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Research in NOAA

Interview with Dr. Alexander "Sandy" MacDonald
June 22, 2007

BARRY REICHENBAUGH: Hi. I'm Barry Reichenbaugh with the NOAA Research Communications Office and I'm here today with Dr. Alexander "Sandy" MacDonald who is the NOAA Deputy Assistant Administrator for Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes. And, he also is the Director of the Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. Welcome, Sandy. Thanks for joining me.

SANDY MACDONALD: Thanks, Barry.

BARRY REICHENBAUGH: For listeners, Sandy, could we start out with the basics here. This is out first podcast and I would just like to ask you if you could explain what NOAA Research is.

SANDY MACDONALD: Okay. Well, I'd start with NOAA, which is actually National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Essentially, NOAA are the people who, for the government, actually try to understand and predict our oceans and atmosphere. And, we also take care of the nation's fisheries.

So, what we do in NOAA Research is help improve NOAA's product; so the National Weather Service issues warnings whenever there is dangerous weather or they issue a hurricane warning or the Nation Ocean Service tells people what's happening in the coastal ocean. We're the people who make the product better, so to speak.

And so, NOAA Research has got programs to improve hurricane forecasting. We've got programs to understand life in the ocean and the future of our planet. And, we're really the go-to agency, the ones who really have the responsibility to say where the hurricane's gonna go and have the responsibility to predict the future of our climate which is such a crucial 21st century issue.

BARRY REICHENBAUGH: I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about the quality of research that's being done currently? Where are some of the directions that NOAA Research is headed?

SANDY MACDONALD: Well, one thing that I have enjoyed in this job -- and, I've only been in the job a year -- is the approach that we've taken. Our Assistant Administrator, Rick Spinrad, has said the crucial things for NOAA Research are preeminence. We ought to be the best. And, second, that our research has to be valuable to society. And, I think that's the kind of thing that you can really enjoy working on.

When we talk about hurricanes, during the last 40 years, our hurricane prediction errors, have decreased by a factor of four. In other words, forty years ago, the average error for a three-day hurricane forecast was 400 miles. It's now less than 100 miles. So, we have a track record of making better and better forecasts.

And, Hurricane Katrina, this terrible disaster, everybody has said the one thing that was great was that prediction. It was basically within 30 miles, almost four days in advance.

Now, why does that happen? It happens because we have a dedicated group, both in the research side, figuring out how to make better forecasts, and, the operational side, Max Mayfield (former National Hurricane Center Director) and the Hurricane Center people who actually did the prediction. That's our goal. Make the forecast better.

BARRY REICHENBAUGH: Just, I guess, to touch on some of the other topical things that people would pick up on that NOAA Research is involved in – tsunamis?

SANDY MACDONALD: And, tsunamis is a good case in point. The great tsunami that occurred right before Christmas in 2004, and a lot of people had never heard about tsunamis and that really showed us how terrible and dangerous these things are.

We had cared a lot about it. Eddie Bernard, the Director of Pacific Marine Environment Lab, had actually worked for years to get a tsunami buoy network. They had developed the technology so you can have this buoy out in the middle of the ocean and it'll tell you if a tsunami has actually been created.

So, the United States and the Pacific nations had worked on that. Sadly, the Indian Ocean -- partly because countries are less advanced and partly because they didn't have somebody like Eddie Bernard who really had figured out how to get these buoys out there and tell when tsunamis are occurring.

So, the United States is often served by dedicated people who understand the field. And, there's a lot of that in NOAA Research. And, they look to the future and they say this is something we need.

So, now, worldwide, we're putting out tsunami buoys in the Indian Ocean with the cooperation of them and we're setting up warning networks in the Atlantic and so on.

And, that's really what I think preeminence is defined by, and that is not just thinking about today's problem but thinking about the oceans and atmosphere and all they deliver, and all the dangers that are inherent in those in helping to protect the public.

BARRY REICHENBAUGH: Do any other things come to mind in terms of the labs that would resonate with listeners in terms of just the breadth of what research is going on in NOAA?

SANDY MACDONALD: Well, I think the way I think about the laboratories is that we are a part of protecting the people of the United States and the world. The first job of government is to protect people.

And, you think about it, well, we need protection from tornadoes. This spring, there was a tornado that hit a small Kansas town and just wiped it off the map. The forecaster at Dodge City had tools built by our laboratories. They had Doppler radars. They had advanced information systems. And, that forecaster actually alerted the whole town and got everybody in town into their basements. And, he was lauded by President Bush for that work.

So, our forecasters are a little bit like the quarterback that get all the credit. But, behind them are the linemen, the big beefy linemen, who do the work. Now, that's what our labs have done. They've built these powerful tools. And, that's protecting the public.

There is also protecting the public in the long-term. Is our climate gonna change? Is the western United States already having more trouble with fires and water resources because the climate is heating up? We've been working on that for years. We have what have been characterized as the best climate models. That's preeminence.

And, value to society. Alerting the public as to these dangers, whether they're tornadoes or whether they're increasing wildfires and temperatures and impacts on crops and so on.

So, that's how I see our work. Doing things, extremely important to the public. Doing it the best possible way. Hurricane forecast within 30 miles, days in advance. Predictions of climate change. Predictions of El Niño. We didn't used to be able to do that. We now do those kinds of predictions.

We want to be the best. And, the things that we do are about the most important thing to the public because it is protecting them from these dangerous things that can happen with our oceans and atmosphere.

BARRY REICHENBAUGH: The last topic I wanted to try and touch on here a little bit was our efforts to communicate science to the public. And, I, you know, a couple of things come to mind that are sort of out front, I think, for NOAA Research.

And, I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about your brainchild, Science on a Sphere, and another thing that is current right now and that's NOAA's Virtual Island on Second Life.

SANDY MACDONALD: Yes, I think it is really important for us to present our science. I mean, science -- and, some people remember, you know, they had a bad experience in elementary school and they didn't love science. But, science is exciting. And, we've tried to show that to people.

For example, Science on a Sphere® is this big six-foot sphere. You put it in a dark room and you display the Earth. And, that Earth might be satellite imagery of the clouds. It might be ocean currents, you might even display Mars on it, turning where you can look at Mars, this incredible detail that we've had.

So, Science on a Sphere® is the way to show the public what planets are in the phenomena on those planets. And, it's now in 12 museums. We actually have literally a million people understanding our oceans and atmosphere better because of that.

And, that was developed by our laboratories. I was involved in that. And, I'm quite proud because it's not just a matter of doing the science. It's a matter also of showing the public, you know, what the science is.

And, that's a similar thing with our virtual world. We created a NOAA island and we educate people on tsunamis and we educate them on how NOAA predicts hurricanes and so on.

So, our job is really the complete job. Understand, predict, and inform the public. And, in NOAA Research, part of preeminence is trying to do all those the best we can.

BARRY REICHENBAUGH: Well, thanks, Sandy. It's good to hear someone who's well practiced at communicating science to us non-scientists.

SANDY MACDONALD: Thank you.

BARRY REICHENBAUGH: I want to thank everyone for joining me today. This is Barry Reichenbaugh with the NOAA Research Communications Office. Particular thanks to Dr. Alexander "Sandy" MacDonald.