Environmental▼News NOAA leads climate change research Climate change, environmental monitoring and prediction, and ecosystem forecasting and management received large gains in the president’s FY ’04 request for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Overall, the agency fared quite well, receiving a total of $3.3 billion, or a 6% increase over the 2003 request, with homeland security and infrastructure resources taking top priority (see Table 2). Climate change research, observations, and services would receive $296 million under Bush’s request, an increase of $16.9 million or 5.7% compared with the FY ’03 request. Most of the new money will go to
observing system, and $1 million was allocated to support research on absorption and scattering of radiation by aerosols, which is a major area of uncertainty in climate science.
Overall, CCRI would receive a total of $182 million, which is spread out among several federal agencies, compared with $40 million requested in FY ’03. NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory Supercomputing facility would see a $3.5 million increase to improve efforts in cli-
TA B L E 2
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration budget Budget amounts are given in millions of dollars. FY 2002 Actual
FY 2003 Request
FY 2004 Request
Increase from FY ’03 to FY ’04
National Ocean Service
509.6
400.0
411.0
2.7%
National Marine Fisheries Service
799.3
721.5
732.1
1.5%
Oceanic and Atmospheric Research
383.7
301.4
380.6
20.8%
National Weather Service
742.7
772.4
820.0
5.8%
National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service
704.0
758.5
837.5
9.4%
Program support
259.0
301.3
433.1
30.4%
Adjustments/transfers
−135.1
−119.0
−288.3
58.7%
Total
3263
3136
3326
5.7%
support Bush’s interagency Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI) (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2003, 37, 86A–87A), which is being led by NOAA. Of the increased funding, $6.3 million was requested for sustaining and building a global ocean observing system, which is expected to bring NOAA’s coverage of the ocean to about 48%. An additional $5 million was requested to implement a carbon-cycle atmospheric
biggest dollar increase. The $84.5 million increase was 5.3% above the last year’s request, for a total of $1.6 billion. “This is the foundation of everything we do. These are the systems that provide the raw data that help all of NOAA’s line offices deal with their management, modeling, and climate problems,” says
mate modeling, and $1.1 million would be added for a climate change program office across all federal agencies involved in this work. Overall, CCRI would receive a total of $182 million, which is spread out among several federal agencies, compared with $40 million requested in FY ’03. Environmental monitoring and prediction, which is the biggest line item in NOAA’s request, got the
130 A ■ ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / APRIL 1, 2003
NOAA’s administrator, Conrad Lautenbacher. Most of the gains come from an $81.7 million increase for satellite systems, including the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite and the National Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite System. NOAA’s request also includes $2 million to establish a Coastal Global Ocean Observing System, which will be used to study the effects of climate change on marine species and coastal U.S. communities. “This is the first-ever initiative of NOAA to take a serious look at what climate will be doing to our fishery stocks in the future,” says Lautenbacher. Ecosystem forecasting and management, which is the second biggest line item in NOAA’s budget, received an increase of $48.2 million or 4.7%, compared with the 2003 request, for a total of $1.0 billion. The biggest increase would come from the reauthorization of NOAA’s National Sea Grant Program, which was eliminated from NOAA’s budget request in 2003 because of a proposal to transfer it to the National Science Foundation. The transfer fell through, and $57.4 million was reinstated for the Sea Grant program in the 2004 request. Management of marine ecosystems would see an increase of $18.6 million, with most of the new money going toward reducing the number of overfished stocks, the number of major fish stocks with an unknown status, and the number of endangered species. BRITT E. ERICKSON
