130s. So the C–130 is 

operational workhorse. 

Senator NELSON. What I am getting at is that you have a backup 

with the P–3s. It is single point failure with the G–IV, right? 

Dr. KNABB. An equivalent capability aircraft, correct. There is 

not a backup for it. But we could use the P–3s and/or the C–130s 

to do the surveillance missions, but the vertical profiles wouldn’t be 

from as high of an altitude. 

Senator NELSON. And your accuracy is increased by 15 percent 

by the G–IV in the vertical profile? 

Dr. KNABB. On average, it is in that neighborhood that we have 

made the improvements in past forecasting. Yes, the G–IV is very 

important. 

Senator NELSON. All right. Now tell me this, the El Faro leaves 

port, headed for Puerto Rico, and he sails right into the middle of 

a hurricane. Now there are 33 lives, most of which were from Jacksonville, Florida, lost. 

We are now in the investigation, finding out that they were getting 10-hour-old data on the storm. 

What can we do about that? 

Dr. KNABB. We at the Hurricane Center have been actively participating in the NTSB investigation that is ongoing. 

This is also an opportunity to remind everyone that the National 

Hurricane Center is more than just about hurricanes. As you have 

seen when you visited the center, we have a Tropical Analysis and 

Forecast Branch, TAFB. It is our largest branch. Marine forecasters do offshore waters and high seas forecasts over the Atlantic, Gulf, and Caribbean. 

We are very eager to find out all the outcomes of that investigation because we want to do everything possible to make sure that 

our marine users and partners are getting the data in a timely 

manner to prevent something like El Faro from ever happening 

again. 

Now to head in that direction, we have already had some partners visit the Hurricane Center within the last month from the 

cruise ship industry, from the cargo ship industry, and from the 

Coast Guard, talking about how we enhance how they get our forecasts and warnings in real time. I’m learning that some of the decisionmakers in the various industries that make decisions on routVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:45 Feb 15, 2017 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\24174.TXT JACKIE
20 

ing are often folks who are on land that are then communicating 

routing decisions to the ships at sea. 

So we are going to make sure that we get training delivered to 

those decisionmakers. We are already planning an off-season training course next winter for these marine decisionmakers. 

Senator NELSON. Good. Thank you. 

Senator RUBIO. Thank you. 

Senator Schatz? 

STATEMENT OF HON. BRIAN SCHATZ, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM HAWAII 

Senator SCHATZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Knabb, thank you for your work. I just have two quick questions. Hopefully, they will be quick. 

I have heard reports that NOAA is or was considering relocating 

the Central Pacific Hurricane Center to Florida in an effort to reduce staffing levels. Is this true? 

Dr. KNABB. There are no plans within the National Weather 

Service to change the function of the Central Pacific Hurricane 

Center. In fact, we are continuing at the National Hurricane Center to partner with them, providing them training and working on 

ways to enhance the consistency of products and Web presence, and 

sharing of technology between NHC, the National Hurricane Center, and CPHC, the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. 

Senator SCHATZ. Great. So I won’t go into great detail about this, 

because I think we are now on the same page, but if you could continue to keep in touch with our staff regarding any possible plans. 

Obviously, from an expertise standpoint, from a time zone standpoint, and from the viewpoint of logistics and relationships with 

local civil defense officials, media partners, it makes a lot of sense 

to keep the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in the Pacific. 

Dr. KNABB. Having worked in that office myself, I can tell you 

that the staff there are vital to providing decision support services 

to State and local emergency managers, and briefing the media. 

Senator SCHATZ. Great. Thank you. 

Forecasting hurricanes in the Pacific, as you know, is made more 

complicated by a lack of data. Over the course of the last 15 named 

storms in the Pacific last year, our civil defense community learned 

firsthand how much of a difference more data and adding hurricane hunters could make. What are your Pacific deployment plans 

for Coyote UAVs and APAR units when they are operational? 

Dr. KNABB. The platforms that you just mentioned are research 

platforms that the research component of NOAA primarily schedules as part of their field program. We at the National Hurricane 

Center, and I am sure CPHC would be the same, we would be 

eager to see some of those data in real time and are even more 

eager to find out what the outcomes of those research efforts would 

be. 

We do have at the National Hurricane Center in Miami permanently stationed Department of Defense employees that help us coordinate the taskings that we issue from Hurricane Center Miami 

and CPHC in Honolulu on where we want to send the Air Force 

C–130s and the NOAA G-IV and P–3 aircraft. 

21 

As you saw last year, those aircraft resources were forward-deployed to Honolulu to fly the many systems that were in the central Pacific. We and CPHC collaborate on that. 

Senator SCHATZ. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator RUBIO. Thank you. 

Senator Blumenthal? 

STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM CONNECTICUT 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you for being here. I noted that you began your career in 

Hawaii and then moved to California and then to Florida, so you 

have seen a lot of different weather patterns around the country, 

and you have also seen differences, perhaps, in responses to hurricane warnings. 

Superstorm Sandy, which was a hurricane before it hit Connecticut, did untold and tragic damage in part because people 

failed to respond to the warnings that they were given. I am wondering if you have any observations on what can be done to improve the responses of everyone from public officials to citizen 

groups to citizens themselves? 

Dr. KNABB. Sure. I mentioned earlier the national hurricane program, which is a Federal partnership between NOAA, our agency, 

and FEMA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That national hurricane program is currently going through a modernization. It has already been very effective to date in providing tools, training, and 

the resources, and the real-time decision support, for State and especially local emergency managers to make more effective evacuation and other decisions. 

But that program is currently being modernized, and one of the 

most exciting parts about it is that the modernized tools for emergency managers will be developed in lockstep with new National 

Hurricane Center products and warnings, so they are ready to utilize it in their systems when those products become available. 

In addition, we are, with many different partners, government 

and outside of government, enhancing how we conduct our outreach and education, and provide messages in a far more personal 

and emotional level to make people realize that we have to prepare 

our families just as much as other people do. So our Hurricane Preparedness Week recently focused on messages having to do with 

putting your personal and family evacuation plan together, buying 

your supplies in advance, getting an insurance checkup in advance, 

doing whatever you can now to strengthen your home. 

I am doing those things. By telling the public that I am doing 

those things, hopefully people realize that it is something that they 

ought to be doing as well. 

So those are just some of the things that we are doing to get people and our partners more prepared. When people see us as government partners getting more prepared, hopefully they have more 

confidence in their government and they get prepared as well. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. How about the media, in terms of the way 

it depicts or provides warnings? Have you interacted with them a 

22 

lot? Because that is the way most people figure out whether they 

are going to move or stay put. 

Dr. KNABB. Yes. Despite the increased use of social media, television is still the main way that people get their information as a 

hurricane approaches. We have developed and continue to maintain 

and try to enhance our relationships with our media partners, both 

national outlets and local ones. 

Some of them come to the Hurricane Center. We engage them at 

a variety of off-season conferences. I talked to some of them yesterday on a webinar. One thing that we have emphasized going into 

this hurricane season is making sure they fully understand how to 

interpret this new potential storm surge flooding map, and the new 

prototype storm surge warning graphics, so they are conveying the 

right, consistent message. 

So our relationships with our media partners are absolutely 

vital, and we have increased the amount of training we provide to 

them. And they were involved in some of the development of this 

new storm surge product. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. They have their own meteorologists. Do 

they ever push back or differ with you as to what they think the 

response should be or whether your interpretation of the data is 

correct? 

Dr. KNABB. There are at least a couple reasons why that isn’t a 

huge problem. Number one is that because we develop the relationships with them, they understand why we are conveying what we 

are conveying in our forecast. Our discussion products convey the 

reasoning. 

And, usually, any disagreements on exactly where the forecast 

should have been placed are well within the bounds of uncertainty. 

If you put 20 different meteorologists, even at the Hurricane Center, in the same room, it will not be the exact same forecast. But 

all the opinions that might be out there I think are still well within 

the bounds of the areas that we are trying to alert with regard to 

the wind and water hazards that they might experience. 

But we have enhanced the content of our products. Just last 

year, during Hurricane Joaquin, and then during eastern Pacific 

Hurricane Patricia, primarily for the benefit of the media, we inserted in our discussion product that they are very familiar with 

some key messaging points, main issues that we want our media 

partners to be focused on conveying. 

That is not just for the on-camera meteorologists, but for the producers and the people populating the crawls and the reporters and 

the anchors. The media feedback from that, plus our proactive use 

of social media to let them know what is coming in terms of Hurricane Center product, very good feedback from media partners. So 

that dialogue goes on year-round. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator RUBIO. Thank you, Senator Blumenthal. 

Dr. Knabb, let me touch on a couple points. 

Number one, let me just say that there is obviously a lot of negativity today about government and politics, things going on in our 

country. But our men and women who serve us in public service, 

in various different fields, do an excellent job on our behalf, and 

23 

one of those places is in the National Hurricane Center. I had a 

chance to visit there previously, once as a State legislator and now 

again as a U.S. Senator. I’m just incredibly impressed with the 

work that you do, and we want to thank you. 

The level of expertise and the resource that you provide, as was 

pointed out to me, which I understood before as well, it is not just 

to the men and women of the United States, but so many liaison 

partners around the world that don’t have a National Hurricane 

Center of their own rely on our expertise as well. So that service 

you also provide to so many partner nations who have come to rely 

of the United States as the authority on these issues. 

By the way, almost as if on cue, and no one can accuse me of 

having anything to do with this, but already I see there is a special 

tropical weather outlook report. There is a system developing in 

the western Atlantic. Development is not anticipated for the next 

couple of days, but environmental conditions are expected to become more conducive for tropical or subtropical development on 

Friday. 

So just a reminder that even as we are meeting here today, everything is starting up. And hurricane season is a date on the calendar, but a reminder to everyone that you can have storms before 

that date. We had storms last year, I believe, after that date, or 

close to the end of the season, late in the season. 

So it doesn’t matter when it is. It is a real issue. 

I talked in my opening statement about the legislation that Senator Nelson and I have worked on. We introduced it last year. It 

would require NOAA to improve guidance for hurricane tracking, 

intensity, storm surge forecast. It builds on important work that 

has already been deployed, which is the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project. But it has not yet been congressionally authorized. Now the President’s budget is recommending a cut of $3 million. 

So I am not asking you to opine on the congressional process or 

on the budget recommendation, but I am asking you to speak a little bit about how valuable this project is, the forecast improvement 

project, and how forecasting would be impacted should a future administration further cut or, worse, absent any legislation, end the 

program entirely. 

Dr. KNABB. Sure. I want to take this opportunity to thank you, 

Senator Rubio and Senator Nelson, for your support of the national 

hurricane program and what we do with our partners. That support is very much appreciated. 

It is obvious from what we have already accomplished through 

the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project that investments in 

advanced modeling capabilities pay off, and they are already paying off. 

The good news is that HFIP is not going away. It is going on. 

Again, we have been able to improve our Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast model, the HWRF. And again, during the past 

three hurricane seasons combined, it has remarkably become our 

best-performing intensity model. That is a tremendous accomplishment. 

Because we have been able to make some improvements so far 

in meeting these 5-year goals with HFIP, there is promise for conVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:45 Feb 15, 2017 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\24174.TXT JACKIE
24 

tinued improvements, given a proper level of investment. Again, 

those areas of investment have to be multifaceted and include the 

data you need from inside the hurricane and the environment, scientific advancements, including from data like the Coyote and 

other platforms to increase our understanding of hurricanes, models that can use those data, and the supercomputer power to run 

those more advanced models, and, importantly, to have the staff 

that we need in order to do the development work and leverage the 

improvements that come from these scientific advances. 

The faster we can hire our vacancies, the better off we are going 

to be, and that has been a challenge recently. 

So all of those things require investments to move forward. It is 

always the case, and it is the case heading into this hurricane season, that the National Hurricane Center is fully prepared to carry 

out its operational mission, but we always have more difficulty in 

applying and having the resources to apply to advance our products 

and warning suite, and have the research resources, mainly in 

terms of people, to enhance the computer forecast models that has 

been happening during HFIP. 

Senator RUBIO. You also, in your testimony, talked about the 

next evolution of the geostationary operational environmental satellite, which is set to be launched from Cape Canaveral, I believe 

later this year. This satellite is going to provide high-resolution images of storms up-to-the-minute every minute, and, as a result, 

more accurate tracking and intensity forecast. 

Once that satellite is launched, do you have an estimate as to 

how long it will take to come online and begin providing this data? 

Dr. KNABB. Yes. I will also say, before I directly answer that, 

that the National Hurricane Center has already been preparing 

itself, as have other components of the National Weather Service, 

to get ready for these new data by participating in what is called 

the GOES-R proving ground. Some of our forecasters have already 

directly had their hands on the operations floor on some proxy data 

sets that prepare us for what GOES–R is going to be providing. 

We have also installed in our backyard at the Hurricane Center, 

as you saw when you visited, the three dishes getting ready to 

bring down the GOES–R data. 

Once those data start flowing, after the satellite is launched, my 

understanding is that it could take up to a year for calibration, validation, and checkout to occur. But that means that perhaps at 

some point during the 2017 hurricane season, calibrated, validated 

data from GOES-R could be flowing. 

We have tried also to prepare our computing infrastructure for 

that, because we are going to have three times as many channels 

on the satellite, four times as much spatial resolution, and five 

times as much temporal resolution in the data, so tremendous advances are coming. We are very excited about what is ahead. 

Senator RUBIO. In my statement as I was opening up the hearing, I talked a little bit about hurricane amnesia and the ability 

to forget over time about what this is like. 

I do recall 2004 and 2005, living in South Florida, we experienced storms, if I’m correct—I believe Katrina was in September, 

and there was one again a month later. So we lost power. We did 

not see the extensive damage of Andrew obviously in Florida, but 

25 

Katrina went on to do extensive damage in the gulf coast, Louisiana and Mississippi. 

But time passes and people forget. You have been on the road 

now for the better part of last week traveling the gulf coast, primarily in Florida, talking to people about what they needed to be 

doing to get ready. 

What is your assessment? How aware are people that hurricane 

season is upon us? How prepared are they? What is your sense of 

the standing today among the public about the upcoming season? 

Dr. KNABB. I’m still very concerned that way too many people in 

the public in Florida and other states are not as prepared as they 

need to be. One of the concerns is not only has it been more than 

a decade since the last Florida hurricane, but in that timeframe, 

we have gained something like three million new residents in the 

state of Florida. 

Other metropolitan areas are similar. I just visited Houston, 

Texas, last week. Since Hurricane Ike struck there in 2008, they 

have something like a million new residents in their metropolitan 

area. 

So not only do you have people who might have been through a 

hurricane in the past and maybe they have gotten out of the habit 

of preparing, or maybe they experienced the fringes of a hurricane 

in the past and they haven’t really been through the core of a 

major hurricane, or maybe they are new to the problem, and they 

have never prepared for a hurricane at all. I think there are way 

too many of those people still out there, which is why last week 

during the hurricane awareness tour, which was merged with the 

presidentially-declared National Hurricane Preparedness Week, the 

themes each day focused on things that people, residents of our 

states, need to be doing to get ready for the next hurricane. 

That is why we focused on planning your evacuation route and 

destination in advance, buying your supplies in advance, updating 

your insurance now, because of those 30-day waiting periods for 

flood insurance, for example, and doing whatever you can today to 

strengthen your home. 

And again, by telling people that I’m doing those things personally, hopefully, we are reaching people a little bit more on an emotional level so that they realize that all of us share in this problem. 

I welcome anyone who is willing to go out there and share what 

they do to get ready for the next hurricane to set an example for 

what the public can be doing. 

Senator RUBIO. One of the things we discussed, and I heard this 

discussed previously, is that one of the most devastating potential 

storms would be one that went right into the Tampa Bay area and 

right into the bay. We saw some models of what that would look 

like, rough models. 

But in essence, I think this is important. I think this is an area 

that hasn’t had that event happen, at least not in modern times. 

Could you describe briefly for people living in the Tampa Bay 

area what that storm situation would look like and what level of 

intensity would require for the worst-case scenario? I was particularly impressed, I should say, and impacted by some of the flooding 

and storm surge projections where there were communities not necVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:45 Feb 15, 2017 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\24174.TXT JACKIE
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essarily on the water that could see extensive amounts of flooding 

as a result of a storm of that magnitude. 

If you could briefly take this moment, if you were talking to people in the Tampa Bay area, what would that event look like for 

them, and just sort of worst-case scenario, which, unfortunately, 1 

day will happen, just by matter of statistics? 

Dr. KNABB. Yes, Senator. It certainly is a matter of when, not if. 

The Tampa Bay area is one of those many areas that I am very, 

very concerned about. 

They last experienced a direct hit of a major hurricane back in 

October 1921. So nearly a century later, there are a lot more people 

and a lot more infrastructure in harm’s way there. And it is important for people to realize there that the storm surge flooding risk 

in many portions of the Tampa Bay area goes not just across the 

street from the beachfront property, not just blocks inland, but, in 

some locations, miles inland from the coast. 

So it is vital that people, even if you can’t see the water from 

where you are at your home, find out today if you live in a hurricane surge evacuation zone and figure out today where you would 

go and how you would get there, if told to evacuate. 

For folks who live far enough inland, in whatever part of Florida 

or any other hurricane-prone states, if you are not in one of those 

storm surge zones, find someone you care about who is and plan 

now to be their inland evacuation destination. 

But again, that storm surge hazard in the Tampa Bay area, like 

in many other areas, goes miles inland. That is why it is even more 

important that we are going operational this year with our potential storm surge flooding map, because if people haven’t gotten it 

by that time, then when that product comes out, if a hurricane is 

threatening that area, then we will be showing people just how far 

inland from the immediate coastline the storm surge flooding could 

go in that scenario. 

Senator RUBIO. How could someone, whether it is in the Tampa 

Bay area or anywhere else, see whether their home is in that? 

Where would they go? Where is the resource they can go to, to see 

whether their property or where they are living is located in that 

zone? 

Dr. KNABB. The best advice is to contact your local emergency 

management agency in your county, your city. In the state of Florida, you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting information from 

them about what evacuation zone, if any, that you live in. 

Your local emergency managers have prescribed those evacuation 

zones, in large part based on guidance from the Hurricane Center 

on who is vulnerable to storm surge. So when they prescribe those 

evacuation zones, they are doing it for good reason. When they call 

for evacuations and tell people to evacuate, it is vital that they go 

because they will do that based on advice from the National 

Weather Service on who is vulnerable to storm surge in that situation. 

Senator RUBIO. To that, I would just add, oftentimes, this is anecdotal, but I’ve heard from people who live on the sixth floor of 

a building and their argument is that there is not going to be water 

on the sixth floor. That is not really the point. The point is if you 

live on the sixth floor but the street is heavily flooded, you can’t 

27 

get out, nothing can get in. And if, God forbid, you have a medical 

emergency, responders can’t get there either. 

So people need to understand that being in the zone, it doesn’t 

matter if you’re on the tenth floor of a big building. That doesn’t 

mean you’ll be able to get out for days to come in a worst-case scenario, such as the one you described. 

Senator Markey? 

STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD MARKEY, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS 

Senator MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for 

this very important hearing. 

Although it was a Nor’easter that delivered the perfect storm, 

Massachusetts is not immune to hurricanes. We saw the effects 

from Hurricane Noel in 2007, Hurricane Earl in 2010, and Hurricane Irene in 2011; storms that began off the coast of Africa, traveled across the Atlantic, hang a right, and sometimes find themselves in New England. 

And if they are anything like Boston drivers, they do so without 

a turn signal. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator MARKEY. That is what we get hit with. 

But with the National Hurricane Center at the wheel, we have 

the best science and technology to predict where the storms are 

going to go. You are our needed turn signal, and we thank you for 

that. 

But there is still room to improve. There are still many questions 

about hurricanes. Answers to them will enhance the prediction of 

track intensity and when a storm may transition into an 

extratropical system, one that is powered by differences in atmospheric temperatures rather than ocean temperatures that drive 

hurricanes. 

One of the big questions remaining is: what will hurricanes look 

like in a warmer world? Scientists expect stronger storms with a 

higher frequency of the most intense storms, and heavier rainfall. 

In addition, sea level rise will enhance the threat from coastal 

storms and flooding. 

While hurricanes are sometimes such that we can only predict 

and prepare for them, we can do something to steer the path of climate change, and we must do that. Now that is of concern to us 

because of all the places on the planet, the entire planet, it is the 

sea surface temperatures off of New England that are warming 

faster than any place else on Earth. 

As temperatures continue to warm along the mid-Atlantic and 

New England coast, how might the northern extent of these storms 

change, Doctor? 

Dr. KNABB. Certainly, there is a lot that we know about how the 

climate has changed up to this point. It is rather uncertain how 

much the numbers and strength of hurricanes have changed in the 

decades prior to leading up to now, mainly because we haven’t had 

current monitoring tools as long as people might think. We have 

only had the satellites for half a century, and aircraft reconnaissance since the 1940s. 

28 

Then looking forward, there still remains a lot of uncertainty 

with regard to what will change in terms of the numbers and 

strength of hurricanes. 

Senator MARKEY. So especially the kinds of storms that lose 

strength as they head north? What could it mean in the future as 

our ocean gets warmer and warmer in terms of the intensity of 

these storms further north as they get that extra fuel out of the 

ocean? 

Dr. KNABB. We have many, many events in the northeastern 

U.S. to point to in the last many decades to show it is a relatively 

frequent occurrence to have systems, hurricanes, major hurricanes 

moving north and then having tremendous impact up in the Northeast. 

In fact, one of these days, Senator Rubio, we are going to start 

having hurricanes in Florida like they do in the Northeast. We 

have had them hitting the Northeast with quite a bit of frequency 

the last few years. 

The main concern I have with regard to how hurricane impacts 

are going to change in the future, and many cities and states in 

the Northeast are no exception, is that even if the numbers and 

strength of hurricanes don’t change, and even if the behavior of the 

storms that move up the East Coast and into the Northeast don’t 

change, the potential for rising sea levels, the increased population, 

and the increased infrastructure, I am really worried about increased impacts from storm surge, from heavy rainfall. 

And that, to me, is the biggest challenge that we face in coastal 

regions over the years and decades to come. 

Senator MARKEY. When we had that huge 111-inch snowstorm 

last winter, a series of snowstorms that just came week after week, 

they were measuring temperatures in the ocean off of Boston 20 

degrees warmer than normal. This was off the coast of Boston in 

the winter. 

As that cold air hit them, that warmer water is really what led 

to that Gronkowski-like spike of snow that came down on us. It 

was a very simple phenomenon. 

Obviously, we are getting more concerns as our waters warm in 

terms of what the implications can be, because it was a ‘‘there but 

for the grace of God’’ situation that the storm that hit New Jersey 

and New York did not hit us just 3 years ago. 

Can you discuss some of the forecasting challenges with 

extratropical transition and why it is hard to predict exactly when 

the changes from a tropical storm to something that looks more 

like a Nor’easter will occur? 

Dr. KNABB. Yes, as Sandy and many other storms in the past 

have shown, it is in real time rather uncertain, in many cases, to 

forecast exactly when a tropical cyclone, a tropical storm, a hurricane, will lose its tropical characteristics. 

The reason that is difficult is that involves the changes in the 

inner core structure of a hurricane. That is very difficult to forecast. Computer forecast models are getting better at forecasting 

that. But because that is so difficult, and because that kind of transition can happen near the coastline, after the dilemma we faced 

in Sandy going forward, we can continue to issue National Hurricane Center forecasts and advisories even after a hurricane has 

29 

lost its tropical characteristics. We can maintain or issue tropical 

storm or hurricane watches and warnings. We can do that also for 

the storm surge watches and warnings, once they become operational in 2017, for a tropical system, a hurricane that loses its 

tropical characteristics. 

In addition, for a purely extratropical situation, NOAA is taking 

a proactive approach in looking at all of the components of our 

agency that could bring to bear forecast products and warnings for 

extratropical storm surge. 

Senator MARKEY. May I ask one final question, Mr. Chairman? 

Thank you. 

In recent years, we have seen more land-falling storms in the 

Northeast, in the mid-Atlantic, than we have in Florida. Can you 

talk about that phenomenon and what you think might be occurring? 

Dr. KNABB. Where the hurricanes go from year to year, from decade to decade, is a very chaotic system. It is not very predictable 

at all. 

We have had periods in the past, like the 1950s, that were very, 

very busy for the East Coast, the mid-Atlantic, and northeastern 

hurricanes. Then we saw what happened in 2004 and 2005 with 

Florida receiving unprecedented back-to-back hurricane impacts in 

each of those years. 

No one knows where this year’s hurricanes are going to go. I 

have not seen convincing research that tells us we can predict who 

is going to get more hurricane landfalls in the future. 

But I do know that for any of us, Texas to Maine, and places inland from the coast, it is simply a matter of when, not if, the next 

tropical storm or hurricane brings wind, water, or both to your 

community worse than you have ever experienced. So no one is off 

the hurricane hook this year or in future years. 

Senator MARKEY. Thank you for your good work. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. KNABB. Thank you, Senator. 

Senator RUBIO. Thank you, Senator Markey. 

I want to thank you, Dr. Knabb, for being here today. It is a 

timely hearing that hopefully, in addition to informing members of 

this panel and the Senate about the important work you do and 

what needs to happen, I hope it will also serve to inform the public 

about the constant threat we face from these weather events. It is 

no longer just a southern U.S., southeastern U.S., Gulf of Mexico 

issue, but, in fact, one that is increasingly impacting other parts 

of our country, as we have heard here today. So I thank you. 

The hearing record is going to remain open for two weeks. During this time, Senators are asked to submit any questions they 

might have for the record. 

Upon receipt, Dr. Knabb, I ask that you submit your written answers to the Committee, if there are any, as soon as you possibly 

can. 

With that, that concludes our hearing. 

I want to thank you again for appearing today. 

The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 3:28 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

(31) 

A P P E N D I X 

RESPONSE TO WRITTEN QUESTION SUBMITTED BY HON. JOHN THUNE TO

DR. RICHARD KNABB

Question. We have been monitoring the situation of the necessary relocation of 

NOAA’s Aircraft Operations Center (AOC). Our understanding is that moving forward NOAA plans to award a short-term lease option on, or before, January 2017, 

that will not exceed 10 years. In order to retain AOC’s highly specialized staff and 

meet the Atlantic hurricane mission requirements, NOAA has focused its short-term 

airfield and hangar options within 50 road miles of the MacDill AFB main gate. For 

the long-term solution, NOAA plans to initiate a Nationwide Business Case Analysis. If a nearby location for the long-term airfield and hangar solution cannot be 

found, what other locations would meet NOAA’s mission requirements? 

Answer. NOAA’s aircraft mission requirements cover many areas ranging from 

snow water equivalent detection, to air chemistry research, to winter storms, El 

Nin ̃ o, and of, course, hurricanes. NOAA aircraft fly missions in areas spanning the 

entire United States, to include the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, and covering 

most of the Atlantic Ocean. Supporting NOAA’s hurricane missions are arguably 

NOAA’s most critical requirement and locating the NOAA aircraft Operations Center in the southeastern states, especially Florida, is most effective for meeting that 

particular mission. Extensive costs to ‘‘pre-stage’’ aircraft to be able to support the 

hurricane missions make other locations farther away from this region much less 

favorable and not affordable. 

RESPONSE TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY HON. MARCO RUBIO TO

DR. RICHARD KNABB

Question 1. Technology has taken us from a time where the only forecasting available was from the conditions fishermen and mariners were able to relay to shore, 

to a time of satellites, super computers, intelligent minds and a fleet of aircraft. 

What would you credit as the biggest advancement in hurricane forecasting? 

Answer. Multiple technological advancements during the past several decades 

have simultaneously contributed to our increased understanding of hurricanes and 

to improvements in our forecasting capabilities. Geostationary satellites arguably 

provide our forecasters with their most fundamentally critical observational data for 

monitoring all stages of a hurricane’s development and life cycle, leading to indispensable benefits to timely forecasts and warnings. Data from polar orbiting satellites are also extremely important, for our computer models to correctly depict and 

then forecast the state of the atmosphere on a larger scale, and these data also enhance human analyses of tropical cyclone internal structure and environmental factors that contribute to better forecasts. Advances in physical sciences knowledge, 

coupled with these improvements in observing, have also led to improvements in understanding and modeling. Aircraft reconnaissance data provide much needed smaller-scale data from within tropical cyclones and developing disturbances that are 

vital to our operational forecasts and warnings, and these data are also increasingly 

utilized by higher-resolution hurricane forecast models, including those currently in 

operational use and those still under development via programs like the Hurricane 

Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP). Overall, the combinations of advancements 

in satellite data observations, improvements in the understanding of the physical 

factors, and advanced computer model forecasts, augmented by aircraft reconnaissance in our areas of responsibility, have together produced the advancements in 

hurricane forecasting that we have seen and that we expect will continue. 

Question 2. Speaking of advancements, NOAA has been testing a small unmanned 

aircraft system (UAS) that is deployed directly from the P–3 Hurricane Hunter. This 

UAS, named ‘‘the Coyote,’’ is expected to better capture atmospheric data in areas 

of a storm where manned aircraft cannot travel. This technology is promising, especially as the costs of the unit can decrease. What is the status of the Coyote and 

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its use for the 2016 season? Where do you see the technology taking us—what, in 

your opinion, is the next step in hurricane forecasting advancement? 

Answer. NOAA has six Coyote UAS aircraft available to test in 2016. The goal 

is to fly these Coyote into mature hurricanes and transmit critical data in real time 

to NOAA’s operational centers (National Hurricane Center and Environmental Modeling Center). While not currently a significant part of our operational analysis and 

forecasting process, operational forecasters can view and evaluate data from the 

Coyote, providing feedback to researchers. The goal for the NOAA UAS Coyote is 

to transform this promising R&D technology into a more economical operational 

tool. Operational forecasters are eager to see how this technology evolves, because 

platforms like the Coyote offer the potential to linger at specified flight levels and 

collect data in portions of the hurricane circulation where more data are needed 

more frequently. Modifying instruments currently used on the GPS dropsondes and 

integrating them with the targeted low level flight capabilities of the Coyote UAS 

has the potential to allow scientists to regularly and reliably sample the lowest regions of the hurricane for an hour or longer which could be valuable for increased 

understanding of hurricane physics, and ultimately operational model and forecast 

improvements. We still envision that the manned aircraft used by NOAA and the 

U.S. Air Force will continue to be our primary operational sources of aircraft data 

within hurricanes for the foreseeable future, due to many characteristics such as 

their fast speed, ability to survey a storm in the period of time needed for operational forecasts and warnings, and ability to carry a full payload of necessary instrumentation. 

NOAA is pursuing other technological advancements that could prove important 

in advancing hurricane prediction, including the capability to enhance wind measurements in and around hurricanes through the use of Doppler Wind Laser Radar 

(Lidar) and evaluating the impact of real time weather data gathered by the NASA 

Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial System on weather and hurricane prediction models. 

We are also looking forward to the detailed data that will be available from 

GOES–R—which is scheduled to be launched later this fall. 

Question 3. I wholeheartedly agree that we need to be a Weather-Ready Nation, 

where our people, businesses and governments are prepared for, and able to respond 

quickly to, severe weather events. In terms of collaboration with Federal, state and 

local officials, can you speak to how important those partnerships are, and what, 

if any gaps exist? 

Answer. The collaboration with Federal, state, and local officials and the much 

broader community is essential to achieving a Weather-Ready Nation. We now have 

over 3,500 Weather-Ready Nation Ambassadors who are our partners, committed to 

working with NOAA and other Ambassadors to strengthen national resilience 

against extreme weather. In effect, the Weather-Ready Nation Ambassador initiative helps unify the efforts across government, non-profits, academia, and private 

industry toward making the Nation more ready, responsive, and resilient against 

extreme environmental hazards. We are seeing much more weather awareness than 

ever before, and we are hoping this trend will continue as we realize our vision of 

a Weather-Ready Nation. Part of meeting this goal will be increased emphasis on 

social science research to complement NOAA’s physical sciences research and operational activities. As an example of our proactive approach to promoting hurricane 

resilience, we collaborated more closely than ever before with numerous WeatherReady Nation Ambassadors in conducting the NOAA Hurricane Awareness Tour 

this past spring, resulting in increased media and public attention on tangible steps 

that individuals, families, and businesses must take well in advance of the next hurricane. 

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