Weather forecasting and not climate change. From the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research:
UCAR PRAISES PASSAGE OF WEATHER RESEARCH AND FORECASTING INNOVATION ACT
With the unanimous passage of legislation to improve weather research and prediction, Congress has taken a major step today toward strengthening the nation's resilience to severe weather and boosting U.S. economic competitiveness.
"This landmark legislation will save lives and property while providing business leaders with critical intelligence," said Antonio J. Busalacchi, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). "Today's bipartisan vote underscores the enduring value of scientific research to our nation."
The Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act is the first major weather legislation since the early 1990s. It calls for more research into subseasonal to seasonal prediction, a priority for business and community leaders who need more reliable predictions of weather patterns weeks to months in advance. The bill also will strengthen short-term weather forecasts and smooth the way for research findings to be adopted by forecasters and commercial weather companies.
Improved short- and long-term weather predictions have major implications for public safety and the economy. The nation experienced 15 weather and climate disasters last year that cost $1 billion dollars or more, including tornadoes and widespread flooding that left dozens dead. Even routine weather events can affect transportation, supply chain management, consumer purchasing, and other sectors, with a collective impact of hundreds of billions of dollars on the U.S. economy.
Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which is managed by UCAR on behalf of the National Science Foundation, have estimated that weather forecasts provide an annual benefit to the American public of more than $30 billion, compared with about $5 billion spent on generating U.S. weather forecasts.
This is very good - the European forecasting model is a lot better than ours and we need to adopt it - from Ars Technica:
The European forecast model already kicking America’s butt just improved
The European forecast model already outperforms all of the world’s other global forecasting systems, including the North American GFS model. The most overt demonstration of the European model’s superiority came in the week before Hurricane Sandy’s devastating landfall in 2012. Out of more than a dozen computer forecasts, only it showed the storm veering along a path toward the East Coast of the United States instead of staying harmlessly out to sea.
Now the world’s best forecast model is getting better, and not just by a little bit. An upgrade that went live this week provides dramatic improvements to the resolution of the model, both for its deterministic forecast as well as the ensemble model runs that are used for forecasting conditions a week or more in the future. “What the European modeling community is doing is just amazing,” Ryan Maue, a meteorologist with WeatherBell, told Ars. “This is the golden age of weather forecasters. It’s an absolute wonder of computer modeling technology.”
Only issue is that this model deals with a lot more data and needs a supercomputer to run - unfortunately, from Cliff Mass, February 25, 2014:
Where is the National Weather Service's New Supercomputer?
It is nearly a year since the U.S. Congress supplied the money for a new cutting-edge National Weather Service weather supercomputer, using Superstorm Sandy supplemental funds.
The computer promised to greatly improve weather prediction in the U.S. and was cited as a "game changer" by the head of the National Weather Service.
It offered the U.S. a chance to finally catch up with or exceed the state-of-the-art predictions of the European Center, resulting in saved lives, improved warnings, and large economic benefits for the United States.
Now a year later, the computer has not even been ordered, while the the European Center has just secured a brand-new American computer to push the envelope of weather prediction far beyond that practiced in the U.S.
Politics as usual - some politician thinks that the computer manufacturers in their district are so much better than the manufacturers in any other districts that they stall until they get their slice of pork. Another example of the swamp that needs to be drained.
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