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RESTORING U.S. LEADERSHIP 

IN WEATHER FORECASTING 

PART II 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JUNE 26, 2013 

Serial No. 113–38 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming 

DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY WEBER, Texas 

CHRIS STEWART, Utah 

VACANCY 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

DAN MAFFEI, New York 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

SCOTT PETERS, California 

DEREK KILMER, Washington 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC VEASEY, Texas 

JULIA BROWNLEY, California 

MARK TAKANO, California 

ROBIN KELLY, Illinois 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT

HON. CHRIS STEWART, Utah, Chair 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia 

RANDY WEBER, Texas 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

JULIA BROWNLEY, California 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

MARC VEASEY, Texas 

MARK TAKANO, California 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Wednesday, June 26, 2013 

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2 

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3 

Opening Statements 

Statement by Representative Chris Stewart, Chairman, Subcommittee on 

Environment, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House 

of Representatives ................................................................................................ 10 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 11 

Statement by Representative James Bridenstine, Vice Chairman, Subcommittee on Environment, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, 

U.S. House of Representatives ............................................................................ 12 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 13 

Statement by Representative Suzanne Bonamici, Ranking Minority Member, 

Subcommittee on Environment, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ............................................................... 14 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 15 

Witnesses: 

PANEL I 

The Honorable Kathryn Sullivan, Acting Administrator, National Oceanic 

and Atmospheric Administration 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 16 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 19 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 35 

PANEL II 

Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier, Vice President for Research, Regents’ Professor for 

Meteorology, Weathernews Chair Emeritus, University of Oklahoma 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 46 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 49 

Dr. William Gail, Chief Technology Officer, Global Weather Corporation, 

President-Elect, American Meteorological Society 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 59 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 62 

Dr. Shuyi Chen, Professor, Meteorology and Physical Oceanography, Rosentiel 

School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Miami 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 71 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 74 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 87 

Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions 

The Honorable Kathryn Sullivan, Acting Administrator, National Oceanic 

and Atmospheric Administration ........................................................................ 96 
Page

IV 

Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier, Vice President for Research, Regents’ Professor for 

Meteorology, Weathernews Chair Emeritus, University of Oklahoma ............ 125 

Dr. William Gail, Chief Technology Officer, Global Weather Corporation, 

President-Elect, American Meteorological Society ............................................ 131 

Dr. Shuyi Chen, Professor, Meteorology and Physical Oceanography, Rosentiel 

School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Miami .................. 133 
(1) 

RESTORING U.S. LEADERSHIP 

IN WEATHER FORECASTING 

PART II 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 2013 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, Washington, D.C. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Chris Stewart 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 
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Chairman STEWART. The Subcommittee on the Environment will 

come to order. 

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to today’s hearing entitled 

‘‘Restoring U.S. Leadership in Weather Forecasting, Part II.’’ In 

front of you are packets containing the written testimony, biographies, and truth-in-testimony disclosures from today’s witness 

panels. 

And I now recognize myself for five minutes for an opening statement. 

I would like to thank the excellent witnesses for being with us 

today. We have two panels, and first, Dr. Sullivan, I thank you especially for being with us. We had the chance to spend some time 

together last week, and I enjoyed that and appreciated the opportunity to get to know you, and we look forward to working with you 

on many important issues. 

I would also like to welcome the Subcommittee’s new Vice Chairman, the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Bridenstine. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Thank you. 

Chairman STEWART. This hearing is the second installment in a 

process that we began last month to discuss legislation to enhance 

weather forecasting throughout targeted research investments at 

the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

Severe weather routinely affects large portions of the United 

States, and this year is no different. As we discussed in Part I of 

this hearing, the United States needs a world-class weather predicting system that effectively safeguards American lives and property. 

Today, we are discussing legislation that was recently introduced 

by Vice Chairman Bridenstine, a bill that I am proud to cosponsor. 

The Weather Forecasting Improvement Act of 2013 prioritizes forward-looking weather research, improves procurement of observing 

systems data from space and land, and opens up NOAA processes 

to encourage private sector weather solutions. The legislation is a 

down payment to upgrade our weather predicting systems that has 

fallen behind according to international standards. 

Now, let me be clear what the goal of this bill is. It makes the 

protection of lives and property through improved forecasting the 

top priority for NOAA. The bill does not micromanage the Agency— 

and I know, Dr. Sullivan, you will appreciate to hear that—but instead expands resources available for achieving this objective. 

I appreciate the wise counsel of the witnesses testifying today, 

and I think we can all agree that improved weather prediction is 

a goal worth pursuing. We should not let the perfect become the 

enemy of the good, and in these tight fiscal times, it is absolutely 

vital that our first and most important research programs are authorized by Congress and thus more protected from future budgetary constraints. 

At this time I would like to yield the remainder of my time to 

the Vice Chairman from Oklahoma, Mr. Bridenstine, to discuss his 

legislation and the positive impacts it would have to protect his 

State and this Nation from the life-threatening severe weather. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stewart follows:] 
11 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN CHRIS STEWART

Good morning and welcome to this morning’s Environment Subcommittee hearing 

titled ‘‘Restoring U.S. Leadership in Weather Forecasting Part II.’’ I’d like to thank 

our excellent witnesses for being here today. I’d also like to welcome the Subcommittee’s new Vice Chairman, the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Bridenstine. 

This hearing is the second installment of a process we began last month to discuss 

legislation to enhance weather forecasting through targeted research investments at 

the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Severe weather routinely affects large portions of the United States, and this year is no different. As 

we discussed at part I of this hearing, the United States needs a world-class weather prediction system that effectively safeguards American lives and property. 

Today we are discussing legislation that was recently introduced by Vice Chairman Bridenstine,a bill that I am proud to cosponsor. The Weather Forecasting Improvement Act of 2013 prioritizes forward-looking weather research, improves procurement of observing system data from space, air, and land, and opens up NOAA’s 

process to encourage private sector weather solutions. The legislation is a down payment to upgrade our weather prediction system that has fallen behind international 

standards. 

Let me be clear about the goal of this bill: It makes the protection of lives and 

property through improved forecasting the top priority for NOAA. The bill does not 

micromanage the Agency, but instead expands resources available for achieving this 

objective. I appreciate the wise counsel of the witnesses testifying today and I think 

we can all agree that improved weather prediction is a goal worth pursuing. We 

should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and in these tight fiscal times 

it is absolutely vital that our most important research programs are authorized by 

Congress and thus more protected from future budgetary constraints. 

At this time I would like to yield the remainder of my time to the Vice Chairman 

from Oklahoma, Mr. Bridenstine, to discuss his legislation, and the positive impacts 

it would have to protect his state and this nation from life threatening severe 

weather. 
12 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 

your leadership and for your co-sponsorship. And I look forward to 

working with you on this. I wanted to take just a few moments to 

recognize some important points about today’s hearing for me and 

the people of my State. 

Let me begin by saying how truly honored and proud I am to be 

here. This is my first hearing as the Vice Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Environment, and recent events have made me 

even more appreciative of the opportunities we as a committee will 

have to do important work for the American people over the next 

18 months. 

As every Oklahoman knows, tornadoes are an unavoidable challenge faced by millions of Americans. But we know equally well 

that every minute we can add to our tornado detection and alert 

system has a direct effect on the number of lives that can be saved. 

As the Subcommittee with jurisdiction over the agency responsible for weather research and prediction—the National Oceanic 

and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA—I believe we have a 

moral obligation to advance legislation to the full House that forces 

NOAA to place its highest priority on what is undoubtedly its most 

important duty: enhancing public safety through timely and accurate forecasts of severe weather systems. 

To implement these much needed reforms, I have recently introduced the Weather Forecasting Improvement Act of 2013. This legislation would establish within NOAA a Tornado Warning Extension Program aimed at improving the average time for a tornado 

warning from a few minutes to an hour or more. NOAA itself has 

indicated that this is a worthy and achievable goal, but sufficient 

resources and a dedicated effort is needed to make it a reality. 

This legislation aims to accomplish this not by requesting or 

spending any new funds at NOAA, but rather by shifting their priorities and resources away from lower priority climate and ocean 

research and towards weather forecasting research and innovation. 

The inadequacy of attention to potentially life-saving advances in 

weather forecasting is evidenced by the fact that NOAA’s research 

arm currently spends more than three times as much on climate 

change research as it does on weather forecasting research. Across 

all government agencies, the difference in these misplaced priorities can be measured in the billions of dollars. Today’s hearing is 

an important step towards the legislative solution needed to fix 

this problem. 

Finally, I want to thank Acting Administrator Sullivan and all 

of our witnesses for appearing here today, and extend a particularly warm welcome to Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier, who will be joining 

the second panel from my home State of Oklahoma. 

Dr. Droegemeier has been an invaluable resource both for my office and the staff of the Science Committee as we have developed 

this legislation, and I thank him for making the trip from the University of Oklahoma today to lend his perspective and answer questions for our committee. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bridenstine follows:] 
13 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE VICE CHAIRMAN JAMES BRIDENSTINE

Let me begin by saying how truly and honored and proud I am just to be here. 

This is my first hearing as the Vice-Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Environment, and recent events have made me even more appreciative of the opportunities 

we as a committee will have to do important work for the American people over the 

next 18 months. 

As every Oklahoman knows, tornadoes are an unavoidable challenge faced by millions of Americans. But we know equally well that every minute we can add to our 

tornado detection and alert systems has a direct effect on the number of lives that 

can be saved. 

As the Subcommittee with jurisdiction over the agency responsible for weather research and prediction—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or 

NOAA —I believe we have a moral obligation to advance legislation to the full 

House that forces NOAA to place its highest priority on what is undoubtedly its 

most important duty: enhancing public safety through timely and accurate forecasts 

of severe weather systems. 

To implement these much needed reforms, I have recently introduced the Weather 

Forecasting Improvement Act of 2013. This legislation would establish within NOAA 

a Tornado Warning Extension Program aimed at improving the average time for a 

tornado warning from a few minutes to an hour or more. NOAA itself has indicated 

that this is a worthy and achievable goal, but sufficient resources and a dedicated 

effort is needed to make it a reality. My legislation aims to accomplish this not by 

requesting or spending any new funds at NOAA, but rather by shifting their priorities and resources away from lower priority climate and ocean research and towards weather forecasting research and innovation. 

The inadequacy of attention to potentially life-saving advances in weather forecasting is evidenced by the fact that NOAA’s research arm currently spends more 

than three times as much on climate change research than it does on weather forecasting research. Across all government agencies, the difference in these misplaced 

priorities can be measured in the billions of dollars. Today’s hearing is an important 

step towards the legislative solution needed to fix this problem. 

Finally, I want to thank Acting Administrator Sullivan and all of our witnesses 

for appearing today, and extend a particularly warm welcome to Dr. Kelvin 

Droegemeier, who will be joining the second panel. Dr. Droegemeier has been an 

invaluable resource both for my office and the staff of the Science Committee as we 

have developed this legislation, and I thank him for making the trip from the University of Oklahoma today to lend his perspective and answer questions from our 

Committee. 
14 

Chairman STEWART. Thank you, Mr. Bridenstine. 

I now recognize the Ranking Member, the gentlewoman from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici, for her opening statement. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you, Chairman Stewart, for holding this 

hearing today. 

This is our second hearing to consider legislation to improve the 

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—NOAA’s—forecasting abilities. And I appreciate your willingness, Mr. Chairman, 

to work together to plan this hearing, and I am very pleased that 

we ended up with such a distinguished panel of witnesses. 

The views of NOAA, as represented by Dr. Sullivan, as well as 

those of the other three witnesses from the nongovernmental portion of the weather enterprise, will greatly enrich our understanding of how to improve weather forecasting. And I wanted to 

thank you, Chairman Stewart, for the bipartisan spirit you have 

shown in inviting collaboration on legislation. 

The draft bill we took testimony on in the first hearing has been 

replaced and expanded upon in the bill introduced by Subcommittee Vice Chair Mr. Bridenstine. There are many elements of 

that bill that are promising and I am particularly enthusiastic 

about the new section on tornado forecast research. I want to applaud the gentleman from Oklahoma for including that provision. 

We all agree that weather forecasting can and must be improved. 

As we learn more about weather forecasting in the United States, 

how it is done, and the partnership that has evolved among NOAA, 

academic researchers, and private businesses, it becomes evident 

that the core of the bill should be refocused away from its emphasis 

on research at OAR, or the office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, and more on the actual forecasters’ needs at the National 

Weather Service. Putting all of our legislative emphasis on the 

OAR seems inconsistent with our stated intention of improving 

forecasting and protecting lives. 

OAR is a research arm in NOAA that manages oceans, Great 

Lakes, climate, weather, and computer research. It makes more 

sense, Mr. Chairman, to authorize the National Weather Service 

directly and put the forecasting operation in the lead on guiding research into innovations that have real utility. If our goal is to enhance forecasting, empowering the forecasters would seem to be 

the obvious way to proceed, and this is in fact the way the Army, 

Navy, and Air Force all do their research-to-operations efforts. 

Additionally, the bill as drafted may create unnecessary conflict 

between the researchers at OAR and the forecasters and researchers at the National Weather Service, as well as between the weather portion of OAR and the oceans and climate portfolios at OAR. 

We need progress in all of these areas to improve forecasting. 

As Dr. Sullivan concisely explains in her testimony, in the scientific world, weather is classified at shorter timescales which technically extends to two weeks. Any forecast timescales beyond two 

weeks are classified as climate. So emphasizing weather research 

over climate research is likely to be counterproductive. 

As Dr. Droegemeier states in his testimony, all of us recognize 

the importance of balance between weather and climate investment 

in our Nation’s research and operations portfolio. Yet the traditional line dividing weather and climate is increasingly blurred as 
15 

climate models are now run at resolutions approaching those of 

weather models. Consequently, we would do well to consider weather and climate not as two distinct elements at the extreme ends of 

the spectrum but rather as inseparable parts of the Earth’s system. 

And I look forward to Mr. Droegemeier’s testimony further on that. 

Mr. Chairman, I am confident that working together we can craft 

a bill that is on target with the needs of the weather community, 

fiscally responsible, and protective of the public safety. I am very 

optimistic that your Subcommittee can draft a bill that is constructive and truly bipartisan. If we closely study the testimony we have 

received, it will give us a good guide for how to move forward, and 

I hope we can do that together. 

And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Bonamici follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE RANKING MEMBER SUZANNE BONAMICI

Thank you, Chairman Stewart, for holding this hearing today. This is our second 

hearing to consider legislation to improve the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 

Administration’s (NOAA’s) weather forecasting abilities. I appreciate your willingness to work together to plan this hearing, and I’m pleased that we ended up with 

such a distinguished panel of witnesses. The views of NOAA, as represented by Dr. 

Sullivan, as well as those of our three witnesses from the non-governmental portion 

of the Weather Enterprise, will greatly enrich our understanding of how to improve 

weather forecasting. 

I want to thank you, Chairman Stewart, for the bipartisan spirit you have shown 

in inviting collaboration on legislation. The draft bill we took testimony on in the 

first hearing has been replaced and expanded upon in the bill introduced by Subcommittee Vice Chair Mr. Bridenstine. There are many elements of that bill that 

are promising. I am particularly enthusiastic about the new section on tornado forecast research and I want to applaud the gentleman from Oklahoma for including 

that provision. 

We all agree that weather forecasting must be improved. As we learn more about 

weather forecasting in the United States—how it is done and the partnership that 

has evolved between NOAA, academic researchers, and private businesses—it becomes evident that the core of the bill should be refocused away from its emphasis 

on research at OAR, the Office of Oceans and Atmospheric Research, and more on 

the actual forecasters’ needs at the National Weather Service (NWS). 

Putting all our legislative emphasis on the OAR seems inconsistent with our stated intention of improving forecasting and protecting lives. OAR is a research arm 

in NOAA that manages oceans, Great Lakes, climate, weather, and computer research. It makes more sense, Mr. Chairman, to authorize the National Weather 

Service directly and to put the forecasting operation in the lead on guiding research 

into innovations that have real utility. If our goal is to enhance forecasting, empowering the forecasters would seem to be the obvious way to proceed; this is, in fact, 

the way the Army, Navy, and Air Force all do their research to operations efforts. 

Additionally the bill appears to create unnecessary conflict between the researchers at OAR and the forecasters and researchers at NWS, as well as the between 

the weather portion of OAR and the oceans and climate portfolios at OAR. We need 

progress in all of these areas to improve forecasting. 

As Dr. Sullivan concisely explains in her testimony, ‘‘In the scientific world, 

‘weather’ is classified at shorter time scales, which technically extends to two weeks. 

Any forecast timescales beyond two weeks are classified as ‘climate’.’’ 

Emphasizing ‘‘weather’’ research over ‘‘climate’’ research is likely to be counterproductive. As Dr. Drogemeier states in his testimony, ‘‘All of us recognize the importance of balance between weather and climate investments in our nation’s research and operations portfolio. Yet, the traditional ‘line’ dividing weather and climate is increasingly blurred as climate models are now run at resolutions approaching those of weather models. Consequently, we would do well to consider weather 

and climate not as two distinct elements at the extreme ends of a spectrum, but 

rather as inseparable parts of the Earth system.’’ 

Mr. Chairman, I am confident that, working together , we can craft a bill that 

is on target with the needs of the weather community, fiscally responsible, and protective of public safety. I am very optimistic that this Subcommittee can draft a bill 
16 

that is constructive and truly bipartisan. If we closely study the testimony we have 

received, it will give us a good guide for how to move forward and I hope we can 

do that together. 

Chairman STEWART. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici. And let me state 

as well that we look forward to working with you and other Members in a bipartisan fashion as I think is appropriate for a Subcommittee such as this. 

If there are Members who wish to submit additional opening 

statements, your statements will be added to the record at this 

point. 

It is now my honor to introduce our first witness panel. And our 

first witness today is Hon. Kathryn Sullivan, acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Acting Administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

Previously, Dr. Sullivan served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction, as well as 

performing the duties of NOAA’s Chief Scientist. She is a distinguished scientist, a renowned astronaut, which is in my opinion 

very cool, and an intrepid explorer. Dr. Sullivan earned her doctorate in geology. 

And as I am sure, Doctor, you know, spoken testimony is limited 

to five minutes after which the Members of the Committee will 

have five minutes each to ask questions. So I now recognize Dr. 

Sullivan for five minutes to present her testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE KATHRYN SULLIVAN, 

ACTING ADMINISTRATOR, 

NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION 

Ms. SULLIVAN. Thank you, Chairman Stewart, Ranking Member 

Bonamici, Members of the Committee. It is a pleasure to be with 

you this morning. 

I would like to start by thanking you for your support for NOAA. 

We share a goal of improving the United States’ weather forecasting, and so we welcome your interest in something about which 

we throughout the Agency also care very strongly. 

While the intent of the legislation as submitted is a very good 

one, we do have still a few serious concerns about some aspects of 

the bill. We look forward to working with you to discuss those in 

the weeks ahead. The products and services that the Nation has 

come to rely on from NOAA require research across many science 

disciplines and scales. I look forward to working with you to refine 

some aspects of the bill that will ensure that we can reach our 

shared goal of improved weather services and products. 

NOAA is entrusted with the responsibility of providing environmental intelligence to American citizens, businesses, and governments. This is what we all need to enable informed decisions on a 

range of Earth science issues and scales from the local to the global 

and the short-term to the long-term. We provide a suite of products 

and services, including reliable and timely delivery of public weather warnings that save lives and property and enhance our national 

economy. 

Much of our success in providing these products and services 

comes from scientific and technological breakthroughs produced by 
17 

research across scientific disciplines and a range of time and space 

scales. Therefore, we caution and appreciate the Committee’s concerns about erecting artificial boundaries between these disciplines 

or across these scales that would hinder the advancement of our 

mission and the critical research that can help achieve the goal we 

share. 

Our understanding of Earth system phenomena along short and 

long timescales strengthens our weather products and services and 

allows us to examine the ways in which we can make improvements such as highly accurate hurricane track predictions further 

in advance. Emergency management officials have indicated to us 

that at ideal capacities, NOAA would provide highly consistent and 

accurate hurricane landfall predictions at days five and six, allowing for pre-positioning of crews and enhanced evacuation efforts. 

Many economic sectors would see significant cost savings with 

highly accurate drought predictions ranging 6 months to several 

years in advance. 

If NOAA is to achieve these goals and also achieve the improved 

warning we need on severe and acute events like tornadoes and severe storms, we must have the flexibility to research both shorter 

and longer timescale phenomena. 

Historically, weather and climate models only incorporated atmospheric inputs and outputs. In recent years, scientists have recognized the need for these to be integrated with ocean observation 

and science to provide a more accurate picture of how our entire 

Earth system works. 

For example, the El Nı ̃no Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is a recurring pattern of periodic warming and cooling in ocean temperatures off the coast of South America. These significant changes in 

tropical Pacific water temperature affect weather patterns worldwide. Daily and seasonal weather in the United States are affected 

by these slightly longer-term seasonal climate events. So improving 

our weather forecasts requires that we follow the science and apply 

our research and observational efforts appropriately across the continuum of time and space. 

Advanced computing assets and modeling methods are also crucial elements of our national forecasting infrastructure. Over the 

past two decades, our tornado warning lead times have more than 

doubled and we share your aim of continuing to improve the timeliness of such warnings. Computing capacity and computer modeling 

are indispensable to this. 

The upgrade to NOAA operational computers that is scheduled 

to be completed next month marks a big step forward and we 

thank you for supporting the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 

2013 that made this possible. In addition, the President’s Fiscal 

Year 2014 budget requests further funds for NOAA to take the 

next vital step forward in operational supercomputing, ultimately 

providing a 27-fold increase in computing capability by 2015 and 

putting us on par with the world-leading forecast centers again. 

NOAA uses many tools to help determine what new data or technologies will yield the best improvements in forecast accuracy and 

so warrant investment. Observing System Simulation Experiments, 

or OSSEs, are just one of these tools. They are computationally intensive and time-consuming. Observing system experiments and 
18 

adjoint simulations are two other tools that can provide similar analytical insight and rigor much more efficiently. Thus, we would 

hope the final bill would not stipulate that only OSSEs be used to 

assess the relative value and benefits of observing systems. 

NOAA regards the protection of the people of the United States 

from the devastation that weather can bring as a sacred trust and 

duty. Fulfilling this obligation requires a robust, flexible, and integrated program of sustained environmental observations, scientific 

research aimed at computing our forecasts and warnings, and cutting-edge modeling and computing. Our end goal is a weatherready Nation. We appreciate the bill’s intent to advance this cause 

and look forward to working with you to refine its provisions. 

I thank you again for the opportunity to testify on this important 

matter and am happy to take your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Sullivan follows:] 
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Chairman STEWART. Thank you, Dr. Sullivan, for your testimony 

today. Thank you for your extraordinary service to your country for 

many years. 

I would remind the Members that Committee rules limit questioning to five minutes. And the Chair will at this point open the 

round of questioning, and the Chair recognizes himself for five minutes. 

Dr. Sullivan, you mentioned a couple things in your testimony I 

would like to maybe expand on a little bit. And the first one I 

would like to go a little quickly, saving time for, perhaps, a second 

question as well. You mentioned the money provided by the Super 

Storm Sandy relief funding that was appropriated recently and 

that NOAA has committed to Congress to immediately undertake 

two very important OSSEs, or the Observing System Simulation 

Experiments, to assess potential gap-filling satellite technologies. 

And in our meeting last week, we had a chance to talk about this 

just a little bit, GPS radio occultation and the geostationary 

hyperspectral sounding. 

For this latter technology can you explain to the Committee your 

evaluation criteria? Are you going to evaluate a constellation of six 

instruments around the globe or only a single sounder here in 

North America? And can you then give us some insight into, you 

know, with that decision how that will affect the results of these 

experiments? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

That Observing System Simulation Experiment, as I understand, 

is still being formulated. I don’t have at hand the detail of whether 

a—whether the initial plan is to do a single instrument or then a 

full complement of 6 or what the time and computational resource 

required to do either and both of those would be, but I would be 

happy to get that for you. 

Chairman STEWART. Okay. Help me understand. Can you get 

meaningful data with just one or do you really need six to draw 

very meaningful conclusions? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. That is a very subtle, technical answer that goes 

to how the data would be incorporated into global forecast models. 

I would have to get some of our scientific experts to give you a view 

on that. 

Chairman STEWART. Okay. Well, I look forward to those—you 

know, that reply from you. It would be helpful for us. 

And, you know, I wouldn’t presume that you can’t achieve what 

you want to do with only the one, but it would certainly seem like 

six is much more meaningful and I am sure you have constraints 

regarding funding that would impact that. 

Ms. SULLIVAN. Certainly to provide—and when you run a global 

model, you need to initialize it, start it out with some initial conditions. And to do that you need to sample the entire globe. 

So we take today, for example, polar satellite data, sounding 

data, from all across the globe and we take ground-based instrumentation data from all across the globe shared by international 

partners at no cost to each nation. So that is the current 

initialization. It does make first-order sense. If indeed the performance of the hyperspectral sounder proved out, as is postulated in 
36 

the written literature, it certainly might make sense, but that density and precision could aid in the initialization of global models. 

Chairman STEWART. Okay. Thank you. And again, we look forward to more detailed response on that. 

I think you will like my second question. It is a little easier perhaps. What are—you know, we have seen so much—so many advances in technology, so much—such a greater result over the last 

couple decades, certainly from when I was younger, and it is remarkable really. But, of course, there is much more that we can do 

and so I would ask you, what are some of the promising technologies and some of the promising research areas that you are not 

able to pursue because of some perhaps restrictions in funding? 

What would you like to be doing that you are not able to do right 

now? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I would focus on two things, and my answer will 

pick up the piece of Mrs. Bonamici’s statement. One of the things 

that we have found most fruitful within NOAA to making—really 

advancing the research, making sure we have got a sharp focus on 

the most important things to move forward on, and ensuring it couples closely and rapidly into the forecast world are co-locations and 

testbeds. 

So I can cite two, one from the Vice Chairman’s home State, 

which I know he knows well. At the National Weather Center at 

the University of Oklahoma in Norman, we have co-located the National Weather Service’s Weather Forecast Office, the actual operational forecasters; our National Center for Severe Storms Prediction. Anytime you see ‘‘the Severe Storm Center says’’ on your 

television, that is coming from NOAA, from the main forecasting 

engine that produces American weather forecasts; and finally, our 

Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research’s National Severe 

Storms Lab. 

Putting those three entities so close together, letting the scientists and the forecasting experts really work very flexibly and 

fluidly with each other and work together around what has been 

developed—they are called a hazardous weather testbed—has really been a—made a tremendous difference in the rate of advance 

and refinement of the forecasters’ tools. 

So what we aim to do at NOAA, frankly, in essentially all of our 

research, we are not really a blue sky research agency. Yes, we do 

research that is labeled climate. Far the great majority of that research within NOAA is seasonal to interannual and very directly 

oriented towards understanding the longer-term underlying patterns that shape daily and seasonal weather in the United States. 

And these close couplings with the Severe Storms Lab, the testbed, 

the Storm Prediction Center, and the forecasters have proven very 

fruitful. I would love to replicate that model in more places. 

Chairman STEWART. Okay. Great. You know, and my time is— 

has now ended. Maybe I could close with just these two observations. The first is obvious, and that is as Mr. Bridenstine has indicated in what took place recently in his home State. There is more 

that we can do and the technology is available for us now perhaps 

where we can take some generational leaps forward in providing a 

longer warning period and more safety and security for people. And 

we look forward to working with you in helping that come to pass. 
37 

The Chair now recognizes Ms. Bonamici for her questions. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And I want to follow up on your previous answer, Dr. Sullivan, 

but before that, I want to join the Chairman in thanking you for 

all your service. I really liked reading in your testimony about your 

view from the shuttle showing the interconnectedness of all the 

systems. 

So following up on your last answer, Dr. Sullivan, according to 

some weather experts and people who have raised concerns about 

proposals to reallocate significant resources from NOAA’s climate 

and ocean investments to weather forecasting. So I noted in several 

places in your written testimony where you caution us against actions to increase one important mission area to the detriment of 

NOAA research programs in climate or ocean science. So will you 

please explain how climate and ocean research and research flexibility are critical to NOAA’s mission providing more timely accurate weather forecast? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. Thank you, Mrs. Bonamici. I would be delighted 

to do that. 

Let me open by saying that weather forecasting and the protection—the forecast services that protect American lives and livelihood already—are already NOAA’s highest priority. They are encoded in national security functions that we are directed to fulfill 

by the President of the United States in support of the Commerce 

Department’s mandates. So they stand already far head and shoulders above many other things that we do. 

How is this flexibility important? How does it help us? Let me 

cite our Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program to give you an 

example of that. This was assembled after a state of land falling 

hurricanes, very devastating hurricanes. We brought together academic, federal, outside researchers and forecasters. We looked at 

the spectrum of underlying causal factors, what patterns in the atmosphere lend to the formation of hurricanes, shape them, steer 

them, stop them? What phases of things do we need to understand? 

The answer is a mixture of things ranging from understanding 

decades-long oscillations in the Earth that put the Earth sometimes in a phase we are in now where the Atlantic basin is very 

active, and then a few decades later in the phase when the Atlantic 

basin is not very active. That is a deep underlying heartbeat of the 

planet. To know the predictability of hurricanes, we need to understand those kind of longer-term heartbeats. 

But to really get track and intensity right is also clear on the 

other end of the scale. We need to have models that can resolve the 

actual inner core of a hurricane very precisely. So this Hurricane 

Forecast Improvement project set out an array of research endeavors coupled to this purpose across that timescale. They cross-check 

regularly and frequently which ones are advancing. They created 

a stream that could advance and yield benefits to forecasting with 

the operational supercomputing assets in place at the moment and 

they yielded a second stream that could take us even further if we 

could step ahead the capacity of the operational supercomputer, 

like way ahead. And then they created another stream to bridge 

them and make sure that we didn’t leave good results sitting on 

the sidelines for any longer than are necessary. 
38 

The flexibility of this sort of integrated team to move those pieces 

back and forth under a broad charge given by the Congress to get 

better hurricane forecasting, get these targets by these times, and 

then the throttle-setting that the Congress can allow us each year 

in the appropriations has really made that a tremendously fruitful 

program. I think that is a great model to emulate. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you. And this is similar to the Chairman’s 

second question. Based on your years of experience and your expertise, what changes if any should be made to the structure or processes at NOAA to provide continuing improvement in weather forecasting? Are there some structural things that could change that 

would help improve them? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. We are trying to make some of those now, and I 

think a couple others could help. Again, I would cite the Hurricane 

Forecast Improvement Program. It had many strands of activity 

under it but it was agreed upon with the Congress at the level of 

the program and then appropriated at that level each year. That, 

in my view, is a sound and healthy balance of the rightful prerogatives of the Congress and the flexibility needed to adjust programs 

as they evolve and deal with setbacks when they occur as—you 

know, as they will in the research arena. 

We have also—I think if we can improve the way we all look at 

keeping NOAA’s operational supercomputers closer to the cutting 

edge, we would find a great improvement there. 

And I will give you one great example. We have research models 

running. In fact, the research model that runs under the hurricane 

program cannot be put into the operational supercomputer right 

now. So during hurricane season we run the National Hurricane 

Center, and we run this research model in real time because we 

can’t fit it into the operational supercomputer. We should be able 

to fit it in. We have a model that could have forecasted last year’s 

diverter 12 hours in advance. It did. It did but it was running in 

research mode. We need to be able to move those more rapidly into 

supercomputing rather than waiting so long for big-step functions 

in our supercomputers. 

Ms. BONAMICI. That is very helpful. Thank you very much, Dr. 

Sullivan. 

And I see my time is expired. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman STEWART. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici. 

We now recognize the Vice Chair, Mr. Bridenstine, for five minutes. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Dr. 

Sullivan, for being here. I have just a few questions. 

You would agree that increasing tornado warning lead times is 

as much as one hour is a priority of NOAA’s? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I wouldn’t set one hour necessarily as a priority, 

Mr. Bridenstine. There is a significant response question as to 

what people would do with one hour. And I think we have begun 

mounting in concert again with the weather center down in Norman some social science and risk communication research lines to 

understand A) is that the right target to set? And B) if it were, 

what do we need to understand about how to present and communicate that so that it doesn’t become something somebody heard 

and then got busy on something else and then by the time the hour 
39 

came they were immersed in a video game and the tornado ran 

right over them. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. So more lead time would be more dangerous? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. More lead time if it triggered the inappropriate 

response to take safety—— 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Is it—— 

Ms. SULLIVAN. —could be inimical to the gain—— 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. —you are impugning the motives of the people 

we are trying to protect. If they had an hour lead time, that would 

be better than 16 minutes, which is what the people in Oklahoma 

got this time, correct? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I do believe longer than 16 would be beneficial. 

I am simply saying there is a genuine question about how humans 

respond to impending risks that are—risk scientists tell us we need 

to be cautious about in just imagining that an hour or a day is the 

right time frame to communicate on. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. So the—— 

Ms. SULLIVAN. So I consider it an open question. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. And so the government should make decisions 

about how much lead time we give people because we know better 

than they know how to protect themselves? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. No, we should understand how to communicate 

the information we have so that it is effective for the people who 

have those decisions to take. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. So, let’s say we had an hour lead time. Would 

you suggest we should withhold that information because an hour 

is too much and people aren’t smart enough to take cover? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. We provide five and three day outlooks now to 

citizens and to emergency managers in a rich dialogue that has 

evolved over time to where we know how—we all know how to respond to that information. And again, there are powerful instances 

from your home State and town of communities doing just that. I 

will defer to Dr. Droegemeier to amplify on it. He has lived through 

them. 

So I am not saying withhold it. I am simply saying that the challenge of communicating forecast information effectively to decisionmakers is a genuine question that needs to be approached thoughtfully, and the best scientists I know on this question cautioned me, 

including scientists at the National Weather Center, cautioned me 

the questions we need to probe together to be sure we would communicate that information effectively and not unintentionally have 

exactly the result we didn’t want. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Okay. Are you—you are familiar with the 

phased array radar, obviously, that is in Norman, Oklahoma—— 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I am. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. —and I am a Navy pilot myself and certainly 

I have been involved in these kind of technologies from a war-fighting perspective and the ability to detect targets from long distances 

and direct energy in a very specific and dynamic way to get precise 

measurements I think is critically important. Is this technology 

something that you believe we could advance to the point where we 

could deploy it in a way where we could get an hour lead time? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. It is—I don’t have the technical acumen to conclude that phased array radar itself is pivotal to that. We are still 
40 

learning a lot about what the dual polarization NEXRAD radars 

can give us. I would go back to the example that I cited to Mrs. 

Bonamici in assimilating NEXRAD current radar into very fine resolution models, which we are running in research mode. 

Last year, in June of 2012, in fact very accurately forecast the 

retro line of very severe storms which were tornadic-strength 

storms 12 hours in advance. So we do already know finer-scaled 

modeling, which requires better—much better computing capacity 

operationally than we currently have, and proper incorporation of 

that data, all 3 ingredients are critical. It is not just by a radar. 

But those three we have demonstrated could give us a 12-hour very 

good—not just the convective probability but there is the storm line 

and here is where we are propagating. 

MPAR is certainly—offers additional promise but we have had 

one of them that we are still experimenting with to understand just 

what that potential could be. And as your bill suggest, be sure that 

we really understood its contribution before we might make any 

nationwide deployment decision. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Let me ask you, if you were in Moore, Oklahoma, and somebody said to you maybe we shouldn’t have this type 

of research because if we gave you too much information too early 

you might not act on it, how do you think my constituents in Oklahoma would respond to that? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. But that is not what I am saying, sir. I am saying 

that I want to be sure I say to you, go now or some communication 

that you really register as the one that will prompt you to the action that you should take. And that—the language style mode of 

that communication is something that needs to be studied and 

worked with people like your constituents. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Okay. I yield back. 

Chairman STEWART. All right. Thank you, Mr. Bridenstine. 

And now, we turn to Ms. Edwards. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you, Chairman Stewart, Ranking Member 

Bonamici. I appreciate today’s hearing on weather forecasting. In 

my view, it is a necessary part 2 on a subject that greatly impacts 

the American public and our greater economy. 

And I am pleased that NOAA, which is headquartered in my 

Congressional District—thank you, Dr. Sullivan—has the opportunity to be before our committee today and to discuss efforts to 

improve weather and climate forecasting. 

Today’s panels are an improvement, I think, on the last that we 

have had. I am concerned about the legislation that we are discussing today. And, as indicated in the testimony of our witnesses, 

the legislation is really flawed in its execution in my view. NOAA 

is a multi-mission agency, and that means its priorities—ocean, atmosphere, climate, and weather—are interconnected. I think Dr. 

Sullivan has testified to that today. 

And given what we have learned and experienced with increasingly severe and more frequent severe storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, it is hard for me to believe that you can separate 

or slash funding of climate research when all of our weather scientists and our forecasters indicate the kind of interconnectivity 

that Dr. Sullivan has discussed. Our Earth is a system, and I think 
41 

in order to understand the processes, we have to understand it as 

a whole. 

And so with that, Dr. Sullivan, I know we have had a couple of 

one-on-one conversations about NOAA’s work and concern about 

where we stand vis-&-vis Europeans in weather forecasting. And I 

know we talked about our—the lagging in our supercomputer computing power as evidenced by some of the different modeling that 

we saw with Hurricane Sandy. And so I wonder if you could explain to the Committee some of the institutional differences between the U.S. Government’s role in weather forecasting versus 

Europeans’ that keep NOAA from being as cutting edge is we 

would like it to be? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. Thank you, Mrs. Edwards. 

The model that received such acclaim, rightfully, during the evolution of Hurricane Sandy, especially the early days, is a model run 

by the European Center for Midrange Weather Forecasting. That 

is a combination research and operational forecasting center that 

is charged with one and only one thing and that is to run a global 

model that gives a 12—10- to 12-day forecast. 

They have become very good at that. They—it is definitely one 

of the leading models at that time range. What else to say? That 

is all they do at the European Center so the rest of the products 

and services that most national hydro-meteorological services like 

NOAA are charged with fall to the U.K.’s Meteorological Office or 

Me ́te ́o-France or the Deutscher Wetterdienst. 

So to really understand what Europe is doing, you need to take 

a look at both the European Center and the collection of Federal 

or national-level weather services throughout each of the European 

states. That is closer to comparable. 

What does it—what else does European Center do that we would 

like to emulate more closely? They make consistent progressive investments in their main operational supercomputer. They have set 

a target and a policy of staying very close to the leading edge of 

computational capacity. In the United States, in contrast, we tend 

to step forward an operational supercomputer and live with it for 

quite a while as it falls further and further behind the cutting edge 

and then make a big step forward and let it fall back again. That 

has certainly been the case with work that has been going on at 

NOAA in the last five years. 

Europe has also focused on methods that determine how you 

take data into a model to a method called data assimilation or a 

step called data assimilation. It is almost—it is in some respects 

more important than what data do you have. You get the data in 

properly and understand the errors that it contains. They have pioneered new methods over at the European Center for data assimilation. They are very computationally intensive. We have not been 

able to adopt those methods in NOAA’s operating supercomputers 

because they are so intensive. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Do we need to? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. Well, I was just going to transition and say we 

know it is a good advance and so our scientists again—OAR scientists plus our satellite data scientists and our weather service 

scientists altogether developed a method that is as effective and 

less computationally intensive, and proof of that—solidity of that 
42 

advance is that the Europeans are now going to adopt our method 

because it does the same work more efficiently. 

So stay closer to the cutting edge in our operational supercomputer. It would be good. Places like our Science Center down in 

Norman that I cited as an example, emulate the kind of close coupling of research and operations that the European Center has. So 

we do know how to do that and we do it but we do it in a little 

more distributed and more topic-oriented fashion around aviation 

weather challenges, severe storm challenges, and tropical storm 

challenges than they have chosen to do in Europe. But we have a 

greater array and greater variety of weather phenomena in the 

United States than all of Europe combined. And so I think our plurality and our diversity suits this country’s needs. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you very much. 

Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman STEWART. Yes, Ms. Edwards. 

We now—Dr. Broun for your five minutes of questioning. 

Mr. BROUN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Sullivan, the Chairman, the Vice Chairman and I are all 

three pilots, and so we have been very engaged in weather issues 

for a long period of time and concerned about weather, and we are 

concerned not only from a pilot operational perspective but also 

how it affects all of our constituents and not only in our district 

but all across this country. 

The Fiscal Year 2014 request proposes 180 million for climate re- search and $82 million for weather research. If Congress were to 

spend 158 million on climate research and 112 million on weather 

research, would this help or hinder weather forecasting? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. Additional funding in weather forecasting would 

certainly help that effort. My concern would simply be to understand where—what are we giving up? NOAA’s climate research is 

not multi-decadal, century-scale climate research. It is climate research aimed at understanding and more closely relating phenomena such as the Pacific decadal oscillation or the Atlantic meridional oscillation to the weather phenomena that affect the 

United States so that we can extend our lead times on forecasts out 

beyond five days to maybe seven or ten days. 

These broad underlying patterns that are at climate timescales, 

we are—we believe are critical to unlocking the secrets. 

Mr. BROUN. Well, to just tag on to what Commander Bridenstine 

was just saying about time interval between tornado forecasts, I 

just found it incredible that you would even question giving people 

more advanced time for a warning of an impending tornado. 

But let me go back to that same question and let me ask it in 

a different way. Which contains—contributes to weather forecasting more? A dollar for climate research or a dollar for weather 

research? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. It depends on what the—each dollar is spent for, 

Dr. Broun. I can put a dollar into some aspects of weather research 

that are going to make only a minimal advance then I might make 

an advance in understanding just how El Nı ̃no effects seven day 

storm tracks and sets up convective patterns in the central United 

States that would do a lot better for Oklahomans than understanding when they are prone to tornado outbreaks. 
43 

Mr. BROUN. Well, I am sure the people in Oklahoma would like 

to have had an hour warning on their tornado that was bearing 

down upon them, and I think a dollar in weather forecasting research would have helped in that regard. 

Let me kind of change tracks a little bit. Dr. Sullivan, as you 

know, in 2012 a financial scandal was uncovered at the National 

Weather Service where a senior official moved money certainly 

without authorization and very highly unlike—illegally they moved 

that. They moved it between different accounts. It was reported 

that the amount of unauthorized transfers of money may have exceeded $100 million over several years. Did these transfers in any 

way negatively impact programs focused on transitioning new technologies from research into operations? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. Those transfers, Dr. Broun, were all within the 

National Weather Service itself and they were typically transfers 

from systems accounts, software upgrade accounts and things like 

that, into operations and management. So they were, as the investigation indicated, well-intentioned on the part of the offending individuals, which doesn’t justify the act but well-intentioned to try 

to support the forecasters in their everyday work where they felt 

they had budget shortfalls. 

Mr. BROUN. $100 million is a lot of money and moving things 

around illegally is certainly—should not be done by anybody, and 

my concern is that when we talk about tornadoes, when we talk 

about what I faced when I climbed into a cockpit in with these 

other gentlemen did, weather is an important issue. 

I understand climate research and I understand weather research, and I just disagree with maybe my Democratic colleagues 

over where our priorities should be set and obviously what you 

seem to be so wedded to as far as doing climate research. 

But the folks in Oklahoma need more advanced warning, and I 

don’t think it is the government’s responsibility to decide how they 

respond to that warning. We need to give people as much advanced 

warning as they possibly can for a tornado or hurricane or anything else. And doing weather research, I think, is extremely important. 

Now, I applaud the Vice Chair’s bill that he has put together and 

I think it is important for us to proceed, and hopefully, it will be 

marked up and we will pass it into law. 

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back. 

Chairman STEWART. Thank you, Mr. Broun. 

And our final questioner for this panel would be Mr. Weber from 

Texas. 

Mr. WEBER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Let me follow up, Dr. Sullivan, what Dr. Broun was asking 

about. I think when he asked you about the transfers that might 

have been illegal, you said the individuals were well-intentioned, I 

think? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. In their own mind, Mr. Weber, they professed to 

be doing things that they felt kept the weather forecast enterprise 

healthy as it needed to be in their mind. I don’t defend the statement. I am just reporting what they said in their depositions. 

Mr. WEBER. So were you aware of that when it took place? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I was not aware of it when it took place. 
44 

Mr. WEBER. How soon thereafter did you possess the knowledge 

that it had happened? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I try to recall that timeline. There—it came to 

NOAA’s attention through an Office of Investigator General complaint that was referred to us for action by the OIG. We very 

promptly acted on that, established in concert with the Office of the 

Secretary, an investigation and inquiry panel, placed some individuals on administrative leave, and proceeded to conduct an inquiry. 

Mr. WEBER. And was that time frame a month, a week, a year? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. The time frame from our receiving word of the 

problem to initiating the inquiry was hours. The inquiry was completed over some several months. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. Do you have knowledge as to what has happened to those particular individuals? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I do have knowledge and I—as I know the panel 

appreciates under the privacy laws of this country, I can’t speak to 

individual matters in open session. We have shared those details 

with our appropriators. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. Have they—and I am not asking for names 

or specifics, but have they been disciplined? Has anybody lost their 

job? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. Individuals have been disciplined. Individuals are 

no longer with NOAA. Financial controls have been thoroughly reviewed across the entire department and modified and strengthened, and training has been put into place for all senior officials. 

Mr. WEBER. I find the term well-intentioned individuals kind of 

interesting because I am just thinking when they—when those—as 

you called them well-intentioned individuals play fast and loose, if 

you will, with the rules, would you agree that one can certainly 

make that assessment—— 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I—— 

Mr. WEBER. —that they have played fast and loose with the 

rules? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. Oh, that they were either willfully and inexcusably ignorant of the rules or played fast and loose—— 

Mr. WEBER. Or they played fast and loose. We hear that a lot 

in this capacity that people are ignorant of certain things that go 

on, and I keep thinking to myself they should probably run for 

Congress at that level of ignorance. 

Nonetheless, when we up here look at a situation where someone 

plays fast and loose with the rules, can you understand that it 

gives us pause for concern when somebody brings a budget request 

to us and says this is going to negatively impact our ability to predict climate change and then we have to think, well, there has been 

reported incidences of people in that agency playing fast and loose 

with the rules. And I believe the quote is well-intentioned individuals who we would ascertain that played fast and loose with the 

rules. So when someone comes up with the budget request and 

they say this is going to impact us negatively, can you understand 

how we might draw a similar conclusion that may be that is a fast 

and loose playing with the rules that we might question that? 

Could you understand how we could come to that conclusion? 
45 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I follow your logic, Mr. Weber. I would ask that 

you attribute the fast—the well-intentioned to the people who said 

it and to the people who were doing the actions. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. 

Ms. SULLIVAN. It is certainly not my characterization of them. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. You don’t want to be associated with it. I 

don’t blame you. 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I don’t care to be associated with it—— 

Mr. WEBER. Right. 

Ms. SULLIVAN. —and I think I feel, judging from your comment, 

my reaction to and response to that incident and those behaviors—— 

Mr. WEBER. Right. 

Ms. SULLIVAN. —are very close to yours. 

Mr. WEBER. Right. Well, we would hope that it—that there 

would be enough oversight and enough safeguards in that agency 

that that kind of playing fast and loose with the rules A) as it purports to moving money—well, some of us have been afraid it was 

actually illegally—would also purport, too, that when you come to 

this committee or when you come to the Congress and say we need 

money for climate change and, yes, there is a discussion—this is 

going to be about climate change—that there is not the same kind 

of fast and loose playing with the facts. And that is what is our 

concern. 

And I know that you can’t speak for everybody but we just simply ask you to—implore you to make sure that that kind of fast and 

loose playing goes away and that if you have anything to do with 

it, well-intentioned individuals or otherwise, you make sure we get 

the facts. 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I assure you that I will do that, Mr. Weber. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. I appreciate that. And I yield back. 

Chairman STEWART. I thank you, Mr. Weber. 

Dr. Sullivan, thank you for your time today. Thank you for your 

testimony. There is one item I would like to follow up with if I 

could, and that is, as I—you may remember, last September you 

testified before the Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee on a 

hearing about the National Weather Service, and on November 6, 

Committee staff sent follow-up questions for the record to you as 

well as to one of your colleagues, Mrs. Maureen Wylie. 

The Committee has not yet received a response to those questions for the record. And I would ask if you would commit to me 

and to other Members of this Committee as well that you would 

answer those questions as soon as possible? 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I certainly will make that commitment to you, Mr. 

Chairman. The formal clearance processes, as I know you understand, sometimes wreak havoc with the actual timeliness and delivery. It is my understanding that we have had staff-to-staff conversations on those matters but the formal transmittal has been 

delayed. 

Chairman STEWART. Okay. Can you—— 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I admit we will work on that. 

Chairman STEWART. Can you give us some indication of when 

you—that would—that process would be complete and we could expect answers to those questions? 
46 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I will probe where that is—where things stand 

and get back to you on that. 

Chairman STEWART. Okay. So we are going to—you are going to 

get back to us on when you are going to get back to us. Is that— 

okay. 

Ms. SULLIVAN. I will get back to you on the timeline that I believe I can commit to. 

Chairman STEWART. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. 

Again, one more time, thank you for your testimony today. 

And, Members of the Committee, as we have discussed, can have 

additional questions for you and they—and we will ask you to respond to those in writing in an appropriate and timely fashion. 

And the witness is now excused and we will now move on to our 

next panel. Thank you, Dr. Sullivan. 

Ms. SULLIVAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman STEWART. At this time, I would like to introduce our 

second witness panel, and I will introduce them individually and 

then allow them time for their opening statements. 

Our first witness today is Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier, Vice President 

for Research and Regents’ Professor of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Droegemeier is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and a member of the National Research Council Board on Research Data and Information. 

In 2004, Dr. Droegemeier was appointed by President Bush to 

the National Science Board and was reappointed in 2010 by President Obama. He holds a Ph.D. in atmospheric science from the 

University of Illinois. 

And I will remind all of the witnesses that, as has already been 

stated, your spoken testimony is limited to five minutes each and 

after which Members of the Committee will have five minutes to 

ask questions. 

And I now recognize Dr. Droegemeier for five minutes to present 

his testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. KELVIN DROEGEMEIER, 

VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH, 

REGENTS’ PROFESSOR FOR METEOROLOGY, 

WEATHERNEWS CHAIR EMERITUS, 

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. Good morning, Chairman Stewart. Thank you 

so much. Ranking Member Bonamici, Mr. Bridenstine, good to see 

you. Thank you so much for the privilege to speak to you this 

morning on a very important matter. I appreciate all the work that 

you are doing to help protect our citizens from the destructive 

forces of nature. 

I offer my perspectives as a Professor of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. I have been there almost 30 years working at 

the National Weather Center as a meteorologist really at the nexus 

of severe weather in the Nation, in fact, in the world. I witnessed 

firsthand last month as these tornadoes ravaged parts of our State 

and many thousands of people no doubt would be dead today were 

it not for the extraordinary warning and prediction system we have 

in this country. 
47 

So great—thanks to NOAA and all the wonderful work they have 

done, but yet, in fact, our work is not done and we still have people 

dying. Even one death is really intolerable. 

I would like to make three very brief points for you this morning. 

First, I really do welcome this bold, focused initiative on high-impact weather prediction. It builds upon a strong foundation that we 

have in this country, a very, very solid foundation. It prioritizes 

key topics, and really the only thing I would add would be to build 

on what Dr. Sullivan said in terms of the prescriptiveness of the 

bill really allowing scientists to focus on the best tools and techniques to do things like assess observational needs. And I want to 

let you know that the academic community stands ready to work 

with you and to help you however we possibly can. You can marshal all of those resources. 

The second point was talked about in the last session. It is extremely important. As a meteorologist it may seem heretical for me 

to talk about the social sciences, but in fact this is a real people 

problem. Really, ultimately, what we are dealing with here is a loss 

of life, and our ability to deal with that means that we have to address the issues of how people understand and predict and prepare 

and so on, respond to warnings. We need to understand how we 

convey and formulate uncertainty in messaging to the public, how 

the public responds and comprehends warning information. There 

are issues of trust and source security of information and so on. 

And I think we have to even ask ourselves whether or not the 

whole current warning and watch system really needs to be rethought from the ground up starting with people because the people are the ones who are affected ultimately. 

Also, I would like to talk to the issue of tornado warning lead 

time. As specified in the Act, this is a very, very important issue, 

extremely important. It has to be looked at. But I think we want 

to be careful about not focusing entirely on that magical number 

because, ultimately, the question is, as Dr. Sullivan mentioned, 

what are people going to do with that one hour? 

In my written testimony, I give you a little narrative of what I 

saw firsthand on May 31 in Oklahoma as thousands of people fled 

their homes, put themselves in harm’s way because they had a 

very large amount of lead time without really knowing what to do 

with it. This issue resides in the domain of the human behavioral 

sciences. It is not a weather or technology problem. It is something 

we really have to learn how to address. And so I would argue that 

really our focus ought to be on the goal of zero deaths. Zero deaths. 

We achieved that in microbursts. 

Wind shear—you folks are pilots. You know, we had a lot of 

planes crashing back in the ’70s. We had a concerted attack on understanding the causes of wind shear we put in technology and 

training and over 20 years now have passed since then and no one 

has died in an aircraft accident due to wind shear. Zero deaths is 

not an unattainable goal and that puts our focus on people. 

Finally, I would like to highlight the importance of a truly interdisciplinary approach. Dr. Sullivan and Ranking Member Bonamici 

talked about this a little bit. In terms of our testbeds, these operational test beds that we have that integrate research and operations are very important. They exist but they need to be expanded 
48 

and improved and enhanced. They do a really wonderful job but we 

could yet do more. 

And I would suggest to you that this notion of research to operations is probably a little bit misconceived. It really says there is 

research over here and operations over here. I suggest that research plus operations, working hand-in-hand with the operational 

folks, working with the researchers hand-in-hand as we do in Norman, this wonderful hazardous weather testbed that truly is credited with saving lives, developing new technology, and the rigors of 

operational activities with scientists and operations people working 

together, that to me is the way that it ought to be done. 

I would like to close by showing you a brief movie here of the 

May 20 tornado in Moore and it gets to the question I was asked 

earlier about the value of MPAR and this movie, I will introduce 

it to you. We will go ahead and start it. 

[Video shown.] 

The first clip is of a TV station, KWTV Channel 9 in Oklahoma 

City. There is the Moore tornado. It is hailing; there is debris falling. And I am going to freeze it on a radar picture from the TV 

station you will see in a moment that shows where the current 

warning time comes from before you have a given thunderstorm, 

and then the path of the tornado is extrapolated based on its previous history. So there you see it. That hook-shaped image there 

in the lower left part is the tornado itself. That great part is the 

debris ball and the line moving from it to the Northeast is the 

track of the tornado at various times. So that is where we got the 

16, 30, 40 minutes of lead time. People in harm’s way saw that 

image. 

[Slide.] 

What I am showing you now is sort of the future. This is a picture of counties in Oklahoma and the two lines of inverted triangles are actual tornado paths in 2011. We reran the forecast of 

this situation there. You see the radar echoes forming. And as as 

this thing plays forward, you will see these black contours, these 

dark circles. Do you see them forming along the tornado track? 

This forecast was produced an hour in advance, experimentally, not 

in real time, but we got very, very close to predicting the occurrence of a real tornado of a real event an hour in advance. 

This is what is possible. Can we do it this good every time? No. 

You see some tornadoes down there in the lower right that have 

no real counterpart associated with them. And so the science is not 

there yet, but 20 years ago we didn’t think this was even theoretically possible. Now, we are not only able to show it is possible, but 

in the hazardous weather testbed, we are able to demonstrate it in 

real time working with operational forecasters. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Droegemeier follows:] 
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Chairman STEWART. Thank you, Mr. Droegemeier. I appreciate 

your testimony. 

Our second witness I would like to introduce as Dr. William Gail, 

Chief Technology Officer of the Global Weather Corporation and 

President-Elect of the American Meteorological Society. He was 

previously a Director in the Startup Business Group at Microsoft, 

Vice President of Mapping Products at Vexcel Corporation and Director of Earth Science Programs at Ball Aerospace. He is a lifetime associate of U.S. National Academy of Sciences Research 

Council, and Dr. Gail received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering 

from Stanford University. 

And Dr. Gail. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. WILLIAM GAIL, 

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, 

GLOBAL WEATHER CORPORATION, 

PRESIDENT-ELECT, AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY 

Dr. GAIL. Thank you. Chairman Stewart, Ranking Member 

Bonamici—— 

Chairman STEWART. Turn your microphone on, please. 

Dr. GAIL. Thank you. Chairman Stewart, Ranking Member 

Bonamici, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, it is a 

privilege to be here today and provide testimony. Thank you for 

your invitation. 

As was mentioned, I am Cofounder and Chief Technology Officer 

of Global Weather Corporation, a startup company providing precision weather forecast to businesses within the energy, media, 

transportation, and consumer sectors. I am also President-Elect of 

the American Meteorological Society, and I was a member of the 

recent National Research Council study advising on future directions for the National Weather Service. 

This is a tremendous time to be part of the weather community. 

We have an opportunity to serve the Nation, our citizens and businesses, far more effectively than has ever been possible. The reason 

is simple. Our work involves three basic cavities: observing the current weather, converting that information into forecasts, and getting the results to the people who need it. 

Each step in this process has been sequentially revolutionized. 

Beginning in the 1960s with the advent of satellites and ultimately 

Doppler radars, continuing through the 1980s with rapid improvements in computing and weather forecast models, and finally, 

today, with broad adoption of the internet and mobile phones. We 

are now beginning to deliver the ultimate vision: individualized 

weather information matched to every user’s need, time, and place. 

So why is this important? Well, Sandy and the Oklahoma tornadoes reminded us that we can and must do far more to protect lives 

and property, but often forgotten is the great potential of weather 

information to drive economic growth. On average, economic output 

at the state level varies by up to three percent from one year to 

the next due to weather variability. In four of the eight States represented on this subcommittee, the variation is over 8 percent. 

Improved weather information can clearly be a growth engine for 

the Nation’s economy. Indeed, in every market my company enters, 

we find opportunity for efficiency improvement. 
60 

For example, Xcel Energy uses ten percent of America’s wind 

farm capacity. An improved wind forecast system saved $22 million 

for the ratepayers in 2012 alone. 

The trucking industry lost $18 billion in 2011 to weather-related 

accidents and delays, yet weather forecasts are not routinely used. 

A company called Telogis is about to change that, providing weather and road surface forecasts for every mile of major road in the 

country. 

All this is made possible by the American Weather Enterprise, 

a truly remarkable collaboration between academia, government 

agencies such as NOAA, and the private sector. Working cooperatively allows us to be bigger than the sum of our three parts, a key 

reason for our success. 

One current goal is to unify our voice and provide prioritized 

community-based guidance for legislation such as this. To this end, 

a group of enterprise leaders recently met and agreed to build an 

advocacy organization called the Weather Coalition. 

It is important to recognize that our strength arises from 

breadth. Space weather, hydrology, oceanography, and coastal meteorology are key sister disciplines to weather. Both near-term and 

long-term weather are important. One often hears that businesses 

need a predictable regulatory environment to plan long-term 

growth. Predictable climate is needed for the same reasons. 

Whether it is a military strategist analyzing regional 

vulnerabilities over the coming decade or simply a parent planning 

a sunny day for their daughter’s wedding next year, understanding 

climate and its variability are integral to weather forecasting. 

Rather than dividing the weather and climate communities, we 

need to bring them together to improve forecasts and ever-longer 

timescales. 

Now, we do have problems to address as a community from the 

looming satellite gap to forecast model performance. The Sandy 

Supplemental already helps substantially, but our problems are not 

simple. The issues are interlinked requiring collaboration across 

NOAA and often the entire enterprise. The proposed legislation, 

while admirable for furthering forecast improvement, is too limited 

in scope, too prescriptive, and not sufficiently guided by broad community input to accomplish what the Nation deserves. I urge you 

to build from this legislation drawing on community advice and encouraging innovative solutions within NOAA and across the enterprise. 

Unlike most people who have the honor to serve as the AMS 

president, my career has not been entirely within the field of 

weather. It gives me a bit of an outsider perspective. My experience 

is that the people in this field—and I enthusiastically include those 

in NOAA—are the most dedicated, passionate, and innovative people I have ever met. To a person, they have one focus: make the 

Nation safer and more productive. Give these people your legislative support and they will return the investment many times over. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Gail follows:] 
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Chairman STEWART. Thank you, Dr. Gail. 

Today’s final witness is Dr. Shuyi Chen, Professor of Meteorology 

and Physical Oceanography at the Rosentiel School of Marine and 

Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami. She previously 

served as an editor for Weather and Forecasting Journal at the 

American Meteorological Society. She is a Member of the National 

Academies Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate and a Fellow at the American Meteorological Society. She received her Ph.D. 

in meteorology from Pennsylvania State University. 

Dr. Chen. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. SHUYI CHEN, PROFESSOR, 

METEOROLOGY AND PHYSICAL OCEANOGRAPHY, 

ROSENTIEL SCHOOL OF MARINE 

AND ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES, 

UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI 

Dr. CHEN. Chairman Stewart, Ranking Member Bonamici, and 

other respected Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the 

opportunity to testify before you on the important issue of improving weather forecast. 

So I would like to focus my testimony on three points regarding 

the bill and many have been stated. I wouldn’t repeat. These are 

my personal opinions, although they are very much based on the 

number of studies conducted by the National Research Council of 

the National Academies. 

The first point will be probably the most important point. I will 

come back to that. So I would first like to make a comment on the 

second and the third. The second referred to a point in the bill 

about specific technology, evaluating observing systems in terms of 

using models. I would say in its present form it is narrow and prescriptive, so we would like to see that to be broadened to address 

the challenge that we are facing in terms of a—having that technology more flexible and including other new technologies that are 

currently in place. 

In terms of weather prediction, we have made tremendous 

progress. The point I would like to bring your attention to is that 

we are at a crossroads that we face new challenge. One of the 

issues is that we can actually make weather forecasts beyond two 

weeks. This is where I think the weather and climate will come together because this is an important area. 

In fact, in Florida, when we make a forecast for hurricanes, the 

long-term projection into the next several weeks, a probablisitic 

forecast, is important because that is the time we need to make 

plans, for instance, for water management. The science that can be 

done nowadays is much better than we can imagine before. 

So, again, follow the same theme. I think weather and climate 

forecasts are connected. They both are needed by society. I think 

we are ready to do that and we certainly would like to see that 

happen. 

Now I am going to the first point of my testimony in terms of 

a need for a holistic approach to the transition from research to operations. As you all know that we have made tremendous progress 

in terms of forecasting high-impact weather like the event in 
71 

Moore, Oklahoma, and Super Storm Sandy. The problem that we 

are facing, the challenge that needs to be resolved, is the following: 

the research and the operations are sitting in two boxes. They are 

not well-connected. They are well-intentioned, as we probably 

heard before, but there is no connection between them or no link, 

so we have not made much progress even though a lot of the studies have suggested we should. 

I think Congress can help us in terms of providing that linking 

piece. This is where I think a National Advisory Board would help 

to make that decision for transition from research to operations, 

not only at OAR or within NOAA but also a broad research community that is driven by users’ needs, and at the same time we would 

like that the oversight for this important effort to making decisions 

for transition to the National Weather Service. 

Currently, many models not only they are not running in real 

time by NOAA operations; they have no pathway to even getting 

into NOAA operations. So this is where I think Congress can help 

to bridge that gap. 

I would like to show you a research that is done—many research 

has been done for Super Storm Sandy. And this is a familiar picture, and I would like you to be the judge to see what research has 

come along and whether they should be going to operations. 

[Slide.] 
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This storm taught us a lot of things. Many things have worked 

well. One thing we recognize Sandy as a hurricane does not to operations, with its environment, and many models had made forecasts quite far in advance. If you look at the panel on the right that 

many global models prodicted the storm track way in advance, especially one of the models from Europe that prodicted nine days before the storm would have a high probability of hitting the Northeast. 

On the other hand, our high-resolution model to the left on the 

slide can really get into the nitty-gritty details of the storm impact 

in terms of rainfall and so on, interaction between the storms. And 

furthermore, the models conducted at a universities have made 

much more progress in terms of resolving the surface winds. For 

instance, the right panel is model prediction and the left panel is 

observed from satellite. Those—you can’t really almost tell them 

apart. The research is really making progress. 

In terms of forecasting impact, these are—you are looking at, the 

surface wave and ocean sea level height. This was not imaginable 

many years before, but recently, we can really quantitatively forecast the sea level heights when the storm is approaching, especially 

to the right of the storm track where you have water pushing onshore and offshore to the south. So we can quantify this information much more accurately by going to high-resolution storm surge 

impact forecasts. All this is available now in the research community. 

[Video shown.] 

The last thing you will see is a movie that is model simulation 

of the weather systems that are interacting with each other. One 

is Sandy as it is approaching the land and the upper atmosphere 

has a wave that interacts with Sandy. They wrap around each 

other, dancing around, and this has made Sandy extremely special. 

This type of research is available, but unfortunately many of 

these models developed by the research community have no pathway to go into operation. We would really like the Congress to address this important issue going forward. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Chen follows:] 
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Chairman STEWART. We thank the witnesses for your testimony 

today and we remind Members of the Committee that rules limit 

questions now to five minutes. And the Chair at this point will 

open the round of questions and the Chair recognizes himself for 

five minutes for questioning. 

I would like to expand a little bit on some things that have been 

said both in this panel and in the previous panel. And, Dr. 

Droegemeier, I would like to begin with you and your desire—I 

think the goal where we said we had theCan objective of trying to 

have zero deaths from hazardous weather, and you said that that 

was an achievable goal. 

I would like to open that to the other members of the panel. Do 

the rest of you believe that that is an achievable goal as well? Dr. 

Gail? 

Dr. GAIL. My specific knowledge on this issue is somewhat limited so I prefer not to say what an achievable goal is, but certainly 

we have continued to make progress in our ability to forecast. And 

so improving beyond what we are currently doing towards an hour, 

to an hour, passed an hour is a—definitely a worthy goal, absolutely. 

Chairman STEWART. Okay. And Dr. Chen? 

Dr. CHEN. I think in terms of scientific knowledge, the predictability which means how long or how far in advance we can predict 

a certain phenomena, it is very much skewing the research that we 

are trying to search for these answers because answer ocean as a 

system that has a limited predictability. In terms of scientific findings, we are not at a stage where we can tell exactly which phenomena, how far in advance we can—but it will certainly search 

for the answer, including hurricanes. Is a hurricane predictable 7 

days out or 30 days out? That is an open question. 

Chairman STEWART. Okay. And, look, I understand you can’t account for people doing foolish things. You can give people adequate 

warning and they can ignore it, they can run into the face of the 

storm. People will do dumb things sometimes. But the point is you 

give them the information that would allow them to protect and— 

their property and their own lives in many cases. 

And, Dr. Droegemeier, I am wondering, do you want to expand 

on that or we just leave it at that, that this is an achievable goal? 

Because I believe that it is an achievable goal with the exception 

again of sometimes foolishness. 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman, I agree. And I think 

the—part of the point of that is to get our focus on what is really 

important. There are lots of metrics that we can use to measure 

forecast accuracy, reliability, lead time; all of those things are floating around. At the end of the day, though, it is about people dying. 

And I think if we say what is it going to take to get us to that place 

of zero deaths, then it really forces us to confront the difficult challenges of understanding what those deep problems are. 

But you are quite right. I think there are going to be circumstances where people will die unnecessarily due to decisions 

they made, but I think we can do a lot better job of conveying information, formulating it, and helping them understand what the consequences of their actions are. 
88 

Chairman STEWART. Yes. The money that we spend on weather 

research and weather studies is money well spent. We have an 

achievable goal here that would be dramatic and some would say 

fanciful, but it is not. And I think we would obviously support any 

efforts in order to move towards that goal. 

In my remaining time, I would like to come back. We had an interesting exchange between Mr. Bridenstine and the previous witness, Dr. Sullivan, where there was this—a bit of an idea about, 

you know, well, we—can we give 16 minutes or could we give an 

hour? And I would like to explore that just a little bit and that is, 

again, the idea that just very quickly from the three of you, if we 

could give someone an hour’s warning, that is always better than 

giving them 15 minutes’ warning. Does anyone disagree with that? 

Okay, no, of course not. I mean, clearly, it is better to give them 

an hour than 15 minutes. But then if any of you would like to talk 

about some of the concerns we have with giving people more time 

and what some of the reactions that people have that make it so 

they don’t take advantage of that or how you have to communicate 

that? Any on the panel like to address that? Dr. Gail? 

Dr. GAIL. Sure. One of the big challenges we face not only in this 

area but in all aspects of weather it is how to get the right information to the right people at the right time. So you can have an 

hour warning but to get it to them in a way that they can act on 

it and they can choose to do the most appropriate thing for themselves is still a big challenge. And so when we say we want an hour 

warning, the next step is to make sure that that information 

doesn’t in fact get to people; it doesn’t just come out on some single 

website. That is a challenge, being able to get it into—to them in 

a way that they can make best use of it. 

Chairman STEWART. Okay. Thank you. Then it seems that we 

have two problems. One is the technology and the research in actually providing the—whatever it is, 45 minutes or an hour, as long 

as it might be, and then kind of the human element of helping people to take advantage of that. But we don’t want to make perfect 

the enemy of the good. Recognizing that there are challenges on 

the backside doesn’t diminish the great—the good that can come 

from expanding and lengthening the amount of time we could warn 

people. 

Okay. And my time is expired again. Thank you to the witnesses 

and I now recognize the Ranking Member, Ms. Bonamici. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank 

you to this very distinguished and knowledgeable panel of witnesses. 

And in some of the testimony it mentioned three reports, recent 

reports that have studied how we can improve weather forecasting, 

one from the National Academy of Science, one from the National 

Academy of Public Administration, and then NOAA’s own Scientific 

Advisory Board. 

And in those reports they did discuss the issue that you brought 

up, Dr. Chen, about the moving innovation and research from labs 

to the weather forecasting operations. My impression is that there 

has been a lack of communication and an inability to—for those entities to connect and that is something that hopefully we can address through this legislation. 
89 

But I wonder, could you talk also about other recommendations 

in those reports? Are there recommendations in those reports that 

could help improve the legislation? Because we all have the same 

goal here of improving weather forecasting. Can we make use of 

those reports in other ways? 

Do you want to start, Dr. Chen, and then the others? 

Dr. CHEN. Thank you. I would like to follow up on that. There 

have been many studies from the National Research Council, and 

each report recommends almost exactly the same thing. We need 

a systematic approach to research—from research through operations and then transfer the technology. Our current system so far 

has not worked as well. Like I mentioned, the research and the operations are somewhat separate. 

So I think that this particular panel and this particular bill could 

help us to address that in terms of providing that mandate, perhaps a National Advisory Board. Even though the funding has been 

appropriated to do this work, right now, the problem is the structure that are not allowing the smooth transition from the research 

arm of NOAA to the operations, and more importantly, from the research community, from outside. From academia and private sectors we have not been able to make that transition to NOAA because the system is not allowing that flexibility. I think that—— 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you, Dr. Chen. 

And, Dr. Gail or Dr. Droegemeier, do you agree with that? Do 

you want to add to that, the information in the reports that may 

help inform NOAA? 

Dr. GAIL. Yes, these are all excellent reports and provide a substantial basis of community input upon which legislation could be 

based. Helping NOAA move forward with implementation of these 

recommendations within legislation I think would be a very valuable thing. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you. Dr. Droegemeier? 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. Yes, thank you very much. I think we do have 

some exemplars of these kinds of testbeds that truly are integrative 

where you bring in the operational folks that are already there, you 

bring in the academics, you bring in other researchers, and they all 

work together toward the common goal. 

And not being parochial, but the one we have in Oklahoma, truly 

is unique because we have the university co-located, as Dr. Sullivan said, with an OAR lab, with National Operational Centers, 

plus a Forecast Office. When those folks get together, wonderful 

magic things happen, and that sounds a little trite but it is really 

true. And I think we can replicate that model. 

Ms. BONAMICI. All right. Thank you. Dr. Sullivan agreed with 

you in terms of her testimony. 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. Yes, ma’am. Thank you. 

Ms. BONAMICI. And there is a requirement in the draft legislation 

about the OSSEs. And do you—can you explain briefly other kind 

of evaluative tools that might be used? There is a requirement that 

may be too constraining we heard in the testimony, so if anyone 

wants to address. Are there other kinds of evaluative tools that 

might be used instead of OSSEs, and is that flexibility important? 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. I could address that real quickly. There are 

a variety of techniques and tools, one of which Dr. Sullivan men-
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tioned is the adjoint technique. Basically, it tells you where the 

forecast error will be large and where you need observations. What 

is important about that is you can, if you are not careful, put observations where in fact they are going to degrade the forecast because it will put errors where you don’t want errors to be and they 

might grow. And sometimes, these other assimilation techniques 

will actually create observations where they don’t exist and you actually don’t need observations. 

So we need—it is a very, very complex problem. We need to understand it. And I think the only thing that we are saying is basically there are many tools available. Probably let the scientists decide which ones are most appropriate. We are not at all discounting 

the value of OSSEs. We are just saying there are other techniques 

used in concert would be helpful. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you. We heard testimony about that flexibility. And in my remaining time I just want to follow up on the 

social science research. Dr. Droegemeier, you talked about and the 

Chairman mentioned about the importance of how to communicate. 

Of course, the timing is important but the message is important as 

well, so it was an issue in Katrina as well, how that communication is and how we get people’s attention. So could—maybe if any 

of you want to, in my remaining time, just add how that research 

can be furthered through that bill, please? 

Chairman STEWART. In the remaining two seconds. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Sorry, I am out of time. Well, I yield back and 

maybe I will ask for some input in writing from the witnesses 

about that important issue. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman STEWART. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici. 

To the Vice Chair, Mr. Bridenstine. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Droegemeier, I had a question for you specifically about the 

Multifunction Phased Array Radar. Earlier, you showed a video 

and you had those two lines and you were in—you were suggesting 

that we were able to predict tornadoes an hour ahead of time. Is 

that accurate? 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. Correct. And that was with a numerical forecast model if I failed to mention that. It was initialized with radar 

data but you are seeing simulated with the model radar data. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Okay. So as far as our numerical model, how 

do we compare to the rest of the world in our ability to use that? 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. With these particular models, we called them 

cloud resolving models. We lead the world. There is no question. In 

fact, we pioneered this whole area of the fine scale prediction. 

Other groups are now doing a lot of wonderful work but we really 

lead the way on that. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. And on this Multifunction Phased Array 

Radar, is there anywhere else in the world that has that? 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. In military circles, phased radar is used a lot, 

as you know. As far as phased array, weather radar is really—I 

think we are leading the area there as well. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Are there multiple of those in the United 

States or is there only one? 
91 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. Right now, there is one testbed in Norman 

called the National Weather Radar Testbed. There is a lot of development going on. The FAA and NOAA are jointly looking at a system that would not only track weather but also track aircraft as 

well. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Wonderful. So if you were to have—is there 

any talk of maybe one day eventually networking multiple Multifunction Phased Array Radars together, networking maybe 

throughout the greater Oklahoma City area to provide as much energy as possible into a specific target for purposes of, no kidding, 

enhancing that one-hour capability that you have already identified? 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. That is an excellent question. In fact, the National Science Foundation, almost ten years ago, funded a center 

to focus just on that where instead of having large phased array 

radars you actually have small ones and they talk to one another 

and they collaborate—— 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Right. 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. —and say, hey, there is a tornado over here. 

Let’s focus our attention on that because that is what is really important right now, and then later on, focus attention on something 

else. So that has been done experimentally and we are looking at 

that as part of the operational system going forward. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. The distributed networking capability that we 

have leveraged inside the United States military it seems would be 

highly valuable to get better information for weather. 

But certainly one other thing, when you think about the Multifunction Phased Array Radar, is this a technology that would be 

kept in the public sphere or is this something that the private sector could eventually advance and develop a part? Is there any revenue model by which this could be valuable for a private enterprise? 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. That is an interesting question. The private 

sector is actually involved in helping develop the prototypes. Various companies are doing that. As far as the operational structure, 

that is a good question. Would it be a government-run system or 

could it be a privatized system by which the government would 

purchase data or—I think that needs to be looked at. That hasn’t 

been decided yet. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Okay. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman STEWART. Thank you, Mr. Bridenstine. 

We now turn to Ms. Edwards, the gentlewoman from Maryland. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to our 

witnesses. 

I want to focus on behavioral and social sciences research because in the time that I have been on this committee we have held 

hearings, not recently, on the use and effectiveness of social science 

research, and there are a number of Members of this Committee 

who have point-blank rejected the use of that kind of research and 

the work that we do, and so I am intrigued, Dr. Droegemeier, by 

your testimony, and in particular on page 5 of your testimony 

where you point both to a University of Oklahoma preliminary 

study, as well as to the events surrounding the May 31st hurricane 

and—or tornado rather in Oklahoma City in Norman and sur-
92 

rounding communities. And you make a really compelling argument for the integration building on a foundation of social science 

and behavioral research that would augment the kind of weather 

forecasting that we also need to invest in. 

And so I wonder if you could be a little bit more specific. You 

have one recommendation for building on that, but where and what 

agencies would it be most appropriate if the Federal Government 

were involved in funding some of that research? I know that we do 

fund some research in other agencies—NIH, National Science 

Foundation, and the rest—but it is not all focused on weather forecasting. So if you could share your thoughts about that. 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. Well, thank you very much, Congresswoman. 

That is a really important point. And I think the term ‘‘social 

sciences research’’ is misunderstood. I think a lot of folks don’t really know what all that involves. But the questions that we need to 

address are really fairly clear. They do involve human behavioral 

work. 

You are right. The National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, a lot of studies have been done. People that look 

at trust in terms of information and communication and 

verification. There is a broad body of literature already out there, 

but a lot of the social scientists—in fact, most of them—I don’t 

think realize the opportunity that is available for them to come and 

link up with the weather community to really understand how to 

apply this body of scholarship, number one, that already exists; 

and number two, to do new studies that are geared specifically toward the weather challenges. 

But I think a lot of it is misunderstanding of what the social 

sciences are really about. And I have to say I had the same misunderstanding until I began working with them and really seeing 

the virtue of their activities. 

Ms. EDWARDS. And I did until I came to serve on this committee. 

I didn’t get it at all. I thought it was kind of silly making. But it 

turns out that understanding behavior really should connect with 

the kinds of technology advances that we see. 

Do you have an idea of how much is spent or whether it would 

be worth it to have some of those resources actually engage 

through the National Weather Service and NOAA? 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. I think that is a good question. I don’t know 

the amount of money that is spent across agencies or even within 

agencies, but I do think that NOAA—it doesn’t need to stand up 

a whole big social sciences activity. I mean universities have entire 

social sciences programs across many, many departments. So I 

think NOAA is in a position to leverage that, but I do think there 

has to be a presence within NOAA that recognizes and helps, as 

Dr. Chen mentioned, transfer that—those research outcomes into 

the operational mainstream of decision-making and behavior in 

terms of how we do the warning and watch system. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Great. And just with my remaining minute-anda-half, I want each of you, if you could, to comment on the link— 

a link that you see or don’t see between balancing NOAA’s work 

on climate with the work on weather forecasting and whether or 

how those things are connected and whether you think that we 

struck the right kind of balance. 
93 

Dr. GAIL. Let’s imagine that we didn’t have a debate on anthropogenic climate change and climate change. I believe we would be 

doing the same research on climate that we are currently doing 

just to improve our weather forecasting. So what we are doing is 

really essential to what we are doing in climate. 

Dr. CHEN. Yes, I want to comment on the jointedness of the 

weather and climate because if the system is together, there is no 

artificial dividing line. For instance, hurricanes, we are very much 

needing information of few weeks outlooks so exactly for the water 

management. And the same time as each storm close to landfall, 

we do transition to the forecast part very smoothly. 

So I just want to also possible follow-up on the question of the 

using social science to address this issue. Hurricane, for instance, 

is 7 days ahead. Whether we can get warnings and then whether 

it is good because that is interesting social science question. A lot 

of times our forecast is not precise and that could be—or a warning 

can actually do harm in terms of people’s actions, so those are connected to issues that need to be addressed. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman STEWART. Thank you, Ms. Edwards. 

And we appreciate your comments regarding the social science. 

And some of you may be interested to know that Section 5 of this 

proposed legislation has extensive foundation therefore encouraging 

the social science and some of the communication process as well. 

Our final questioner then today is the gentleman from California, 

Mr. Rohrabacher. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. Let me just note that 

there has been a great deal over the last 15 years of money spent 

specifically to prove that humankind is causing the climate change. 

To suggest that that would at the same time benefit weather forecasting stretches credibility because people were given grants specifically to prove that and other people were denied grants unless 

they were willing to prove that. 

Let me go back to the question that seems to have been asked 

before, something about this climate research going back to challenge the point you just made, for the dollars that we are spending 

in climate research, would not those dollars be better spent on 

weather research that we know affects and puts people in danger 

right now? 

Dr. GAIL. Yes, thank you for the clarification. And that was really specifically referring to NOAA where really the large part of the 

climate research is focused on improving weather forecasting. And 

so—— 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Department of Energy, et cetera, et cetera, 

has spent enormous sums of money on trying to prove that human 

beings are changing the climate. That has not helped weather forecasting. But let’s—let me get into this one last thing because I have 

got three minutes to ask questions as well to get the answers from 

you folks. 

I understand that there is a gap—let’s go right to weather forecasting—that there is a gap that will be appearing, if it is not already there, in the data provided by polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites. There will be a gap in that information. Is 
94 

that correct? Is that predicted? Is it happening now? Is that something that is predicted? Whoever. 

Dr. GAIL. That is certainly anticipated. I do come from the satellite industry a while back and you can never know how long a 

satellite is going to last, but there are certainly risks and widely 

recognized risks. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So this is a—there is a significant gap that 

is—that we are facing in the information that we have been getting 

from these satellites? Now, we had—there was a hearing last year 

in which Dr. David Crane stated that possibly commercial satellite 

data doing this—getting that data commercially might actually be 

the most cost-effective way of doing this, but yet, in this Observing 

System Simulating Experiments that NOAA hasn’t really looked at 

that option. Should NOAA be looking at that? Should the OSSE 

system focus on whether or not we can cost-effectively utilize private satellites for—to fill this gap that is expected? Anybody? 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. Well, I would just say the OSSEs themselves 

are really agnostic in terms of who operates and build the satellites. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right. 

Dr. DROEGEMEIER. It really is telling what sensors are needed 

and how rapidly and so on. So it really doesn’t—the OSSE itself 

doesn’t address the question that you are asking. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right, but should NOAA then be doing—taking the steps to see if this would be a cost-effective way of meeting 

this need that we will have in the future in terms of the data gap? 

Is there some reason we shouldn’t use private satellites? 

Dr. GAIL. Oh, absolutely not. I think there is a lot of room for 

innovation here in terms of how we access data, whether it comes 

from the private sector, whether it comes from the government, 

and it should be done in the most effective way possible, absolutely. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right. Let me just note, Mr. Chairman, that 

there are some things the government has to do and there are 

other things that can be contracted out. And before SpaceX arrived 

on the scene, everybody thought the government had to provide all 

the transportation systems to and from space station, for example. 

We have already saved about $500 million using SpaceX. Perhaps 

using commercial satellites, which have other functions that they 

can sell to the private sector, might be a good way to get in the 

information that would protect us from this data gap that we are 

going to face in the future. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman STEWART. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher, and I share 

your concern as well that satellite coverage gap between 2015 and 

2017 is troubling for us and we hope this legislation is able to address some of that. 

Let us conclude then. We thank the witnesses for your valuable 

testimony and for the Members for their questions as well. And 

once again, the Members may have additional questions for you, 

and we will ask that you respond to those in writing. The record 

will remain open for two weeks for additional comments and written questions from the Members. The witnesses are then excused 

and this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:39 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 
(95) 

Appendix I 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
96 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by The Hon. Kathryn Sullivan 
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103 
104 
105 
106 
107 
108 
109 
110 
111 
112 
113 
114 
115 
116 
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119 
120 
121 
122 
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Responses by Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier 
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129 
130 
131 

Responses by Dr. William Gail 
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133 

Responses by Dr. Shuyi Chen 
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136 

Æ