Mr. MOLLOHAN. What basis did he have to make that representation?

Dr. BAKER. I do not know, Congressman. That was not something that we had authorized.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. What are your plans with regard to the facility, the purposes, and the functions that will not go into the facility? Dr. BAKER. We would like to find the most cost-effective way to manage our facilities that we currently have in Suitland and Camp Springs.

We are looking for ways to either put people together or put them into a cooperative and synergistic way with other parts of NOAA or other related agencies. We are looking at areas around the Washington area to see how we can do that.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Do you have any request in the budget for

Dr. BAKER. There is a request in the budget for $735,000 for NOAA-wide space planning to look at the consolidation of offices, both in the Washington, D.C. area and also in Norman, Oklahoma. We have some old space.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. That is a lot of money to look at that.

Dr. BAKER. Well, I think it is not an unreasonable amount when you are looking NOAA-wide space planning.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Did you request money for that purpose last year?

Dr. BAKER. I do not know.

Mr. MOXAM. No, sir. We requested money beginning the design of the building last year of $12 million.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Of the building we have just spoken of. So, this $735,000 is not money for that building, it is money for overall studying of NOAA's space needs.

Mr. MOXAM. Consolidation options, both in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and the Norman, Oklahoma area, sir, where we have a large NOAA population.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. This is for studies.

Mr. MOXAM. Yes, sir.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ROGERS. Who is John Sokich?

Dr. BAKER. John Sokich works for the Weather Service. I do not know his specific title.

Mr. MOXAM. Mr. Sokich was also appointed to be the program manager for the NOAA consolidation effort in the Washington, D.C. area as a collateral duty.

Mr. ROGERS. Even though there is no consolidation effort authorized by Congress.

Mr. MOXAM. Yes, sir. We had started this planning. A part of the planning is to be able to prepare estimates and budgets to explain that both to OMB and to the Congress on how much it would cost.

Mr. ROGERS. I want specifically to know how come this program manager had the authority to announce at a press conference apparently that you are going ahead with the building that we specifically said do not do? How?

Dr. BAKER. Mr. Chairman, we had another interview where we had that corrected in another publication. We believe that all we did at that time was roll out the environmental assessment. Part of the environmental assessment process is to make it public. When

they picked up the article, they did announce it as done deal. I do believe we tried to correct that.

Mr. ROGERS. Well, somebody called the press to get the story out in the paper. It was not just an accidental effort. This was a planned effort. I would like to know how it came about. Now, is it the National Weather Service that did this?

Dr. BAKER. I believe we were contacted by the press, Mr. Chairman, but I certainly can get back to you on that one.

Mr. ROGERS. No. Let us get with it right now.

Dr. BAKER. Okay.

Mr. ROGERS. We know the answer. Tell us.

Dr. BAKER. I believe we were contacted by the press once we sent out the environmental assessment. They asked for some more information on the project, what the plan was. Then they wrote that article based on the discussions.

Mr. ROGERS. Well, Sokich is pretty plain about it. He says it is going to be done. We discussed it with Congress. They discussed it with Congress and we said no. We read a press release saying, we are going to build a $100 million center.

Now, either NOAA is going to respond to the Congress or there will be further dues to pay. Which is it?

Dr. BAKER. Well, sir, this press statement was a surprise to me. We have corrected that by directing that there will be no further action on planning for a Goddard building.

Mr. ROGERS. This is not the only thing. There is a whole host of items that you and I have talked about that we find the NOAA and the National Weather Service unresponsive. In fact, contradictory to the will of the Congress.

It is the only agency that we appropriate for that has such an attitude. I just have to tell you, it ain't going to last that way. That is not the way this government is built.

This agency, like all others is responsive to the Congress. If you cannot get that done, then we will have to take the next step, which you will not like. Can we talk?

Dr. BAKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. ROGERS. Can we have an assurance from all of your department heads? Sometimes I think the problem is not with you, that it is just below you. You have got, I think, most of the department heads here today; do you not?

Dr. BAKER. Yes, sir. I think they are hearing your message.

Mr. ROGERS. Those who have not heard my message, raise your hand.

[No response.]

Mr. ROGERS. That goes for all of you. We will not tolerate this agency or any division of it thwarting the will of the Congress, particularly on money issues that this Subcommittee deals with. It just will not happen.

You have done more to destroy your chances for a new building than you can ever imagine. It is going to be really tough for you to get that building now. You had an even chance going in, but you ain't got an even chance now.

So, let it be a lesson. We will not be thwarted, publicly, openly thwarted. Mr. Skaggs.

BOULDER LAB

Mr. SKAGGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It is with some trepidation that I ask about another NOAA building. Are you going to get the new lab in Boulder open this year? Dr. BAKER. I think we will be very close by December, Congressman Skaggs.

Mr. SKAGGS. When in December?

Dr. BAKER. December 11th is our current official projected completion date.

Mr. SKAGGS. Any show stoppers between here and there that we need to be aware of?

Dr. BAKER. I do not think we have any show stoppers. There is a contract option that allows the contractor to delay completion until February 5, 1999. He could wait until December 10th before exercising the option.

The contractor has not exercised the option or told us that he will do that. We have requested the contractor to give us early warning if this would happen. We do not have a response back yet. We are also very concerned about this and we will continue to monitor it.

Mr. SKAGGS. This was built into the contract by GSA, at the contractor's option?

Dr. BAKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. SKAGGS. Obviously there are an awful lot of logistics that go into getting the people that now are scattered around in other places into the new facility in an efficient and least cost way. So, I hope you will keep me and my folks in Colorado advised on real time basis in case I may be able to be helpful with the contractor in getting things cleared up quickly.

Dr. BAKER. Okay.

Mr. SKAGGS. Related to that possible delay, I am told that, that could then force some rent problem for you in your current facilities. I do not need to get into details about that. We will need to know about that sooner rather than later here at the Committee.

I noticed, getting to some of the science that you do, which is really pretty fantastic, some modest increase in proposed funding for the Space Environment Center. Does that flow from anything happening in the solar cycle or is it other program activities that you are going to be undertaking?

SOLAR CYCLE

Dr. BAKER. Well, Congressman, as you know we are just starting the beginning of a solar cycle, one of solar maximum cycles, Solar Cycle No. 23. It started in late 1996. It is expected to peak in early 2000 and decline for two years after that.

We felt it was important that we get some critical base funding into the Space Environmental Center to make sure that we could continue that 24-hour, 7 day a week monitoring. As you know, when you go into the higher solar activity, there is a possibility of particles coming from the sun and destroying utility generators. Right now, the forecast is that this solar cycle would be one of the

So, we expect the storms, the solar flares, to be more intense than ever. As you know and thanks to this Committee, we have a joint activity with NASA and the Air Force that has put a satellite out far enough so we can get one-hour warnings of these geomagnetic storms.

The extra base funding that we provided for the Space Environment Center will help us make sure that we have a continuous and ongoing warning event.

Mr. SKAGGS. I think here, as with so many things that you do, it may not be self-evident to those of us who are not trained in the field exactly what the costs of avoided benefits are of these kinds of activities.

If you could flesh out for the record a little bit what we think we will buy in savings to the power industry, or communications, or astronauts, or whatever it may be from having that additional warning capability. That would be helpful.

Dr. BAKER. Just in a nutshell, the impact of solar activity ranges all the way from saving lives, that is astronauts who are in orbit because of a highly radioactive particles that come from the sun. You used to get a warning about what is going to happen down to power grids. In fact, the last really big outburst caused a power outage all across northern Canada and was close to $1 billion in impact. I cannot remember how long that was ago.

It was in 1989. We have a bigger power structure across the United States and Canada. There is the potential for that order magnitude, hundreds of millions of dollars' impact upon power grids.

If there is a warning, even a half an hour to an hour warning, you can shut down those power grids and you can avoid that loss to the generators. So, it could have an enormous impact. That is why we have a 24-hour day warning in our Space Environment Center.

Mr. SKAGGS. I know you are asking for some additional funds to increase capability and high performance computing. Will that have some affect on the level of specificity in your forecasting?

If so, what is the practical significance of that. Are we on our way toward ten meter resolution instead of one mile resolution? What is involved in all of that?

Dr. BAKER. This is a very important activity for us to have the best possible computing power. Right now, we are trying to do as good a job as possible in forecasting the landfall of hurricanes. That is probably the most important and biggest impact, economic impact, for weather events. Every mile that we can forecast that the hurricane will hit or will not hit is about $1 million of impact. We are doing better. Every year we do a little better. The new computer will help us improve and continue that improvement.

It is not just hurricanes. One of the things that we are looking for is a better job of forecasting very intense weather. Explosive storms is something that we do not understand very well.

Occasionally we get these. Did not know they were going to happen and suddenly they are there. Why do we get in a certain part of the country many tornados occurring all at once?

Right now we are giving 15 to 45 minutes' warning on tornados. What we would like to do is to forecast these ensembles of torna

dos. It is this explosive weather that has the big impact on people and property.

It is not just the short term. It is also the long term. Better computers allow us to do a better job of understanding what happens in the ocean. We can then couple those models to the atmosphere. We can do an even better job of forecasting things like the El Nino or longer term climate changes to give people a month's warning or maybe a season's warning of what the next season is going to be like.

Mr. SKAGGS. Let me just mention one thing, Mr. Chairman, that I have been trying to do fairly coherently on my other subcommittee which is Interior, which is to ask all of our public lands agencies that come to the Interior Subcommittee for money, to submit for the record both their general description and any specific examples that they can come up with in which better weather information, in-hand, enables them to save money.

If they have been able to get a warning that would have enabled them to avoid weather-related costs or incurred; figuring that it might help us justify what we do on this Subcommittee to have a sense of its impact on your sister agencies elsewhere in the government.

I am sure you talk with these folks anyway. It might serve your own enlightened self-interest to assist them in responding to those requests, BLM, Forest, Park Service, et cetera. Thank you. Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Latham.

EL NINO PREDICTIONS

Mr. LATHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, last August you revealed your predictions about El Nino and what the nation could expect.

Being from the Midwest, it really has not had a negative impact. It has been positive as far as moderate wheater for winter wheat. What has historically happened is that when La Nina comes in, that will really affect us.

Dr. BAKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. LATHAM. Do you have a prediction as far as when La Nina will come in?

Dr. BAKER. I wish we could. Right now, we are forecasting a return to normal conditions in the summer. Whether we go to a La Nina situation next year or not I think is very much an open question.

I think there are some people, some researchers, who are willing to take a risk and say maybe you would see this. I think our official forecast at the moment is return to normal by summer.

We really cannot say what is going to happen next fall or winter. In the summer, we should be able to give you a three-month forecast about what we are going to see. There is obviously intense interest on that.

Mr. LATHAM. Do you think that we will normalize by the summer?

Dr. BAKER. That is what everything shows. That is what the system is doing. The additional warm water that has been in the Pacific is being reduced as the Pacific warms up, generally as we