TESTIMONY OF
DR. D. JAMES BAKER
UNDER SECRETARY FOR OCEANS AND ATMOSPHERE
U. S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

BEFORE THE

HOUSE RESOURCES SUBCOMMITTEE
ON FISHERIES CONSERVATION, WILDLIFE AND OCEANS

AND THE

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES SUBCOMMITTEE
ON MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

May 25, 2000

Good morning. I am James Baker, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, and Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee, for this opportunity to testify on ocean observations and related activities performed by NOAA.

It has been long recognized that the oceans critically affect human endeavors. Cargo, fishing, and military ships have always been affected by winds, waves, ice, ocean currents, as well as hurricanes and typhoons. Primitive ocean observations systems were initiated centuries ago to measure and try to predict these phenomena.

As uses of the ocean and coastal waters increase, evidence for widespread impacts of these activities on land, the oceans, and the atmosphere is steadily mounting. These interrelated earth systems have been strongly affected by the direct and indirect consequences of human population growth, industrialization, and demand for natural resources. It is increasingly evident that changes in the environment need to be monitored; that effective action based on these measurements must be taken to mitigate damage; and that future changes to the environment be anticipated.

A sustained ocean observation program to detect, track, and predict changes in physical and biological systems and their effects is needed to measure the impacts of humans on the ocean as well as the impact of the ocean on human endeavors. The oceans are currently monitored far less effectively and completely than terrestrial systems, yet humans depend strongly on the sea as a source of food and for transportation and trade, among many other uses. Further, the ocean strongly affects large-scale weather patterns, as so forcefully demonstrated by El Niño and La Niña events.

NOAA's mission is to describe and predict changes in the Earth's environment, and conserve and wisely manage the Nation's coastal and marine resources. In order to understand and ultimately predict how ocean-atmosphere interactions affect weather, climate and marine ecosystems, and how human activities affect both the physical system and living marine resources, an integrated ocean observing system is needed to monitor the 'state' of the ocean. Just as continuous measurements of weather and climatic conditions are maintained on land, similar sustained measurements of the ocean are required to monitor change and to assist in understanding and predicting its impacts.

An Integrated, Sustained Ocean Observing System
It must be noted that there are already many U.S. observing systems and monitoring programs in place that serve the needs of many users. It is equally important to state that these observing elements are not yet integrated and do not constitute a complete system. These systems do provide data that help mitigate losses to life and property, enhance profits to industry, ensure national security, and provide information to mitigate anthropogenic changes to the environment. They are not, however, as cost effective nor useful as they could be, even at present levels of funding. These elements do not serve the complete needs of users. By implementing an integrated national ocean observing system (see Figure 1), the U.S. will serve better a much wider array of users with only modest increases in costs relative to the additional benefits.

In April 1999, the National Ocean Research Leadership Council (NORLC) submitted a report to Congress calling for an integrated ocean observing system that would routinely gather ocean information similar to the information gathered for atmospheric weather forecasting. The report, "Toward a U.S. Plan for an Integrated, Sustained Ocean Observing System," calls for sustaining existing ocean observations, integrating new and existing observations, and adapting this system to meet evolving needs. It also calls for funding of these activities, organizing and managing them, and building private/public sector partnerships.

As a follow up to this report, a working group of experts (the Ocean Observations Task Team), chaired by Robert Frosch of Harvard University and convened under the National Oceanographic Partnership Program's (NOPP) Ocean Research Advisory Panel, prepared a second report, "An Integrated Ocean Observing System: A Strategy for Implementing the First Steps of a U.S. Plan." This second report describes the next step toward a comprehensive plan, building on the initial report and the results of the community-wide debate.

The reports address seven specific areas for which an integrated, sustained ocean observing system (ISOOS) is needed: (1) detecting and forecasting oceanic components of climate variability; (2) facilitating safe and efficient marine operations; (3) ensuring national security; (4) managing living resources for sustainable use; (5) preserving and restoring healthy marine ecosystems; (6) mitigating natural hazards; and (7) ensuring public health. NOAA operates many open ocean and coastal observing elements in support of a wide range of these requirements. Today, I will explain the scope and nature of NOAA's existing open ocean and coastal observation systems and provide examples of how these observations fit within the integrated network. In addition, I will describe NOAA's modest program in ocean exploration, which serves as a focal point for technology development for future ocean research.

The immediate benefits of an increased effort in open ocean observations accrue to the objectives involving climate variability, national security, and living marine resources; the immediate benefits of an increased effort in coastal ocean observations accrue to the objectives involving marine operations, healthy ecosystems, natural hazards, and public health. While NOAA's efforts are mapped directly into each of these seven societal objectives in the following program descriptions for organizational purposes, it should be noted that each data set is potentially useful for more than one objective. A primary goal of ISOOS is to realize this potential.

OPEN OCEAN OBSERVATIONS
Climate Variability
The most critical information required for forecasting seasonal climate variability, such as El Niño, is that from the tropical Pacific. The oceans hold the "memory" of the climate system which leads to our ability to predict climate variability. Just as continuous measurements of weather and climatic conditions are maintained on land, similar sustained measurements of the ocean are required to monitor change and to assist in understanding and predicting El Niño's impacts.

Improvements in climate forecasts depend on improvements in our ocean observations. The value of the existing NOAA ocean observing networks to its mission of climate prediction can be significantly enhanced through activities that ensure continuity of proven systems, improve instrumentation, fill sampling gaps and implement new techniques. High quality surface marine meteorological data are needed to assess, understand and predict climate variability and related impacts on the coastal zone and fisheries on time-scales from seasonal to centennial. Accurate temperature and salinity data are needed to initialize climate forecast models, interpret satellite data and monitor long-term climate trends.

NOAA's major operational climate prediction program for seasonal to interannual time-scales is the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Observing System. The ENSO Observing System consists of approximately 70 moorings in the tropical Pacific (the TAO array) that provide surface atmospheric and ocean mixed-layer observations; several hundred global Lagrangian drifting buoys in all of the major ocean basins; a Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS)/XBT program of about 40 commercial ships; and a network of tide gauges. The resulting data are used to initialize climate models, verify model results, and monitor the evolution of the upper ocean. Complementing this system are NOAA's environmental satellite systems, which provide regional and basin-wide observations of sea surface temperature and surface wind speed, and NASA's TOPEX/Poseidon satellite altimeter mission, which provides sea surface topography.

NOAA's current observing networks are composed of several individual building blocks, each contributing in a unique way to improve our knowledge of ocean processes and our predictive capability. The ENSO Observing System is composed of 4 of these building blocks; the TAO array, Lagrangian drifting buoys, VOS, and the tide gauges. While the ENSO Observing System is focused on the tropical Pacific Ocean, scientists recognize that climate variability results from interactions among different oceanic regions, so that improved predictability requires the integration of observation systems from over all of the oceans, which can be combined to create critical climate information to a host of U.S. and foreign clients. Thus, in 1998, the International Year of the Ocean, NOAA committed to expanding our contribution to a Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) that is essential to improving the basis for our climate forecasting. The GOOS will be based initially on the four building blocks described earlier, plus a new array of three thousand Argo profiling floats, which promises a cost-effective approach for large-scale ocean measurements. In combination with remote sensing from satellites, these five building blocks provide the backbone of the sustained global ocean observations needed to improve climate forecast skill.

Argo builds on the existing building blocks, extending their spatial and temporal coverage, depth range and accuracy, and enhancing them through addition of salinity and velocity measurements. For the first time, the physical state of the upper ocean will be systematically measured and assimilated in near real-time.

Objectives of Argo fall into several categories. Argo will provide a quantitative description of the evolving state of the upper ocean and the patterns of ocean climate variability, including heat and freshwater storage and transport. The data will enhance the value of the Jason altimeter through measurement of subsurface vertical structure and reference velocity, with sufficient coverage and resolution for interpretation of altimetric sea surface height variability. Argo data will be used for initialization of ocean and coupled forecast models, data assimilation and dynamical model testing. A primary focus of Argo is seasonal to decadal climate variability and predictability, but a wide range of applications for high-quality global ocean analyses is anticipated.

The initial design of the Argo network is based on experience from the present observing system, on newly gained knowledge of variability from the TOPEX/Poseidon altimeter, and on estimated requirements for climate and high-resolution ocean models. Argo will provide 100,000 temperature and salinity profiles and reference velocity measurements per year from the 3000 floats distributed over the global oceans at 3-degree spacing. Floats will cycle to depths up to 2000 m every 10 days, with a 4-year average lifetime for individual instruments. All Argo data will be publicly available in near real-time, and in scientifically quality-controlled form with a few months' delay.

International planning for Argo, including sampling and technical issues, is coordinated by the Argo Science Team. Nations presently having Argo plans that include float procurement or production include Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, U.K., and U.S.A., plus a European Union proposal. Beginning in 2000, combined deployments from these nations are expected to exceed 700 floats per year by 2002. Broad participation in Argo by many nations is anticipated and encouraged either through float procurement, logistical support for float deployment, or through analysis and assimilation of Argo data.

As part of the $28.0 million FY 2001 request for the Climate Observations and Services Initiative in the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) budget activity, NOAA is requesting $9.0 million to continue implementing an integrated global oceanographic observation network necessary for climate forecasting and research, $4.5 million of which is to go through NOPP for Argo. The observation network is based on a set of core observations (e.g., temperature, surface wind stress, salinity, sea level, CO2), consisting of both onsite (in situ) and satellite measurements, that have been identified to satisfy research and operational climate forecasting requirements.

If this initiative is fully funded NOAA will be able to: (1) complete its portion of the global array of profiling floats (ARGO) so that for the first time the physical state of the upper ocean (temperature, salinity and water velocities) will be systematically measured and assimilated in near real-time; (2) deploy additional surface drifting buoys in the Southern Hemisphere and other under-sampled regions to complete the Global Drifter Array; (3) improve and increase sampling from VOS; (4) upgrade global sea-level stations for satellite altimeter drift calibration and for monitoring long-term trends; (5) develop techniques to optimally combine in situ and satellite data sets with ocean model results to produce data products that can be used at all latitudes for marine services, documenting climate variability, and initializing forecast models; (6) develop a methodology for effectively assimilating the satellite altimetry data of sea surface heights into ocean models; and (7) evaluate how the ability to document and forecast climate variability is impacted by the quality and availability of different data sources, including such in situ observations as those from tide gauges and moored or drifting buoys and remote observations from satellites.

NOAA also maintains other ocean observing systems devoted to climate research, including a shipboard thermosalinograph effort; the Trans-Pacific Profiler Network, consisting of ten profilers in the equatorial Pacific; a Pacific upper-air sounding network on islands and ships in the Pacific; the Pan American Climate Studies Sounding Network of enhanced atmospheric observations; an ocean carbon-ocean tracer hydrographic program to determine global distributions of key chemical, biological, and physical tracers; a submarine cable providing estimates of Florida Current transport; a VOS CO2 program of semiautomated systems to monitor pCO2; an Atlantic Ocean pilot project (called PIRATA) of 12 buoys in the tropical Atlantic; and an Atlantic profiling float array to study processes important in establishing SST variability.

Ensuring National Security
NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) serves as the operational and command authority for the Defense Department's Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. NOAA's environmental satellite data are shared in near real-time by formal agreement with the Department of Defense in support of the Air Force and the Navy's global and regional weather and ocean forecasting model prediction services. In times of national emergencies (both military and natural hazards response), NOAA provides enhanced local area environmental satellite coverage through NOAA's polar orbiting satellites worldwide and for emergencies affecting the western hemisphere, NOAA's geostationary satellites. National security interests involve not only military concerns, but also economic displacements that may result from natural hazards, global climate change and political upheavals. In situations involving immediate danger to human life, NOAA-NESDIS provides emergency environmental satellite coverage of local regions for direct use in relief efforts.

Managing Living Resources
Although the overwhelming majority of fishery production is taken within the coastal waters and Exclusive Economic Zones of maritime nations, important fisheries are found also in open oceanic waters. These fisheries are typically managed under international treaties, and scientific assessment of their status is typically conducted through multinational organizations. Particularly important examples of fishery resources in this category are highly migratory species such as tuna in the Eastern Tropical Pacific and in the North Atlantic, swordfish, and salmon harvested on the high seas in the Pacific. Assessment of the status of these resources is essential for effective management, and institutional arrangements are in place to monitor the landings, size and/or age structure, and other biological characteristics of the catch. As expanded exploitation of fishery resources in open ocean waters occurs, a more extensive monitoring network must be established to accommodate demands for resource assessment and evaluation.

NOAA Fisheries is dedicated to protecting and preserving our Nation's living marine resources through scientific research, fisheries management, enforcement, and habitat conservation. From the Gulf of Maine, to the Gulf of Mexico, and to the Gulf of Alaska, NOAA Fisheries scientists and managers work to ensure sustainable fish harvests. To accomplish this goal, NOAA conducts stock assessments using a wide variety of technologies in addition to integrating field, laboratory, and modeling studies to determine how biological and physical environmental factors influence our Nation's living marine resources and their habitats.

COASTAL OCEAN OBSERVATIONS
The number of people living, working and playing in the coastal zone is increasing rapidly; natural resources are concentrated in the coastal zone. Inputs of energy (e.g., storms, tides) and materials (water, sediments, nutrients, toxic chemical, enteric bacteria, etc.) from land, sea, air and people converge in the coastal zone; the combined effects of human alterations of the environment and of large scale meteorological events (e.g., El Niño) and climate change are especially pronounced in coastal ecosystems. The conflicts and challenges of promoting economic development, sustaining living resources, protecting and restoring ecosystem health, controlling the effects of and mitigating natural disasters, and protecting public health and safety are most pronounced in the coastal zone.
There are many indications that coastal environments are experiencing rapid changes as a consequence of human activities. These include habitat loss and modification (e.g., wetlands, coral reefs, oyster reefs), coastal erosion, excessive accumulations of algal biomass, oxygen depletion, harmful algal events, fish kills, shellfish bed closures, declines in fish stocks, the growth of exotic species, chemical contamination and the loss of biodiversity. These changes are making the coastal zone more susceptible to natural hazards, more costly to live and recreate in, and of less value to the national economy.

In the absence of scientific understanding of coastal ecosystems and how they change in response to human activities and natural variability, the formulation and implementation of environmental policies is becoming (and will continue to become) increasingly controversial. Substantial advances in the predictive understanding of environmental changes in coastal ecosystems and their effects on people cannot be achieved in the absence of long-term, large scale observations.

Nowhere do the missions of so many federal and state agencies overlap as in the coastal zone, and this region is the subject of more monitoring and research activity than any other place on earth. Yet we still do not have a predictive understanding of how people are changing the environment and how these changes are affecting people (e.g., wetland loss and coastal flooding, hog manure and Pfiesteria).

Clearly, we must make more effective use of the combined resources/assets of federal and state agencies (environmental monitoring for the purposes of research and management, fisheries stock assessment, habitat surveys, etc.) and the private sector (compliance monitoring) to (1) get a clearer picture of the dimensions of change and (2) make more timely and meaningful forecasts of changes and their impact.

This is the purpose of the coastal component of ISOOS. The first step is to coordinate and integrate existing efforts to collect, manage and analyze data to minimize redundancy, maximize access to diverse data from disparate sources, and produce timely analyses that are useful to a broader spectrum of society. The second step is to enhance and supplement these efforts to achieve a more comprehensive and useful view of changes and their impact.

We are witnessing a convergence of societal needs and technical capabilities that provide both the motivation and means for major advances in our abilities to prevent, control and mitigate the effects of human activities and natural variability. These include: (1) increasing human activity in coastal ecosystems; (2) effects of large scale climatic events and climate change; (3) emerging technologies from the internet for rapid data dissemination to in situ and remote sensing; and (4) rapidly increasing computing power for more rapid data assimilation and analysis.

Marine Operations
NOAA currently operates several real-time observing systems to support the goal of facilitating safe and efficient marine operations and to address the diverse needs of maritime commerce.

National Water Level Observation Network
Along the Nation's ocean and Great Lakes shorelines, NOAA's National Ocean Service (NOS) operates the National Water Level Observation Network (NWLON), which includes approximately 175 continuously operating water level measurement systems. The network contributes to safe vessel navigation and the increased efficiency of maritime transportation by providing basic tidal datums to determine U.S. coastal marine boundaries and for nautical chart datums. All NWLON stations are being configured to report similar high rate data once triggered for storm surge with the information automatically disseminated to NOAA marine forecast offices.

The vast majority of these stations are considered "long-term control" and "primary" stations. The majority of these stations have been in operation at least 50 years, with the longest continuous records over 150 years long. In addition to these near-real-time records, the network's on-line archives also include historical data from secondary and tertiary stations, i.e., those with records lengths from 18 years down to only a few weeks. Ancillary meteorological sensors are also being added to an increasing number of the NWLON stations.

In addition to contributing to safe and efficient marine operations, this network also provides support for NOAA's tsunami and storm surge warning programs, climate monitoring, coastal processes and tectonic research. As part of the tsunami warning system, the NOAA NWLON stations in the Pacific Basin are all configured to report high-rate water level information over random GOES transmission mode once remotely or manually triggered. In the Great Lakes, the network supports water management and regulation, navigation and charting, river and harbor improvement, power generation, scientific studies and adjustment for vertical movement of the Earth's crust in the Great Lakes Basin.

Physical Oceanographic Real-Time Systems
At five extremely busy harbor entrances, NOAA-NOS operates Physical Oceanographic Real-Time Systems (PORTS). These systems consist of measurements from water level stations, acoustic doppler current profilers, meteorological sensors, and water temperature and conductivity sensors all collected using local radio transmission and telephone transmitted to a local data acquisition system for quality control and real-time dissemination to local users (e.g., vessel operators and masters, pilots, mariners, facility managers, etc.). The real-time data information helps the users make sound decisions required to avoid groundings and collisions.

This technological innovation has the potential to save the maritime insurance industry from multi-million dollar claims resulting from shipping accidents. Marine accidents can lead to hazardous material spills that can destroy a bay's ecosystem and the tourism, fishing, and other industries that depend on it. The human, environmental, and economic consequences of marine accidents can be staggering, as demonstrated by the 35 deaths caused by the May 1980 ramming of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay (which led to the first PORTS installation), and the estimated $3 billion cost of the EXXON Valdez accident in 1990.

There is a request in the FY 2001 budget for the PORTS program to expand coverage to other critical areas as well as to prevent the quality control provided by NOAA to the existing PORTS from degrading.

National Data Buoy Network
In the coastal ocean and Great Lakes, NOAA's National Data Buoy Network provides real-time data on the sea state and meteorological conditions at buoys and shore-based Coastal-Marine Automated Network (C-MAN) stations. This information is critical to NOAA, state, and private weather forecasters and extremely useful to the public, fishermen and coastal mariners.

NOAA's National Weather Service forecasters need frequent, high-quality marine observations to diagnose conditions before they prepare forecasts and to be sure their forecasts are correct. This network provides hourly observations from a network of about 60 buoys and 60 C-MAN stations to help meet these needs. All stations measure wind speed, direction, and gust; barometric pressure; and air temperature. In addition, all buoy stations, and some C-MAN stations, measure sea surface temperature and wave heights and periods.

In addition to the networks discussed above, a critical component of NOAA's support to marine operations is the early detection and tracking of significant marine weather events through NOAA's geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites.

Managing Living Resources
More efficient management of our Nation's living marine resources would result from better information about the current status of the various biological and physical components of the marine environment and of the relationships between them, leading to predictive physical-biological models. This will require observations of marine food chains and how they support living marine resources. In part, this information must be based on independent surveys of exploited species using multiple techniques. Some of these techniques, like trawls for detailed sampling of a small portion of a habitat, are well developed. Others, like side-scan sonar and airborne lidar, are capable of covering much larger areas, but questions of data processing and instrument calibration remain to be answered.

Four major programs (Coastal Change Analysis Program; Effects of Fishing on Essential Fish Habitat (EFH); Seafloor Characterizations to identify EFH and Habitat Areas of Particular Concern; and Monitoring of SAVs in Coastal Waters) provide routine observations on the habitats of managed species. In addition, information on the ecosystems within which these stocks exist is required. Ecosystem information including data on physical and chemical oceanography, phytoplankton, zooplankton and forage fishes is collected through several programs: including the California Cooperative Fisheries Investigation (CalCoFI) off Southern California; the Marine Monitoring and Assessment Program (MARMAP) in the Northwest Atlantic; SEAMAP in the Southeast U.S.; and the Fisheries Oceanography Coordinated Investigations (FOCI) in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea. These programs provide essential information on abundance and distribution of marine fish and invertebrates, and environmental changes which affect them. In addition, management-oriented assessment and monitoring programs within the 12 National Marine Sanctuaries use detailed imaging, habitat characterization, and resource monitoring to track and control the effects of human activities such as diving, boating, commercial vessel traffic, fishing, and oil and gas production.

Healthy Ecosystems
As the Nation's principal advocate for coastal and ocean stewardship, NOAA's NOS is responsible for monitoring the health of the U.S. coast.

National Status and Trends Program
NOAA's NOS conducts the National Status and Trends Program which measures the current status of and changes over time in the levels of toxic contaminants, including trace metals, pesticides, petroleum hydrocarbons, and other toxic organic contaminants. In addition, the effects of these compounds on fish and shellfish at about 280 locations in the U.S. Coastal and Great Lakes ecosystems is monitored. In areas where substantially elevated concentrations of toxic substances are detected, detailed observations on the magnitude and extent of biological effects due to these contaminants are conducted.

Temporal trends are being monitored through the Mussel Watch project that analyzes mussels and oysters collected annually at about 200 of those sites. Spatial trends have been described on a national scale from chemical concentrations measured in surface sediments collected by both the Mussel Watch and Benthic Surveillance Projects from 240 sites distributed throughout the coastal and estuarine United States. The Benthic Surveillance Project has, in addition, measured chemical concentrations in fish livers and performed histological analyses of fish for evidence of biological responses to chemical contamination.

National Estuarine Research Reserve System
NOS also supports the National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS) to monitor physical, chemical and biological parameters. The data are used to describe, track and predict long-term changes and short-term variability in the status, integrity and biodiversity of these areas. NOAA's 27-year commitment to NERRS has resulted in the designation of 25 Reserves (with two more to be added in 2000/2001) totaling over one million acres of estuarine waters and lands. Each Reserve is a discrete area, jointly established by a coastal state and NOAA, containing key habitat within an estuary that is protected by state law from significant ecological change.

Reserves are selected to represent different types of estuaries and large biogeographic regions within the Nation. Reserves are operated by coastal states to work with local communities and regional groups to address coastal watershed management issues and to raise awareness and appreciation for estuaries. In addition, because reserves are designated to represent large biogeographic regions, they also provide an important source of information beyond their immediate locale.

Coastal Intensive Site Network
NOAA, in cooperation with EPA and NASA, has initiated the establishment of a nation-wide network of coastal and Great Lakes index sites to provide standard information on major environmental variables. Eleven pilot sites for this Coastal Intensive Site Network (CISNet) have been established with the objectives of: 1) developing and evaluating indicators of environmental change; 2) demonstrating the usefulness of such a network for resolving short-term variability from long-term trends; 3) identifying and quantifying causal relationships between human activities and environmental variability; and 4) developing and validating models of environmental change in response to anthropogenic forcings.

Ensuring Public Health
NOAA conducts several monitoring programs related to properties of concern for protection of public health. In cooperation with the EPA and states along the southeastern U.S. coast, NOAA is monitoring the levels of the toxic dinoflagellate, Pfiesteria piscicida, and related water quality properties to determine the threat posed to human health and the ecosystem by this organism. The National Marine Fisheries Service conducts a Seafood Inspection Program that works in conjunction with the Food and Drug Administration and the States to ensure that U.S. Seafood products are safe for consumption.

Mitigating Natural Hazards
NOAA's suite of sustained ocean observations provides urgently needed real-time data required for decision-making. These data provide fundamental input to the predictive models used for the short-term warnings that NOAA must disseminate to the public and other users. In addition to the programs discussed above in the context of Marine Operations, NOAA also participates in the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Network.

Tsunami Hazard Mitigation
Tsunamis are a threat to the life and property of anyone living near the ocean. For example, in 1992 and 1993 over 2,000 people were killed by tsunamis occurring in Nicaragua, Indonesia and Japan. Property damage was nearly one billion dollars. The 1960 Chile earthquake generated a Pacific-wide tsunami that caused widespread death and destruction in Chile, Hawaii, Japan and other areas in the Pacific. Large tsunamis have been known to rise over 100 feet, while tsunamis only 10 to 20 feet high can be very destructive and cause many deaths and injuries.

The Tsunami Warning System (TWS) in the Pacific, comprised of 26 participating international Member States, monitors seismological and tidal stations throughout the Pacific Basin. The System evaluates potentially tsunamigenic earthquakes and disseminates tsunami warning information. To address the critical need for mitigating the threat of tsunamis along the U.S. West coast (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington), NOAA operates the tsunami warning network, which includes newly installed real-time sensors for detecting the passage of tsunamis most likely to impact highly vulnerable coastal communities. This program has been a part of NOAA's Natural Disaster Reduction Initiative since FY 1997 and is targeted at increasing preparedness and warning capability for tsunami hazards.

Real-time reporting systems are needed in the deep ocean for the early detection of tsunamis and for assessing and forecasting the threat to coastal communities. This capability will also reduce false alarms that undermine the credibility of the warning system and are extremely expensive; 75 percent of all warnings issued since 1948 have been false, and the evacuation of Honolulu in 1986 cost more than $30M. NOAA has developed a system that acoustically transmits data from a Bottom Pressure Recorder (BPR) to a surface buoy, which then sends the data to shore-based receivers through a satellite communications link. Our BPR research experience over the last 10 years indicates that these real-time systems are capable of detecting deep ocean tsunamis with amplitudes as small as 1 cm.

Three complete DART (Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis) systems have been deployed from the NOAA Ship Ron Brown. Additionally, another DART system will be deployed at OWS PAPA as part of a continuing occupation of that site for climate and weather research. Additional moorings are being fabricated for deployments this year. Seismic instrumentation will also be installed in Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon, and California this year as a component of this work.

OCEAN EXPLORATION
In addition to these sea surface- and satellite-based platforms, NOAA has developed a suite of undersea ocean observation systems. Submersible and hydroacoustic technologies have brought scientists to a new frontier in fields of underwater research. Recent scientific advances have allowed us access to thousands of square miles of virtually unexplored seafloor resources. Just as space observatories on earth and other planets help explore the stars and remote worlds, seafloor observatories shed light on inner space -- the ocean frontier.

Seafloor Observation Systems
Experiments and sample collections carried out at permanent seafloor installations provide information needed to understand ocean processes, fish and ecosystem interactions, and predict the impacts of natural and human-induced changes. Scientists gain access to remote, rarely seen environments and not just to look, but to experiment and describe chemical, physical, and biological processes that cannot be understood using only occasional, "snapshot" measurements. The general public benefits in the long term because a better understanding of the oceans and their resources will enable more informed policy choices as ocean development progresses. Students learn by interacting in the exciting world of undersea science.

NOAA has a rich history of support for seafloor observatories and is providing significant new support for various efforts. Three permanent observatories are now in operation: Aquarius underwater laboratory; the Long-term Ecosystem Observatory system; and the New Millennium Observatory.

Aquarius
Owned by NOAA and managed by the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW), Aquarius is the world's only underwater laboratory from which diving scientists can live and work beneath the sea during research missions up to 10 days in length. Aquarius presently operates at a depth of 60 feet at the base of a coral reef wall off Key Largo, Florida. The 81-ton, 43x20x16.5-foot underwater laboratory has many of the comforts of home while also providing scientists with sophisticated on-bottom laboratory capability.

The special diving capability of Aquarius, called saturation diving, allows scientists to work outside the habitat on the reef up to nine hours a day without fear of getting the bends, compared to about one hour if they had to work from the surface. Increased research time on-bottom is the key element that enhances scientific productivity beneath the sea.

Aquarius is the centerpiece of a comprehensive environmental in situ research program in the Florida Keys aimed at better understanding and preserving the health of coral reefs and nearshore ecosystems. Significant discoveries made using Aquarius that help meet NOAA mission goals include the following:
1. Ultraviolet radiation reaches and harms deep (20 m) coral reef environments
2. Sewage pollution and degraded water quality impacts ecosystems throughout the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary
3. New products (e.g., pharmaceuticals) isolated from marine species
4. Basic properties of underwater light and how reef animals rely on it
5. Fossil records of coral reefs and implications for past environmental changes
6. Better understanding of the health, physiology and behavior of coral species

One area of rapid advancement has been in the development of an autonomous vehicle, REMUS (Remote Environmental Sampling Units), that will become integrated into the observatory facility. REMUS vehicles will be used widely in the vicinity of LEO-15 this summer as part of a multi-platform adaptive sampling effort focusing on evaluating a relocatable, data assimilative, coastal-ocean forecasting model.

LEO-15
LEO-15 consists of two unmanned seafloor platforms (or nodes) 1.5 kilometers apart approximately nine kilometers off the central coast of New Jersey, in 15 m of water. They are linked to the Rutgers Marine Field Station in Tuckerton, NJ, with an electro-optical fiber cable. This link provides continuous power and real-time connection between the undersea world off the coast of New Jersey and the Internet, providing scientists, engineers, and educators with realtime access to the sea. Scientists and students may monitor experiments and alter their direction from any classroom, office building, or laboratory with Internet access.

Each node has a "vertical profiler" -- an electric winch and wire controlled by pre-programmed on-site timer, shore station or the Internet, to provide water column profiles of temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, light transmission, chlorophyll, and a variety of custom instruments. In addition, each node has a video camera to provide continuous bottom imagery and two hydrophones to provide information on the sound environment.

An integral component of the LEO-15 design is REMUS. REMUS is a small, lowcost autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) or robot designed for environmental monitoring. The AUV is used to enhance the continuous real-time presence that the seafloor observatory offers by making measurements of episodic events which take place in locations which are remote from the cable. On command from a control station, or via the Internet, one or more of the vehicles garaged in the seafloor observatory are launched and negotiate a pre-programmed round trip course. LEO's capabilities will eventually extend to two more platforms offshore at depths of 750 meters and 2,500 meters.

The LEOs serve as core elements of an ocean sensing network in the Mid-Atlantic Bight to aid in the prediction of, or rapid response to, episodic events (such as storms, upwelling and hypoxia) that are poorly studied by conventional methods. LEO-15 is conducting science that has never been done before. The sheer amount of information is unheard of for most coastal studies-- gigabytes per hour of data stream to the shore base and from there to all parts of the globe.

HUGO
The Hawaii Undersea Geo-Observatory (HUGO) was initially funded by a Marine Research Instrumentation grant to the University of Hawaii from the National Science Foundation. HUGO supplied the infrastructure for a multi-disciplinary observatory at the summit of Loihi volcano, an active submarine volcano about 20 miles southeast of the big island, Hawaii. Like LEO-15, HUGO was connected to shore by an electro-optical cable donated by the phone company. HUGO supported more than sixty types of experiments with about ten watts of continuous electrical power, controlled from shore, and returned 2000 data samples/second to shore in real-time. Data and command capability were also available over the Internet. Most experiments were installed by submersible. Some lower data-rate experiments were autonomous and communicated with HUGO over an acoustic local area network (ALAN) without a hard-wire connection.

Experiments and sensors initially included in HUGO were hydrophone, seismometer, depth sensor and chemical sensor arrays. Other potential experiments included an array of pressure sensors to detect changes in inflation of the volcano's summit, an up-looking Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP), a string of CTD's, video and digital still cameras, a hydrophone array, and an acoustic geodetic network.

NeMO
The New Millennium Observatory (NeMO) is a seafloor observatory located at the summit of a large submarine volcano 300 miles off the Pacific Northwest coast. Established two years ago through joint efforts between NOAA and the National Science Foundation, the focus of NeMO is to understand, and provide access to, the deep hot microbial biosphere which underlies volcanically heated regions of the global oceanic crust. Many of the microbes living within this biosphere belong to a newly discovered kingdom called Archaea. These organisms thrive under very high pressures and many only function at temperatures above 100 degrees Celsius. Interestingly, they also are genetically more closely related to humans than bacteria encountered in everyday life. Because of their unique and extreme living environments, these microbes, which are referred to as thermophiles, have immense potential for biotechnical and pharmaceutical applications.

NeMO is an interdisciplinary effort aimed at discovering the conditions that enable the microbial biosphere to exist. Another objective of NeMO is to provide long time-series surveys and sampling of the biosphere and the physical and chemical attributes of its host rock and seawater environment. A hallmark of NeMO is the development of unique physical, chemical, and biological technology which makes this seafloor observatory unique among all other seafloor efforts. NOAA's acoustic monitoring of the observatory site detected the onset of a volcanic eruption in January 1998, for example, and subsequent studies of the effects of the eruption, while it was active, showed that there was an extraordinary abundance of thermophiles associated with the event. Nearly all of the organisms sampled were new to science and are replete with physical and chemical attributes that make them of potential value for biotechnical and/or pharmaceutical applications. Another technology implemented for the first time during the summer of 1999 at NeMO was initiation of near-real-time access to photographic and temperature data from the site via the Internet. This effort will be expanded in 2000 to include two-way communications with seafloor instrumentation at the mile-deep site.

NeMO involves the collaborative efforts of a team of nearly one hundred scientists from NOAA, U.S. and foreign academic institutions, and other U.S. and non-U.S. agencies and institutions.

Other Undersea Observations
VENTS
Through its VENTS Program, NOAA is conducting ground-breaking research and observations of processes and ecosystems in the interior ocean and sea floor. One recent important finding is the discovery of episodic volcanic/hydrothermal bursts, called megaplumes, which inject massive heat and chemical inputs into the ocean as a consequence of deepsea volcanic eruptions. Megaplumes persist in the ocean for months, maybe years, and have important ocean environmental consequences because of their heat and chemical content. Now, it is suspected they play an important role in macro- and microbiological ecosystems.

The VENTS Program obtained access to the U.S. Navy's Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) hydrophone network and has designed and implemented the world's only real-time, Pacific-wide acoustic monitoring capability. This capability enables VENTS to detect and locate deep volcanic eruptions and thus makes it possible for these events to be studied while they are active. While these are the most common volcanic eruptions on Earth, it wasn't until 1993 when VENTS detected an eruption taking place off the coast of Oregon, along the Juan de Fuca Ridge, that a deep-sea eruption was studied while it was active. These eruptions have profound impacts on the ocean's thermal, chemical, and biological environments.

VENTS scientists are pioneering the study of the subseafloor microbial biosphere through seafloor and water column sampling projects. These projects, including sampling of the plumes arising from active deep volcanic eruptions, have shown that eruptions are literally windows into the biosphere. Within the last five years, VENTS scientists have discovered that the most unusual of the bacteria, which live in extremely hot subseafloor environments, are very common in eruption megaplumes. The monitoring and sampling technologies designed by VENTS has made it possible to recover microbial species with profound potential in industrial, environmental, biotechnical and pharmaceutical applications. For example, an enzyme, found only in deep hydrothermal vents is revolutionizing biotechnology's ability to replicate DNA using the Polymerase chain reaction technique. This technique can be used to identify with a very high-probability, disease-causing viruses and/or bacteria, or the DNA of a particular individual.

Sustainable Seas Expeditions
NOAA, in partnership with the National Geographic Society, supports the Sustainable Seas Expeditions, a 5-year project to explore, study, and raise public awareness of the U.S. National Marine Sanctuaries. Submersible, ROV and diving operations are conducted in the sanctuaries from NOAA vessels by sanctuary program staff, regional scientists and educators.

THE ECONOMIC BASIS AND BENEFITS OF ISOOS
NOAA and the Navy commissioned a panel of economic experts to review the economic justification for ISOOS. This panel included several members who have authored, published, and peer-reviewed studies of the benefits from information systems similar to ISOOS. The panel was asked to: (1) identify and assess potential economic sectors and activities that would benefit from applications of ISOOS data; (2) review and assess the available published estimates of the benefits from existing and possibly similar systems that depend on ocean observations since a formal cost benefit analysis of ISOOS has not been undertaken; and (3) assess the rationale and justification for public funding for a system like ISOOS since it will be a sizeable investment. I will now summarize for you the key points in the panel's report.

ISOOS Benefits Derive from "Network Externalities"
The panel noted that ocean observations currently are largely an ad hoc activity. Data is collected for a specific purpose, such as siting a facility, experiments, environmental monitoring, etc. Once that purpose is fulfilled, data collection often is discontinued. While the data obtained in this way is quite valuable for the specific purpose, it may contribute little to the achievement of other related or unrelated economic or research goals.

ISOOS is aimed at remedying this situation. Consider that the value of the national weather system depends on thousands of individual observations, maintaining historical data bases for modeling, and continuous world-wide coverage of the atmosphere. Similarly, data collection under ISOOS would produce consistent and continuous data with wide coverage. The value of ISOOS derives from its ability to bring together currently scattered observations, to create databases from which historical trends can be measured, and to extend the reach of observations to encompass all relevant data. Because much more useful information can be produced from an integrated system, its value is greater than the sum of the individual observations. ISOOS will create "network externalities."

Such data would still serve the specific purposes that now motivate data collection, but in addition it would make possible important advances in our understanding of ocean systems and lead to results like those we have achieved in forecasting ENSO. For example, there is a North Atlantic Oscillation and a Pacific Decadal Oscillation that have yet to be understood in the way that ENSO is now understood. It is reasonable to expect that when we achieve understanding of these additional phenomena, our ability to make seasonal weather predictions for the U.S. will show further marked improvement of the magnitude we've seen in ENSO predictions. For example, Figure 2 illustrates the predictive potential of the North Atlantic and Pacific Decadal Oscillations for U.S. wintertime precipitation and temperature. Our present understanding of ENSO gives us the predictive power suggested by the top diagram; improved future understanding of the other oscillations should yield the improved predictions shown in the diagram in Figure 2.

Economic Benefits of ISOOS
Seasonal Climate Forecasts
The most important example of benefits from new ocean observing systems is our improved ENSO forecast. The panel cited several published studies indicating large economic benefits. These benefits are estimated to be $300-400 million per year, for improved cropping decisions in U.S. agriculture. Another study estimated similar benefits from improved efficiency in corn storage. Yet another study included the costs of producing ENSO forecasts and estimated a rate of return on investments in ENSO prediction of 13 to 26 percent. This latter study only included the benefits from improved crop choice decisions.

There are many other economic sectors that benefit from ENSO forecasts, including hydroelectric production, energy distribution for space heating, commercial fishing, construction, outdoor recreation, and storm damage prevention. In most cases, the benefits in these sectors have not yet been quantified.

Coastal Management
A second area where ocean observations from ISOOS would have notable value is coastal management. Protective management of the US coastal zones requires accurate information about contaminant flows in order to develop policy regarding wastewater treatment and disposal, trash disposal, airborne pollution control, beach closures, and public health restrictions on seafood consumption. For example, in the Boston area, treated sewage is going to be discharged into Massachusetts Bay rather than into the Boston Harbor. However, this has raised concerns about possible effects on the Bay. The kinds of ocean observations that ISOOS will provide would be of great value in determining a baseline measurement of conditions in the Bay and monitoring the Bay for possible changes due to the re-directed sewage outflow.

Beach management is another important area where ISOOS data would be very useful. Millions of Americans use coastal beaches throughout the year as a major source of recreation, and thousands of jobs in almost every coastal state depend on access to safe, clean beaches. Many threats to the beaches are directly connected to the movement of ocean waters. In California and much of the East, combined sewer overflows can temporarily close beaches when high levels of untreated sewage are pumped into the sea following storms. Oil spills pose another threat that can damage beaches for months or years. The kinds of data that ISOOS would provide would help in making appropriate beach closure decisions and avoiding unnecessary precautionary closures, as well as in deploying clean-up equipment most effectively to minimize damages from oil spills.

Other Benefits
Beyond seasonal weather forecasts and coastal management, many other benefits are likely to arise from ISOOS. These include improvements in short-term weather forecasting abilities, improvements in marine weather forecasts, and increases in available ocean data. Such improvements of course benefit the general public as well as a host of more specific sectors, among them the maritime industry, commercial fishing, recreational boating, offshore energy production, the military, the coast guard, coastal management authorities, public health authorities, and the ecosystem. Unfortunately, specific numerical estimates of economic benefits in most of these sectors simply do not exist.

Given the expectation that ISOOS would produce improvements in seasonal forecasting abilities similar to those we've obtained with respect to ENSO, the panel concluded that these benefits for ISOOS could reasonably be expected to be similar to those from ENSO forecasts. For the other sectors for which there are no quantitative benefit estimates, the panel simply noted that the sectors of the economy potentially benefiting from ISOOS make up nearly 10 percent of GDP have a annual value of output approaching a trillion dollars. If ISOOS data produced even a small percentage improvement in average efficiency across these sectors, ISOOS would produce very large benefits.

Economic Development
In addition to the economic benefits described above, there will likely be some private sector economic development induced by ISOOS. The private sector will find ways to add value to the data through customize products and services tailored to specific users of the basic data. This will create new firms, new jobs, and perhaps new industries built around using, enhancing, and selling information derived from ISOOS. While the location of this private sector development is difficult to predict, it is most likely to cluster around major research institutions involved in the study of the ocean, the atmosphere, and hydrology. Much of this activity will be in coastal states, but centers for the study of these fields are located throughout the U.S., and thus new firms and jobs can be expected throughout the country.

Public Sector Financing is Critical
The panel concluded that although ISOOS should very easily pass conventional cost/benefit tests (ratios, net benefits, internal rates of return, etc.), a key question is whether it should be funded by the public. Here, the panel concluded that there is a legitimate role for the public sector in funding the basic data collection envisioned in ISOOS. As noted, the overall systems value of ISOOS greatly exceeds the sum of the values of the individual elements of the system; i.e., it is a system characterized by "network externalities." Further, in several respects the data that ISOOS would produce has the character of a "quasi-public-good" and in some situations that of a pure "public good." It is well known that private agents generally do not efficiently provide goods with these kinds of external benefits. If funding of ISOOS data collection were left to private individuals and companies, we would only expect to see limited data collection for limited purposes for limited time periods and with limited distribution of the data. As a result, ocean data collection would fail to realize the overall system value. For this reason, public sponsorship of ISOOS is necessary. With public sponsorship, data collection decisions can be guided by their overall contribution to a wide variety of economic sectors and research goals, making it possible to achieve the overall system value we foresee.

Interagency Cooperation
As can be inferred from the long list of ocean observing requirements I have been discussing, the costs of ocean observation programs are very high and NOAA is not able to fully underwrite these costs alone. We are working in cooperation with other nations and collaboratively with other agencies on oceanographic research and in situ and satellite observations. Further, we are working with the University National Oceanographic Laboratory Systems (UNOLS) and private industry to optimize the use of research ship resources. UNOLS is an organization of 61 academic institutions and national laboratories involved in oceanographic research and joined for the purpose of coordinating oceanographic ships' schedules and research facilities. In addition to partnerships based on financial resources, NOAA forms intellectual partnerships, primarily with academia. Through formal institutional partnerships or grants to individual scientists, NOAA provides over $100M annually for academic research in support of our various strategic goals. The NOAA-academic partnership for ocean observations is quite strong and we expect it to strengthen further as we increase our efforts.

To this end, NOAA is committed to working with other agencies in arrangements such as the NOPP. NOAA has been working hard with other agencies to facilitate the implementation of a NOPP Observation Office for the coordination of ISOOS as recommended in the Frosch Report. A strong partnership would allow each agency to execute its own research and/or operational-driven mission while deriving maximum benefit from symbiotic interagency coordination.

The concept and general principles for this Office, for which funds are included in the President's budget, have been discussed by the NORLC. The Terms of Reference for the Office are being developed along with the interagency agreements necessary to implement the Office in FY 2001. We are continuing to move forward on many of the other recommendations put forward by the Frosch report so that this partnership will be a success. As an example, a pilot project is underway in the Gulf of Maine region to establish a multi-sector working group under NOPP involving federal, state and local government, academic and private representatives to solicit support, involvement and contributions for system design and governance.

The plan for implementing ISOOS has identified the potential value of continuing and expanding U.S. ocean observation programs. Congressional leadership will be vital in insuring that the kind of long-term, sustained investment science requires for ocean observations will be realized. We are just beginning to understand other modes of climate variability, but more observations are necessary to help us predict tropical storm development and intensity, and improve numerical weather prediction. NOAA, through its own laboratories and its academic partners is leading the U.S. civilian efforts in in situ ocean observations and is working closely with NASA and DOD on satellite-based remote sensing of the oceans.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my testimony. I would be happy to answer any questions you or members may have.