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[Note from the Editor: The editorial in the last issue (Six
Heretical Notions About Weather Policy, April 2000 WeatherZine)
provoked a number of responses. In an effort to continue a dialogue
on these topics, we highlight two of these letters in the Guest
Editorial space. The first is from Robert Gall, Chief Scientist
of the U.S. Weather Research Program (www.mmm.ucar.edu/uswrp/),
and the second is from Michael MacCracken, the Former Director U.S.
Global Change Research Program and now Executive Director of National
Assessment Coordination Office.]
Letter from Robert Gall
Robert Gall
U.S. Weather Research Program
Dear WeatherZine
A couple of comments on Six Heretical Notions About Weather Policy, April 2000 WeatherZine:
1. Yes there is more data being taken than is used, and that reflects, in part, the process that determines which new observation systems are selected for deployment. Often times what gets chosen for deployment is more a function of who can shout the loudest, who the best lobbyists are, etc., rather than what makes most sense in terms of driving the forecasts systems toward the limits of predictability. If the observing system isn't optimally chosen there will be a tendency not to use the data or only use a small portion of the data. Another problem is that it seems to be relatively easy to obtain funding for development and deployment of certain observing systems but almost no funding is available to develop the systems that are necessary to use the data in the operational forecasting process. Today this usually means developing data assimilation systems that would go with the new data source. There is an assumption that somehow or other that will just happen after the new observing system is deployed, but history shows that it doesn't or it happens very slowly, mostly because of very limited resources for research and development of the systems that take the data and use it in the forecast process.
2. You state that, "approximately $2-3 billion is spent on weather and climate research and operations each" which I take to mean that $ 2-3 billion is being spent on weather research. I'd like to see an accounting of how you reached that number. I suspect that you are off by more than an order of magnitude.
[Editor's note: We apologize for the ambiguous wording. The term "each" refers to weather AND climate, not research AND operations. The budgets for weather can be found on our Weather Policy page, and the budget for the U.S. Global Change Research Program can be found at www.gcrio.org/ocp00/ in the publication "Our Changing Planet."]
3. Yes, there are significant resources that are going into weather research and we are making progress. A figure that we have been using shows skill scores for precipitation forecasts where there is a slow upward trend. I contend that that trend represents the collective effects of current weather research spending. If the country is happy with that trend then I suppose that we have no real need to ask for additional funding to accelerate the trend. But recent events suggest that the public expects much more and that this rate of improvement is unacceptable. A case in point is the January snowstorm where the model guidance for the 24 hour forecast was really pretty good in that a storm along the coast was predicted, though too far east by 100 km or so. That is, the forecast models predicted the snow to be just off shore where, in reality, the heavy snow band passed directly over Washington, DC. The error was only a couple of grid points in the model, meaning the error was close to the best we can do with current technology, yet the public was horrified and demanded more. Granted we can probably take the same models that produced the failed forecast and through tweeking of data, model physics etc., make them make a good forecast for that event, and we probably will, but we need to improve the entire forecast system to a point where the chances for error like we saw in January are reduced. We have to pick up the pace of improvement in the model forecasts and in the total operational forecast system to keep up with the accelerating demand for accuracy.
— Robert Gall
Chief Scientist
U.S. Weather Research Program
gall@ucar.edu
Comments? thunder@ucar.edu
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Mike MacCracken
National Assessment Coordination Office
U.S. Global Change Research Program
Dear WeatherZine
RE: On how big is a billion and the benefits of chaos
The last issue of WeatherZine (Six Heretical Notions About Weather Policy, April 2000 WeatherZine) suggested that "public funding for the atmospheric sciences is truly enormous – approximately $2-3 billion is spend (sic) on weather and climate research and operations each." I would note that probably half or more of which is for satellite based information.
Just a note that, for the U.S., $1 billion a year for a program amounts almost exactly to a penny a day per person over the year. So, you are suggesting that we are each spending the truly enormous amount of about a nickel a day on understanding and predicting tornadoes, the daily weather, hurricanes, El Ninos, climate change, ozone depletion, past climates, sea level rise, environmental and socioeconomic consequences, and a host of other related aspects of environmental change that affect how we dress, what we do, what danger we are in, the world our grandchildren will inherit, etc., etc. This is not to say this is not a lot of money, but I do think a bit of perspective is also needed.
I'll let you do the comparisons with other parts of the federal budget like defense, health, foreign aid, etc. (or with other daily activities we all engage in) and to decide if the public is really getting useful output for its investment, even as you suggest useful ideas (as the rest of the article did) on how we could get even more value for our investment.
I also note with some humility your seeming call for more order and less overlaps and chaos, if you will. In my days during the 1980s traveling so much to the former Soviet Union, I was always struck by the fact that having a perfect, non-overlapping plan for delivering food to Moscow (one kind of soda, one kind of chicken, prices the same everywhere, etc.) seemed so appealing but was so much less successful than the chaos of how New York is fed each day, there surely being no master plan and an amazing overlap and uncountable myriad of products of all types, some appealing to many people, some just to a few. It was always a bit hard to try to explain to my Russian friends that everything would work much better if they had no plan at all and just set up a very few basic rules to keep the market functioning fairly. It seems to me that the same sort of situation applies to our field (and others) – if all we did was have one agency providing funding, only one investigator studying each subject, only the data sets we could actually use right this moment, I think we would find that the whole system would work much less well than the seemingly chaotic system we have (with our basic rules being peer-review and finite term awards). I won't disagree that we might be able to do a bit better, ask better questions, etc., but I think one really has to carefully think through whether having everything perfectly and centrally organized would really be better than having a diversity of views and interests and sources of funds. Are you not really proposing the equivalent of recombining the Baby Bells? In my view, we all need to learn to value the competition (overlap) and apparent chaos in that its overall effect seems to be to better get people what they really need.
— Mike MacCracken
Former Director
U.S. Global Change Research Program
Executive Director
National Assessment Coordination Office
mmaccrac@usgcrp.gov
Comments? thunder@ucar.edu
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