The U.S. Senate today confirmed retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., as the new NOAA Administrator. For more information on the confirmation see the NOAA news release or the NOAA News story. Click here for earlier NOAA's NWS Focus articles on the Admiral Nov. 9 and Oct. 26. For another profile of Lautenbacher, see the November issue of NOAA Report.
In a luncheon speech to reporters at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Nov. 28, Director of the Office of Management and Budget Mitch Daniels singled out the NWS, and two other federal agencies as "true centers of excellence in this government." Daniels was accompanied at the luncheon by NWS Director Jack Kelly and representatives of the National Science Foundation and the Women, Infants and Children Program.
In his introduction of Kelly to the luncheon audience, Daniels described the NWS as "an organization which has staked itself to specific goals and met them and surpassed them. Tornado warning times have doubled, flash flood lead times have more than doubled, and they have been recognized by Government Executive magazine as the only agency to get straight A's on that publication's recent assessment." In his national newsmaking speech, which outlined the administration's current thinking on deficit spending and how it may steer toward a return to balanced budgets, Daniels reinforced the administration's emphasis on organizing and managing federal agencies for effectiveness.
"Programs like this, and there are many, many others, that perform well, that are accountable to you as taxpayers for reaching for real results and measuring and attaining those results, deserve to be singled out, deserve to be fortified and strengthened," Daniels said. "Now conversely, programs that make no such attempt or fail to deliver or can provide no evidence of success really need to be scrutinized, and the money we are now investing in them redeployed to higher purposes, either in the ongoing programs I've just been talking about, or to the urgent business of winning a two-front war."
"If we're going to take a tax dollar from a citizen in Indiana or any other state and spend it on that program, at some point there must be a reckoning, there must be an accounting. And if the performance isn't there, we ought to be looking for a better place to make that investment."
The Office of Management and Budget assists the President in overseeing the preparation of the Federal budget and to supervise administration of the budget in Executive Branch agencies. OMB evaluates the effectiveness of agency programs, policies, and procedures, assesses competing funding demands among agencies, and sets funding priorities. Specifically OMB reviews and approves NOAA and NWS annual budget submissions. For the full text of Daniels' remarks see the OMB website at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/pubpress/2001-61.html.
On November 27, 2001, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) upgraded the NWS's main weather forecasting model, the Meso Eta Model, to improve forecast accuracy and capture real-time weather occurrences in finer detail for all of North America extending from Hawaii to the central Atlantic. The upgrade takes advantage of the parallel computing resources of the IBM SP supercomputer and will provide more accurate and focused forecasts to aid local and federal emergency officials in fire weather, mountain-induced rains, and severe winter weather events. Forecasts of surface winds and temperatures will also be improved, especially in complex terrains or along coastlines. The model is run four times a day up to 84 hours out.
The last Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) site in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the NWS joint Base Program was commissioned on November 14, 2001. This marks the culmination of a nine-year effort to commission and operationally implement this nationwide network of 882 sites. "This achievement provides the American people with a valuable national resource for the safe and efficient use of the National Airspace System for aviation and the provision of more timely and accurate weather forecasts and warnings," said Joseph Facundo, NWS ASOS Commissioning Manager. Ongoing technological enhancements are planned over the life cycle of the system to explore new opportunities and adapt to new challenges.
In the 1980s the FAA and the NWS began a joint program to develop and implement the automated collection and dissemination of surface weather observations at airports across the nation. Previously, over 1,000 staff years were needed annually to collect and disseminate manual weather observations. The implementation of ASOS brought benefits to both the aviation industry and NWS such as unprecedented availability of timely minute-by-minute observations, and continuous and objective observations from more locations.
Keeping the National Weather Service and NOAA prominent in the news earned Curtis Carey the honor of being December's NOAA Employee of the Month. NOAA honored Carey, public affairs chief of the National Weather Service, for doing a great job of educating the public about NOAA and the NWS. Read the full story in the December issue of Access NOAA at http://www.accessnoaa.noaa.gov/
On November 9, 2001, the NWS Pacific Region participated in the installation ceremony for the first Meteorologist in Charge of the Weather Service Office (WSO) in Koror, Republic of Palau. Maria Ngemaes, the new MIC, is also the first woman to hold a MIC position in Micronesia. She is the third graduate of the Meteorologist Training Program (established in 1989 by the NWS and Department of the Interior and is funded through the Compact of Free Association). After graduating from the University of Hawaii in 1999, Ngemaes trained at the NWS Forecast Office in Guam and at WSO Koror prior to assuming the top job. Dignitaries attending the installation ceremony included the Honorable Elbuchel Sadang, Minister of Administration and Finance for the Republic of Palau and Ronald A. Harms, Charge d' Affairs, U.S. Consulate.
President Bush approved a 4.6 percent average pay increase for federal civilian employees in 2002 as part of the appropriations bill funding the Department of Treasury and U.S. Postal Service which he signed on November 12. New pay tables are expected by the end of the calendar year, after the locality pay changes are all computed.
A new graphic storm-information forecast product for commercial and private pilots is now available through the National Weather Service and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Produced by the Aviation Weather Center in Kansas City, MO, the new forecast product provides pilots with a plotted map depicting the current location of convective hazards and where they will be within the next hour.
The National Convective Weather Forecast (NCWF) combines NWS radar mosaics and cloud-to-ground lightning data into a six-color, hazardous-weather depiction. The advanced storm information will make it easier for commercial and private pilots to avoid weather hazards in the United States. NCWF will be used to complement on-board radar systems that detect small-scale storms that are less hazardous to aviation. Available on the Internet http://cdm.awc-kc.noaa.gov/ncwf, the NCWF is updated every five minutes.
The American Red Cross (ARC) is providing the NWS with 10,000 copies of their new publication, "Terrorism, Preparing for the Unexpected." It will be sent directly from the Red Cross to the Regions and Centers. Regions will receive 1,000 copies for distribution to the WFOs. NCEP will also receive copies for distribution to their Centers. Limited supplies will be sent to other line offices in the Silver Spring complex and DOC/NOAA in Washington, DC, for internal distribution.
This is a one-time offer from the Red Cross. If there are requests for additional copies, either within the government or outside, have them contact their LOCAL Red Cross chapter and ask for publication "A1366." These brochures are free from the ARC. This publication is available in English and Spanish for distribution at http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/keepsafe/unexpected.html. The ARC is also developing new publications on Biological-Hazards and Chemical-Hazards. All publications can be located at the ARC's Web site at: http://www.redcross.org.
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