to 1807, long before anybody dreamed that there would be a NOAA, when Thomas Jefferson said, we need to map and chart the Nation's ports and harbors.

Modernization of NOAA's fisheries, very important area in terms of our national resource management.

Coastal conservation programs like coral reefs and marine sanctuaries and, of course, satellites and severe weather. And, of course, we are reminded just today, with Tropical Storm Allison coming into Texas, just how important that part of our mission is. I want to make three other points from my slides if I could. First, I want to talk about what this committee, the subcommittee, what your constituents get from the investment that you approve in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

There is a slide that looks like this. It says Management Improvements. I will just mention two. This slide, National Hurricane Center Atlantic Track Forecast Errors; what that says is that since the mid-1980s we have reduced the errors at 72 hours for hurricane traffic forecast from about 400 nautical miles to 200 nautical miles. A lot of those improvements came in the last 7 or 8 years. It is a great example of what supercomputing can do and what modeling can do, getting the data into supercomputing models, like the observation systems, like our satellites, a significant difference. We can do better, like 24 hours, we got from 120 miles down to the 80s. So it is very significant.

Acquisition reforms, I know there are a few people here on the staff that remember that in the early 1990s the satellites that you see on television, called GOES or geostation satellites, we were down to one satellite in this country, and frankly, it wasn't supposed to last as long as it did.

In 1991 or so, we had a real procurement disaster on our hands and a lot of people from Congress and the industry and the agencies got together. There were a number of changes, there were acquisition reforms that took place in NOAA. There were some personnel changes. There was work with Bernie Schwartz from Loral Corporation. We brought Lincoln Labs in.

The bottom line is, now, 10 years later, we have three geostation satellites in orbit, one in cold storage. It is ready to be turned on when needed. These are our, if you will, severe weather sentinels that will track the hurricanes, what we are talking about, and tornadoes. It is the satellite you see on television.

We are about to launch the last of our Loral satellites on July 15, I think, is the current date. So we are actually in a really robust system in our geostation satellites as we move forward to the next generation with Hughes, Boeing. So that is a really good news story of acquisition changes.

There are a number of items in this budget that have to do with hurricanes and numerical modeling. We have the U.S. Weather Research program, which has an increase of $3.7 million total. There is $3.8 million for the Joint Data Assimilation Center, which is a partnership with NASA and NCAR, National Center for Atmospheric Research, and $93 million for geostation satellites.

Hurricanes is an area that we spend a lot of time on. I would just like to point out that in 1998, good news and bad news, in terms of where we have come, where we are going, Hurricane

Georges-Georges, somebody here that speaks French can tell me how it is supposed to be pronounced.

It came over the Keys, Key West. We were lucky; it didn't intensify. It came in as category 2-it did not go as high as we thought it might-and 48 hours later we said that hurricane would come into coastal Mississippi, and 48 hours later it did.

Hurricane Georges pretty much came on track. It had a little bit of changes, and people in New Orleans got some water, but the model worked. The system worked. The National Hurricane Center, working with FEMA, we got the word out. Everything worked perfectly.

Hurricane Mitch was that same year in about November. Hurricane Mitch downgraded to a tropical storm. None of the models, NOAA's models, the Navy's model, the European model, nobody foresaw this hurricane going and heading South into Honduras and lingering like Hurricane Agnes did.

And this is 98 years after the Galveston hurricane where we lost over 8,000 people. So it shows just how far we still have to go in terms of hurricane modeling and research, and that is one of the reasons why we have these investments in the budget.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, we have an image here, which is www.noaa.gov, that is sort of a part of our Web site. We haveI think it is the last slide in your package. This is something we worked on very hard at NOAA.

Three years ago we had a very solid Web site, but it was something you really needed to be inside the government to use, or be inside NOAA really. We really redesigned that. There is a lot of work and a lot of talented people at NOAA. It is how we get our information in the Information Age out to our public and out to the constituents, our customers. It has made a big difference. We are usually in the top eight Web sites in the government. When there is severe weather going on, like last night, we often go up to number one or two quite often.

I believe that part of NOAA's mission is the education, the training of the next generation of meteorologists, oceanographers, marine scientists, IT experts of tomorrow; and that is persuasive in a number of our programs, but this Web site actually is a big part of that.

For me, one of the really great things in this job is to go around the country and meet teachers and students who continually come up to me and say, you guys have the greatest Web site, and I was able to learn about whales or my daughter was able to learn about tornados and really navigate through this.

So it has been a very, I think, good way to get the investments, that you have put into us in terms of the information we produce, the science, back out to the American public.

That is my opening statement.

[The information follows:]

WRITTEN STATEMENT ON THE
NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC
ADMINISTRATION'S FY 2002 BUDGET

BY

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY AND ADMINISTRATOR
SCOTT B. GUDES
FOR THE

HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, JUSTICE,
STATE AND THE JUDICIARY

JUNE 6, 2001

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the Subcommittee, for this opportunity to testify on the President's FY 2002 Budget Request for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Let me begin by saying that NOAA, a key component of the Department of Commerce, plays a vital role in the everyday lives of our citizens through our numerous contributions to the Nation's economic and environmental health. In a period of strongly competing Government priorities, the President's FY 2002 Budget Request for NOAA is $3,152.3 million in total budget authority for NOAA and represents a decrease of $60.8 million below the FY 2001 Enacted levels. Within this funding level, NOAA proposes essential realignments that allow for a total of $270.0 million in program increases in critical areas such as infrastructure, severe weather prediction, coastal conservation, living marine resources, and climate.

The funding requested in the FY 2002 President's Budget Request will allow NOAA to

ensure that our vision for environmental stewardship and assessment and prediction of the

Nation's resources becomes a reality and that NOAA will continue to excel in our science and service for the American people.

From weather forecasting to fisheries management, from safe navigation to coastal services, remote sensing to climate research and ocean exploration, NOAA is at the forefront of many of this Nation's most critical issues. NOAA's people, products and services provide vital support to the domestic security and global competitiveness of the United States, and positively impact the lives of our citizens, directly and indirectly, every single day.

NOAA's mission is to describe and predict changes in the Earth's environment and to conserve and manage the Nation's coastal and marine resources to ensure sustainable economic opportunities. NOAA implements its mission through its line and staff offices: the National Ocean Service (NOS); the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS); the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR); the National Weather Service (NWS); the National Environmental, Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS); the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO); and Corporate Services (CS).

Today, the Nation and the world look to NOAA to provide timely and precise weather forecasts that protect lives and property; to manage fisheries and protected species; to promote and sustain healthy coastlines; to make America more competitive through safe navigation; to

examine changes in the oceans; and to inspire and create approaches that will protect and keep our precious natural resources alive for the generations to come.

NOAA conducts research to develop new technologies, improve operations, and supply the scientific basis for managing natural resources and solving environmental problems. NOAA's comprehensive system for acquiring observations - from satellites and radars to ships and submersibles - provides critical data and quality information needed for the safe conduct of daily life and the basic functioning of a modern society.

NOAA's products and services include short-term weather and space-weather forecasts, seasonal climate predictions, long-term global change prognoses, environmental technologies, nautical charts, marine fisheries statistics and regulations, assessments of environmental changes, hazardous materials response information, and stewardship of the Nation's ocean, coastal, and living marine resources.

NOAA's programs for FY 2002 support several key cross-cutting initiatives. These cross-cutting initiatives illustrate the degree to which NOAA's programs are inter-related. Each of the component programs within a cross-cutting initiative uniquely contributes to NOAA's ability to meet its mission.

The FY 2002 President's Budget Request supports NOAA's cross-cutting initiatives, each of which I will discuss in greater detail.