Protecting Scientific Use of the Spectrum

by Ya’el Seid-Green, AMS Policy Program
There has been much talk recently about the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proceedings to sell the radio frequencies of 1675-1680 MHz, currently used for GOES data transmission, on the open market. A comment period on the proposal closes June 21st. More information can be found here.
The radio spectrum is a limited resource of great value both within and beyond our scientific community. The weather, water, and climate community uses radio spectrum to conduct scientific research, collect observations, and transmit data that contribute to oceanic, atmospheric, and hydrologic research, models, products, and services. Spectrum is also used to support mobile broadband networks, a sector with enormous growth potential and value for the United States economy.
The scientific community uses the radio spectrum in three distinct ways:

  • Passive remote sensing: Measuring the natural radio emissions of the environment and space (receiver only). Example: GPM Microwave Imager on the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission Core Spacecraft
  • Active remote sensing: Emitting radio waves and measuring the return emissions (transmitter and receiver). Example: Cloud Profiling Radar on CloudSat
  • Data transmission: Transmitting data from satellites and ground-observation stations. Example: GOES VARiable (GVAR) service on the GOES system satellites

Observations are made using ground-based, airborne, and space-based platforms to determine wind profiles, rainfall estimates, wave heights, and ocean current direction, among others. Further information on active and passive sensing instruments is available here: https://earthdata.nasa.gov/user-resources/remote-sensors.
With the advent and rapid growth of mobile commercial technologies, interference on and competition for the radio spectrum has increased. The signals of commercial terrestrial users of spectrum are often much stronger than the signals being measured or transmitted by the weather, water, and climate communities. This can cause radio frequency interference (RFI) that degrades or entirely destroys the data being collected and transmitted for scientific and operational uses.
In addition, there is pressure for federal agencies to relocate off certain spectrum bands to free up additional space for commercial users. In 2010, President Obama set a target of freeing up 500 MHz of spectrum for wireless broadband services. (See also, the Report to the President: Realizing the Full Potential of Government-Held Spectrum to Spur Economic Growth, available here.) The potential benefits to the U.S. economy from freeing up spectrum for commercial use are considerable. Mobile broadband is a rapidly growing segment of the economy, and in 2015 the FCC auctioned off the frequencies of 1695-1710, 1755-1780, and 2155-2180 MHz (collectively the “AWS-3” bands) for mobile telecommunication use for a combined $44.9 billion.
There are several challenges in understanding spectrum allocation policy. First, several different agencies are responsible for allocating and regulating spectrum: the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), within the U.N., allocates spectrum internationally; the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) manages Federal use of the spectrum; and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) manages non-Federal use of the spectrum. This bifurcated regulatory system can make decision-making and management of spectrum use challenging.
Second, given the diverse and complex sources of data that go into weather, water, and climate products, it is often hard for end users to understand how radio spectrum management issues may impact the products and services they rely on for creating value-added products or for making management decisions (see the joint letter sent to the FCC by the AMS and National Weather Association). Finally, it is often difficult to determine the value of scientific and operational uses of the spectrum. Because of this valuation problem, there is concern that earth science uses of the spectrum are not being taken fully into account in spectrum management decisions (see the National Research Council report, A Strategy for Active Remote Sensing Amid Increased Demand for Radio Spectrum).
Although the FCC proceedings regarding 1675-1780 MHz have received the most attention in our community recently, issues around spectrum allocation and management are only going in grow in scope and frequency as pressure on the spectrum increases. An AMS Ad Hoc Committee is working to update the AMS Statement on radio frequency allocations, and there are several bills under consideration in Congress that focus on spectrum management concerns. As a community, we must be prepared to communicate the importance of spectrum for earth observations, science, and services, and the resulting societal applications. We need to be actively engaged in exploring management strategies, policy options, and technology innovations that will allow the nation and the world to gain the maximum benefit from our use of the radio spectrum.
 

Letting Scientists Benefit Us All

Lately you may have noticed that AMS has garnered media attention by standing up for NOAA scientists who are the focus of Congressional scrutiny. This scrutiny was initiated after the scientists re-analyzed global surface temperatures with newly corrected data and found that the warming trend of the second half of the 20th century has been continuing unabated since 1998 instead of experiencing what sometimes has been portrayed as a warming “hiatus.”
AMS doesn’t step casually into political arenas. As a non-profit scientific and professional society, we remain solidly grounded in the world of science. We help expand knowledge and understanding through research and, as our mission states, we work to ensure that scientific advances benefit society. We engage the policy process to help inform decision making and to help ensure that policy choices take full advantage of scientific understanding.
This case is slightly different, however, because the scientific process itself is at risk. When the scientific process is disregarded or, worse yet, possibly derailed, a political issue can become an AMS issue.
The scientific process that AMS and other like-minded institutions have championed over the centuries is about taking careful observations, conducting controlled experiments, separating personal opinions and beliefs from evidence, and, perhaps most critically, exposing scientific conclusions to rigorous and repeated testing over time by independent experts. These repeated cycles of distribution and “trial by fire” happen most notably at meetings, in peer-review, and in publication.
Crucially, the process systematically removes as much as possible of our human tendency to see what we want to see and puts the burden of proof on reproducible steps. It is a disciplined, particular way of finding truths, no matter how elusive, while rendering biases, opinions, and motivations as irrelevant as possible.
This systematic approach to separating fact from opinion occasionally goes astray, of course, but its iterative nature means that science is continually self-correcting and improving; better data and understanding ultimately replace older thinking. Science encourages people to question and challenge thinking, certainty, and accuracy—but it requires they focus exclusively on what they can detect and measure and reason.
Even though all the data, logic, and methodologies are publicly available, the paper rejecting the global warming hiatus inspired Congressional requests for additional email and discussions. Asking for these correspondences—especially from scientists themselves—can easily weigh down the ingenious process by which science has continually advanced. And so AMS made public statements in favor of letting science freely work its wonders. It’s not the first time AMS has done so, and it probably won’t be the last.
We owe much of modern prosperity to an unencumbered scientific process, and it continues to provide some of the most profound and dramatic advancements in the world. This includes medicine, biology, chemistry, computing, agriculture, engineering, physics, astronomy, and, of course, meteorology, hydrology, oceanography, and climatology. Every one of us benefits every single day from what scientists have learned, shared, and provided.
And that’s yet another reason why occasionally AMS must speak out—because of our mission “for the benefit of society.” The point is not just to protect science but also to protect the benefits that knowledge can provide to all of us, no matter what we think of the results. In this, our scientific society actually has much in common with the politicians and policy makers in Washington, D.C.
AMS stands behind the scientific process and will defend that process when necessary, but our goal is to work with policy makers to promote having the best knowledge and understanding used in making policy choices.

Federal Funding for Research in Weather, Water, and Climate

by Paul Higgins, AMS Policy Program Director
In June, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to cut funding for Earth system science and services. One bill cuts roughly 5% each from NASA’s Earth Sciences and the total NOAA budget. That same bill also cuts more than 16% from the total funding for NSF’s Geoscience and Social, Behavioral, and Economics (SBE) directorates. In a separate bill, the House voted to cut more than 9% from Biological and Environmental Research (BER) in the Department of Energy’s Office of Science (though the name can be misleading to some, BER houses the research most relevant to our community).
Both bills passed with support from nearly all House Republicans and opposition from nearly all House Democrats. So the cuts suggest that House Republicans do not think as favorably of the Earth sciences as the AMS community might like.
To become law, the Senate and the President would need to sign off on these cuts. That doesn’t appear likely at this time but the paths to agreement for any funding bill—which must be approved every year—are far too complicated to predict. The good news is that Republicans in the Senate (and Democrats in both chambers) appear more predisposed to fund weather, water, and climate research and the President pushed for increases in weather and climate research through his budget proposal earlier this year. The bad news is that the House, Senate, and President must all ultimately agree on funding decisions and even a compromise does not look like good news for our community.
Two contributing factors to the House funding bills are particularly noteworthy. First, the funding for Earth sciences is at least partially reflective of the differing views on how best to deal with the larger budget situation.
The Federal budget consists of two types of spending: 1) mandatory programs (e.g., Medicare and social security), and 2) discretionary programs. Discretionary spending is often further divided into defense and non-defense spending. Much of the funding for science (e.g., NSF, NASA, NOAA, DoE, and USGS) is in the non-defense discretionary (NDD) category.
The President’s proposed budget for NDD spending in FY 2016 of $526 billion exceeds by $33 billion the proposals created by Republican leadership in the House and Senate of $493 billion. Note, however, that even the President’s proposed budget remains roughly $15 billion (2.8 percent) below FY 2010 levels (assuming a rate of inflation of 1.7% per year). So the Federal budget for research (along with everything else) is under pressure even under the President’s higher numbers.
Some of this ties back to the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011, which made direct cuts to discretionary spending (e.g., funding for science) along with even deeper spending cuts through “sequestration”—automatic across-the-board cuts to both defense and NDD that took hold because Congress failed to agree to a more comprehensive deficit reduction plan (which would have involved a combination of tax increases and more targeted spending cuts). The sequestration cut to NDD is an additional reduction of about six percent.
This overarching budget situation (or conflict) is both a justification for cutting programs and politically expedient cover for those who want to make funding cuts for other reasons, which brings us to the second factor.
The second contributing factor to the House funding bills is the President’s aggressive efforts at climate change risk management. These efforts, which have increased over the last year or so, appear to have angered some, particularly in the House. That anger seems to be being expressed in funding decisions for all of the Earth sciences. At first look, that may not seem to make sense because climate science is a tiny fraction of the Earth sciences and climate change risk management is only tangentially related to climate science. However, the Earth sciences are somewhat easier politically and procedurally for members of congress to focus on than climate science would be alone.
No matter the cause, our community has a strong interest in helping Congress better understand the value of the Earth sciences to the nation and the world. AMS sent a letter to all members of Congress to raise awareness of our contribution (http://ametsoc.org/sss/letters_geosciences_support_may_2015.pdf) but similar efforts from individual scientists throughout the country will likely be needed if policy makers are to view the Earth sciences in a more favorable light.
Strong positive messages, such as those in the AMS letter, are most likely to convey effectively the importance of our science and services to the nation.
Weather and climate information helps society manage risks and realize opportunities associated with existing weather patterns and changes to the climate system (natural and human caused). The services that result can include weather forecasts and warnings, flood and drought prediction and monitoring, natural hazard preparedness and response, public health monitoring, disease prevention and control, assessment and management of fire risk, and decision support for water resources, agriculture, transportation, and other key economic sectors.
Thoughtful engagement with the policy process has the potential to help shift the focus in Congress to the critical role the Earth sciences play in advancing the national agenda. That would help secure the support and resources that our community needs to make critical information and services available.

From Florida, A Reminder About Freedom of Expression

The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting published allegations this week that the terms “climate change” and “global warming” were banned from state government communications in Florida, including state-agency sponsored research studies and educational programs. The Washington Post followed with claims, for example, that a researcher was required by state officials to strike such words before submitting for publication a manuscript about a epidemiological study.
No evidence of a written policy or rule has been reported, and state officials have denied any policy of the sort. Meanwhile, the media are hunting through Florida websites trying to find state documents produced during the administration of Gov. Rick Scott with contents that would contradict the charges of an unwritten policy, imperfectly enforced.
The controversy is one in a string of recent events reminding us how much scientists rely on their freedom of expression. Most often the problem has been the freedom of government scientists to speak about their work with the public. Lately this has caused a media blizzard in Canada.
Science ethicists may argue one way or another about where the limits of public expression are for government scientists when they contradict policy goals. And certainly—as well seen most obviously in the Cold War—such goals can include national security concerns. But the AMS stance on the filtering or tampering of science for nonscientific purposes is quite clear in the Statement on Freedom of Expression:

The ability of scientists to present their findings to the scientific community, policy makers, the media, and the public without censorship, intimidation, or political interference is imperative.

Freedom of expression is essential to scientific progress. Open debate is a necessary part of science and takes place largely through the publication of credible studies vetted in peer review. Publication is thus founded on the need for freedom of expression, and it is in turn a manifestation of freedom of expression.
One might think the job of journals is to screen out unwanted science, but it’s quite the opposite. Papers are published not because they are validated as “right” so much as they are considered “worthy” of further scientific consideration. In addition, the publication process itself—which AMS knows well in its 11 scientific journals—is not just for authors to report and interpret their work. It relies on free discussion. The peer review process usually allows reviewers maximum protection of anonymity to preserve the ability to speak freely about the manuscripts being scrutinized. The papers that pass review are then the starting point for documenting objections, alternative interpretations, and confirmation, among other expressions that only matter if made accessible to other scientists through peer reviewed journals.
The AMS Statement recognizes that such freedom implies responsibility:

It is incumbent upon scientists to communicate their findings in ways that portray their results and the results of others, objectively, professionally, and without sensationalizing or politicizing the associated impacts.

Scientists are not the only ones to treasure such freedoms, of course. Society benefits from the progress of science every day. This only happens when scientists freely, promptly, and prolifically report what they find—and that means exactly what they find, not what they are told to find. The alternative is to compromise the pursuit of truth and the very foundations of our health and prosperity.
We all become victims when science is not shared and cannot flourish. The fact that climate change has deep social, economic, and political implications today means it is even more important to recognize that with increasing value of climate change science comes the increasing temptation for policy makers to co-opt and alter that science. As the AMS Statement warns, the principles of free expression “matter most—and at the same time are most vulnerable to violation—precisely when science has its greatest bearing on society.”
 

An Invitation to the AMS Washington Forum

By Shawn Miller, Chair, AMS Board on Enterprise Economic Development
Fellow stakeholders in the weather, water, and climate enterprise, as chair of the AMS Board on Enterprise Economic Development (BEED), I would like to invite you to participate in the 2015 AMS Washington Forum, April 21-23 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Building, 1200 New York Avenue NW in Washington, D.C.
Organized by the AMS BEED, the purpose of the annual AMS Washington Forum is to provide an opportunity for members of the weather, water, and climate community to meet with senior federal agency officials, congressional staff, and other community members to hear about the status of current programs, learn about new initiatives, discuss issues of interest to our community, identify business opportunities, and speak out about data and other needs.
The 2015 AMS Washington Forum will focus on end users of weather, water, and climate data, returning to the theme of past years’ User Forum events conducted by the AMS. As the enterprise evolves and adapts to changes in budgets and cost-sharing paradigms, heightened attention to the needs of its end users is key to success for all stakeholders. Particular attention must be given to key areas of industry, such as health and the various modes of transportation. The 2015 forum will promote dialogue between the enterprise and its end users toward that end. Several special topics are planned for interactive panel discussions, including an overarching theme session; hospital preparedness in the wake of extreme weather and climate events; weather data needs relating to rail, trucking, and marine transportation; and water resources and related user needs. The forum will also feature speakers on the topics of national/international water rights issues, the intersection between legal and science issues, and commercial weather satellites. Complementary to the session topics on specific user needs, senior leaders from agencies including NOAA, NASA, and other enterprise stakeholders will look ahead and provide updates on current programs and provide insights on new science initiatives and directions. We will also invite leaders from the Office of Management & Budget and the Office of Science & Technology Policy, and from Congress, who will discuss the latest weather-, water- and climate-related programs and legislative initiatives to better serve the American people.
Seating is limited for this exciting event, so preregistration is strongly recommended. Please watch the AMS_PSL list for announcements, or send an e-mail to Gary Rasmussen ([email protected]) to be added to the announcement list. Thank you for your time and attention, and I hope to see you in Washington this April!

A Question for the Experts

There have been many thoughtful questions raised throughout this weekend’s AMS Student Conference, but one question posed at the communications breakout session on Saturday proved particularly challenging for the panelists. A student asked, “How do you educate the public that doesn’t have access to television or social media? How do we educate the homeless about severe weather events?”
Here were the responses from the panelists:
Marshall Shepherd, Univ. of Georgia: I think you’re hitting on a key question. The homeless question…that’s tough. These are the people who aren’t watching, necessarily. That really involves grassroots efforts. TV stations can be involved in galvanizing and organizing. So, for example, I teach a class at the University of Georgia on urban climate, and one of the projects I ask students to do is look at tornado sirens in the Athens/Clark County region. One of the things we found was that the way the tornado sirens were distributed, there were significant parts of the population—particularly those who were underserved or lower income—who didn’t even have sirens where they lived.
So I think there’s a whole notion of increased social sciences and environmental justice and all types of issues that we all have to be aware of and address.  I don’t know the answer to that question you asked, and I think there’s an opportunity.
Ginger Zee, ABC News: I’ve done four stories on that same thing of the sirens, because there’s no federal law, state law, no county law in any state that says there has to be one. I grew up in Michigan and we had them in every single town. It’s amazing to me that there are places that don’t have them, especially in places that really need them but don’t. Requiring outdoor warning systems—I don’t know if that’s going to happen; it’s not going to be funded.
I think the community outreach part is probably your best bet. You guys remember in Virginia this year, there was a camp with a bunch of kids outdoors and a long line of storms on the ground for three hours. It’s amazing to me that they still didn’t have warning. That can’t go on.  There was one kid who died. That shouldn’t have happened, because once they got indoors they were safe inside. If that was a fire and they didn’t have a smoke alarms, we would not be having the same discussion. They would have been sued like crazy.
Weather has grown…our ability to forecast has grown and now the whole policy part of it has to catch up. I think that will take time.
Keli Pirtle, NOAA: The National Weather Service works with local emergency managers to help prepare communities through the Storm Ready program.  I would hope that a shelter, like a homeless shelter, would have a NOAA Weather Radio. That’s a hope more than a reality, I’m afraid.  We can encourage people—churches, nursing homes, schools—to have multiple ways to receive information, to have a plan. A homeless person on the street, they’re in touch with others. I would hope the network on the street would get them the information, but it’s certainly an area where we desperately need to improve.
Jorge Torres, KOB-TV: And I agree with that. At our station, we’re partners with the Red Cross, and with the Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico, which helps feed the hungry because New Mexico is, I believe, the number one state in the country for childhood hunger. So we do have outreach programs with the lower-income communities. But that’s not in the form of weather [information] mostly, it’s in the form of talking to them. I do think you bring up a good point that those who don’t watch us, can’t watch us. They’re the ones who deal with the elements much more—the homeless especially—than the rest of us because we have a roof over our head and they don’t.

Take This Survey and Help R2O

by William Hooke, AMS Associate Executive Director and Senior Policy Fellow
The AMS and its Policy Program invite you to take on-line survey on R2O: here are four reasons why you should.
Research-to-operations.” “R2O.” “Applied research.” “Development.” “Technology transfer.” A rich nomenclature has grown up to describe the process and activities by which people and institutions take basic scientific understanding – pure knowledge – and turn it into practical products and services that people want or need. Making the leap from Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetic waves to the radio and then television. Conjoining Boolean algebra and understanding of semi-conducting materials to develop computers and smartphones. Seeing in Bernoulli’s equation the possibility of flight, and inventing the airplane. Discovering the equivalency of matter and energy; then going from E=mc2 to nuclear power – and so on. The process is often thought of as purely technical, but there’s also a social component to uptake of new ways of doing things – and more jargon: bridgers; translators; boundary organizations.
R2O is generic. It challenges every field of endeavor and every application: What good are lasers? Now that we’ve mapped the human genome, what does that tell us about health and disease? We can now locate ourselves on the surface of the planet to within a meter or so. Is that valuable? The photoelectric effect? Curious… but can we apply it to our advantage? Fullerenes are interesting carbon structures – but might there be commercial applications of buckyballs and buckytubes in either electronics or nanotechnology?
Meteorology provides its own examples. Computers can perform trillions of computations per second. How might we harness that capability to predict weather numerically? We can measure infrared and microwave radiances from space. Can we use that to infer ground, water, and atmospheric temperatures? Can we accomplish that well enough to put data into those numerical weather models? And what about radars for aircraft detection? Perhaps if we made them even more sensitive, they’d detect rain or snow. Or clouds themselves. Or the wind field within clouds. We’ve improved the physical aspects of weather forecasts (such as the severity of storms, their onset, motion, and dissipation); how can we apply social science to characterize weather impacts and help individuals and communities take effective action?
But R2O is not only pervasive. It is difficult. Vexing. Time-consuming. It can offer huge payoffs, but it’s also expensive. And it’s risky. For every success, there may be dozens, even hundreds of failures, dead ends. It’s complex, and sometimes feels more like an artistic endeavor than the basic science it feeds on. The difference between what works and what doesn’t is poorly understood. The R2O terrain is so difficult that it’s been referred to as “crossing the Valley of Death.[1]
Enough context. You’ll find the link to the AMS Policy Program R2O Survey here [2]. We’re hoping you’ll take time to contribute, for four reasons:
R2O matters. Simply put, it’s the key to realizing societal benefit from R&D. The International Council for Science (ICSU) has long argued that the greatest challenge facing 21st century science and technology is “the widening gap between advancing scientific knowledge and technology and society’s ability to capture and use them.[3] Without R2O the potential benefit from national investments in science is compromised. The world urgently needs scientific understanding of natural resources, natural hazards, and threats to the environment to be translated into action.
The survey has an important audience, and it will change behavior and outcomes. That starts with you. You’ll have access to the results, including others’ inputs, and they’ll have access to yours (without attribution, if you so desire). It will be impossible for you to participate in this survey without becoming more intentional yourself about the uptake and use of your work to make a better world. But it extends as well to national-level leadership. Congressional staffers and executive – branch policy officials are aware of this site and can draw ideas from it as they formulate legislation and allocate federal-agency resources on R2O, especially as it bears on forecast improvement, but not limited to that arena. The more thoughtful and detailed your participation, the greater will be your impact.
Diverse cases provide fuller opportunities for learning. R2O projects are much like snowflakes in that no two are identical. The efforts are not like laboratory experiments which allow stepwise dialing through different inputs and variables to divine generalizations. What’s needed, then, is a rich diversity of cases or narratives, a blend of success stories and failures, and ventures in between, that allow general principles to emerge. Look at the results to date and you’ll find citations to the Clean Air Act, development for weather information processing systems, dual-polarization radars, satellite instrument applications, and more. Add from your own unique personal experience and our community will grow that much wiser.
Your participation will shape future surveys. The AMS Policy Program, under the leadership of Dr. Paul Higgins, is not simply carrying out a one-off survey, but rather developing a platform for drawing on the full resources of our community to think through a range of complex, timely, and important issues. The survey website captures this aspiration:

… Through this site, the AMS Policy Program creates a platform for scientists to engage in the policy process by providing opportunities for them to share their subject matter expertise and inform decision making on important issues for the community. We have informed policymakers, including decision makers in the Executive and Legislative branches, about this site. They are aware of this site and can actively peruse it for a better understanding of the relevant and important community issues.
This site is open broadly to all members of the weather, water, and climate community. It creates a public forum for sharing experience and expertise in these specialty areas of the AMS. Periodically we will host surveys on policy relevant issues within these areas. Please visit this site regularly to participate in current surveys and view past survey results. We hope that you find this public forum as a useful resource for engagement and information!

So, please, participate in this survey. And along the way, help us improve the saliency and utility of the surveys to come. Let’s master this technique for adding to the store of human knowledge and making a safer, more sustainable world.
Thank you!


[1]Want to learn more? See, for example, these links, for biology, for cybersecurity,  and for Earth observations.)
[2] This particular survey has been formulated and is being conducted by Dr. Shalini Mohleji, a Senior Policy Fellow at the AMS.
[3]From a 2006 ICSU CSPR Assessment Panel report, Priority Area Assessment on Capacity Building in Science page 5.
 
 
 

“Current” Affairs at the 2014 AMS Washington Forum

by Ellen Klicka, AMS Policy Program
Very exciting developments are about to unfold at the Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center (SNMREC) at Florida Atlantic University: Ocean current energy developments.
Florida-CurrentSAt this week’s AMS Washington Forum, Dr. Camille Coley, Associate Director at SNMREC, will discuss the process her center is pioneering to get the nascent marine hydrokinetic industry off the ground and into the water, so to speak. Coley’s remarks are expected to touch on the realms of technology commercialization, environmental impacts, the federal regulation landscape, public-private partnerships, and the national energy agenda.
Leaders from the weather, water and climate enterprise are gathering for three days in Washington, DC, as they do every April, to discuss pressing issues, identify business opportunities and forge stronger relationships with federal policy makers. Due to the challenges marine hydrokinetics faces, the field serves as an informative microcosm of the multidisciplinary, multi-sector issues the AMS community shares. Such multifaceted explorations are typical of Washington Forum sessions.
Coley says harnessing offshore renewable energy sources could improve U.S. energy security. The oil price spike of the mid-2000s revived the U.S. Department of Energy’s original 1970s interest in what was then a fringe area of science involving the conversion of kinetic energy from ocean waves, tides and currents.
Resource assessments showed Southeastern Florida as a potential goldmine of ocean current resources, and the SNMREC was born in 2007. Wave and tidal energy technologies have seen a slightly clearer path from research to deployment because the action occurs near the shore in waters regulated at the state level, where establishing procedures can be a more nimble process than at the federal level. Currents strong enough to generate energy are found on the Outer Continental Shelf at least 12 miles offshore, in federal waters.
Nearly five years ago, SNMREC began working with the Minerals Management Service, now called the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), to obtain the first lease ever to be granted to install turbines on the Outer Continental Shelf. Both SNMREC and BOEM charted new territory as they took each step. In addition to applying for the permit under an interim policy set in 2007, BOEM conducted an environmental assessment and ensure compliance. The assessment surveyed areas of planned development for possible negative impacts on sea turtle, manatee, shark, deep water coral and other marine species populations. The Navy, NOAA, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and EPA all weighed in. Sensors and cameras have been installed to monitor the condition of the turbines and observe any approaching marine life.
The center expects the final green light this month and hopes to have pilot turbines in the water this year.
Coley notes lessons learned for future applicants seeking a BOEM license. Even with funding boosts from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, tight federal budgets have created challenges for public investment in research, development, pilot deployment and environmental impact checks. Private ocean current energy developers can’t obtain venture capital until the technology is proven. According to the Department of Energy’s Technology Readiness Level scale, which measures the maturity of technologies for application, ocean current energy scores a 4 on the scale from 1-9. Private financiers generally consider investing in technologies at level 8. Where will the money come from to drive ocean current energy up four more points? It’s the classic chicken and egg dilemma that could strand this emerging industry in the “valley of death” unless policy makers intervene.Ocean-Current-TurbinesS1
According to Coley, a federal renewable energy standard, combined with loans or tax credits for marine hydrokinetic energy development, would create demand and a secure market for additional renewable energy capacity.
The credits could be analogous to the production and investment tax credits already established for wind power. Incidentally, the Senate Finance Committee is aiming for this week to begin its consideration of how and whether to extend a bevy of temporary tax breaks that lapsed at the beginning of this year, such as the wind production tax credit (PTC) and other clean energy incentives. To date, no federal incentive bills have been introduced to encourage development and commercialization of marine hydrokinetics.
Coley also recommends a reevaluation of the regulatory process to assist timely project development and ensure appropriate attention to environmental and community safeguards. She says future ocean current permit applicants would benefit from increased collaboration among public and private entities, including the electricity industry, research engineers, aquatic scientists, environmentalists and community stakeholders.
Coley will participate in the Washington Forum’s Water-Energy Nexus panel Thursday, April 3 from 10:30 am – 12:00 pm. Can’t make it to DC? Follow the conversation with the hashtag #AMSWF or join the AMS Washington Forum LinkedIn group.

The President's Climate Speech

by Paul Higgins, AMS Policy Program Director
In June, President Obama gave a long-anticipated speech laying out his vision for climate change risk management. The centerpiece of the approach is to use the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. What those regulations will look like remains unclear, but the President’s intent to reduce emissions significantly, particularly from coal-fired power plants, is clear.
By all accounts, this wasn’t the approach the president wanted to take for climate change. He has said repeatedly and throughout his presidency that he favors a bipartisan solution that comes from Congress. After nearly five years and with the end of his second term approaching, the president appears to have concluded that the political divisiveness surrounding climate change makes congressional action unlikely.
How well the president’s approach will work is hard to know, of course, but it will be particularly interesting to see how this unilateral effort affects the politics of climate change risk management. There is a chance that the president’s plan will ultimately reduce the political divisiveness surrounding climate change, in part, because the approach itself is politically divisive.
Using the EPA to regulate emissions will not go over well with many in Congress. His opponents will likely find it easy to criticize, and score political points in so doing, on both philosophical grounds (i.e., based on a preference for less intrusive federal intervention) and because unilateral executive action is less democratic than including Congress in the creation of a new law. But the very fact that substantive arguments can be made for different approaches may provide an incentive for his opponents to develop and offer those alternatives. That could create an important opening that’s been largely missing for climate change over the last few decades.
Prior to the 1990, Clean Air Act Republicans and Democrats could more easily agree on an environmental problem yet disagree on the solution. Republicans tended to prefer market-based solutions while Democrats tended to prefer command-and-control regulation. Conservative philosophy convincingly won that debate because the market-based approach used in the 1990 Clean Air Act proved far superior as a tool for protecting the environment and maximizing the economic benefits of doing so.
Perversely, that philosophical victory for conservatives has made it harder for the two parties to agree on climate change risk management. There isn’t an easy way for the parties to distinguish themselves if they agree on the basics of the solution. Instead, the political incentive has been to disagree about whether there is a problem in need of a solution in the first place. Once the champions of climate policy coalesced on a conservative approach for addressing climate change, the choice for everyone else became too stark: go along with that approach or oppose climate policies altogether. If there isn’t middle ground and your opponent is for it, then few options are more politically effective than being against it.
Of course, the politics of climate change are, and will likely continue to be, challenging for other reasons, most notably because of the competing and incompletely reconcilable interests of those affected by policy options. But there is a wide range of potential solutions for helping to manage climate change risks. Critically, there is a policy option for virtually any political philosophy out there. For example, Congress could use a market-based approach to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously using every penny that the government raises through such an approach to reduce existing taxes on wages, corporate income, or capital gains. The reduction in taxes that would result would be a major victory for conservatives that many Democrats could plausibly go along with. Yet such options haven’t been developed or seriously considered.
That a broad range of potential risk management strategies hasn’t been developed and explored by policy makers is a major breakdown in our policy process. That policy deliberations (and public debates) about climate science are routinely at odds with the assessments of the relevant subject matter experts is a major failure of our national dialogue on the topic.
These failures have resulted, in part, because the political incentives for developing and exploring policy options have been too weak. By moving to circumvent the current political impasse to climate policy through a unilateral approach (particularly one likely to face sharp political opposition), the president may create a new opportunity for a broader consideration of options. If that happens, whether or not the president’s proposed solution is sufficient, he may help to depolarize the politics of climate change and spur the consideration of new and meaningful approaches to climate change risk management.
AMS Policy Program Director Paul Higgins’s perspectives, including this column, will be appearing regularly in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Moving Forward, Again, on a National Network of Networks

by James Stalker, President & CEO, RESPR, Inc.
Since my last blog in The Front Page a little over a year ago about the effort to form a National Network of Networks, many changes have taken place.
First, the AMS NNoN ad hoc Committee completed its final report in 2013, which is available on the AMS website at http://ametsoc.org/boardpges/cwce/docs/NoN/2013-06-01-NNoN-Final-Report.pdf. A short summary article will appear in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society this fall.
While these are welcome developments, the network of networks initiative almost came to a screeching halt except for the work of the Weather and Climate Enterprise Commissioner, Matt Parker, who didn’t want it to go away. Matt asked me to chair the new Nationwide Network of Networks (NNoN) effort going forward. At that time, as the NNoN R&D/Testbeds Working Group chair for the previous three years, I was prepared for the seemingly inevitable end of the NNoN effort, but refused to accept it.
So, here we are now with renewed enthusiasm for the new NNoN initiative taking shape within a full fledged AMS NNoN Committee, under the AMS Board on Strategic Topics (BEST). Previous participants, particularly John Lasley, and the past NNoN ad hoc Committee chair, George Frederick, pooled together a committee of more than 30 people to resume the effort.
For those of you who are not familiar with the NNoN initiative, it all got started when the National Research Council (NRC) report titled Observing the Weather and Climate From the Ground Up: A Nationwide Network of Networks came out in 2009. The AMS NNoN ad hoc Committee further reviewed the recommendations of the NRC report and produced the aforementioned report of its own.
The ad hoc committee produced six specific recommendations, but the first and most important one is to organize a stakeholders summit to gain weather and climate community-wide support for the NNoN effort. The renewed NNoN initiative is, in fact, considering this recommendation in stride. It will hold a couple of mini-summit meetings in 2013 and 2014, before the culminating stakeholders summit in 2015.
In this regard, a meeting is scheduled to take place in Boulder, Colorado, on Monday, August 12, the day before the AMS Summer Community Meeting begins. Members of the weather and climate enterprise community are urged to attend this mini-summit to learn about the new NNoN direction and provide critical input.
One of the key tweaks in the approach of the new NNoN is the bottom-up approach, as opposed to the top-down approach of the earlier efforts. In other words, new network members joining the NNoN are consulted for their input before recommendations are suggested specifically for that network member. Another key tweak is that the new NNoN Committee is going to actually help network members implement the network-specific recommendations. Implementation services will require funding, and the new NNoN is exploring many possible ways to secure such funding.
The new NNoN effort is supported by three working groups: 1) an Implementation Working Group, 2) an Outreach Working Group, and 3) an Advisory Working Group. These working groups comprise multiple teams to provide the benefits network members are looking for. The upcoming BAMS article will detail the new NNoN initiative, including the working groups and the teams that comprise them.
Also, for further information and for expressing your interest to join the effort as a committee member, get in touch with me at [email protected] or any of the three working group chairs (Greg Partt at [email protected]; John Lasley at [email protected]; Don Berchoff at [email protected]).