30, hurricane arlene. and historically, especially in florida, you will see that august and september are the most intense months for hurricanes. so, i think that we can't simply say that since we have seen an emerging stronger el nino we can conclude that we are safe. i would also point out that obviously from our standpoint, one severe storm is catastrophic and we are more concerned with nailing the forecast with respect to those individual storms than what the statistical average outlook might be. but i think, in sum, since you have tested my forecast capability, we will see on august 6 an outlook that accommodates the consequences of what is now clearly an el nino signal. >> that being the case, would it be reasonable to expect that the

late hurricane season, of which you pointed out andrew was in late august, that because of el nino appearing, that it lessens the likelihood of the atlantic ferocious storms since it shears off the top of them? >> statistically, yes, sir. but as i point out -- and in fact i would have to look back at the record -- there have been a number of very strong storms during el nino years as well. >> was el nino present in any of those years that you mentioned, andrew or arlene? >> i believe there was a weak el nino in 1992 during the andrew evolution. >> so, that just disproves the whole theory? >> to the extent that statistics are disprovable, yes. statistically of course it still

holds. >> in other words, we take no comfort in the fact that el nino is there? >> that's right, for the climatologies there may be comfort in fitting curves in the future. but clearly i would not want to go to the citizens of florida, louisiana, texas and say since it is an el nino year the statistics are such that you might have a slightly reduced probability of severe storms. that is not consolation in my opinion. >> is noaa working with hud and other agencies to tie the science and the coastal management and community preparations together? >> noaa is working with a variety of different agencies. i would point out since we are in the department of commerce, we work closely with national institute of standard -- >> senator martinez, i wanted, before you left -- and i really appreciate your being here -- i just want to, since you and i

introduced this package of bi s bills, do you all generally support this six-pack that we put together? basically, the legislation is a lot about what we have been talking about here. is there anybody that doesn't? >> senators, as you know, the reinsurance sector has always had an ongoing dialogue with you, senator martinez and the state of florida about the value of the private sector's role in financing catastrophe risk and the role government can and should play with it. with that caveat, we are strongly supportive of the bill you and senator martinez have introduce bed d about increased research and we think it should be more. >> so it is fair to say the

reinsurance industry would not support the bills that we have introduced with respect to the federal government giving a loan guarantee to the states for their hurricane catastrophe funds? >> senator, the loan guarantees without some conditions with respect to the underlying insurance markets and insurance being risk based would be important conditions with regard to to make certain itthe insurae markets are responsibly being profilesed and that the -- priced and the people are paying baghdad baghd based on the risk they have. >> what i don't understand is when the big one hits, a category four or five hitting a dense part of the urbanized coastline, there's going to be more business than you can shake a stick at. and you are going to have to have the states strengthened in their reinsurance funds, their

catastrophe funds, in order to accommodate that kind of economic loss. a and, rather than your industry looking at that as competition from the federal government, it seems like that we ought to be able to marry up the two going in the same direction. >> the private reinsurance sector, which is all i can speak to, not the insurance sector, wants to write catastrophe risk in florida and other states. it is a business that is driven by the demand for reinsurance and we want to provide that market. to the extent the state of florida has a catastrophe fund that reconcludes or preempts companies from buying private reinsurance, it is an unfair advantage, we would say, for the government programs to do that. so, we would like to find a compromise that works but i would say that the private

sector can forth easily compete with the -- cannot easily compete with the public insurance provided in the state of florida. >> thank you, senator martinez, for being here. and i would say this, interestingly, the insurance industry is split on this issue on what we are talking about. the reinsurance industry doesn't support the federal guarantees for a state catastrophe fund whereas generally the insurance companies do. and i just wanted the record to show that. thank you. thank you, senator vitter. may i continue on once we know that a storm is going to hit, a lot of you have talked about the preparations that people need to make to move to safety.

dr. wells, for example, you all had such a horrendous tie-up on your interstate in trying to evacuate. that has happened in florida as well. then everybody gets smart an figures out a way with the highway patrol to make the interstate one way so people can get out. what is your experience with other states doing what texas and florida have done? >> i will risk arguing with you just a little bit here. my background is in hydrodynamics and i can say for hurricane rita you only have so much road bed available on which to put vehicles. if you have an overevacuation that occurred, as did occur during hurricane rita, we had 22 2.7 million people over a short time span decide to get on the roads out of houston. there is basically no solution.

you can start with 0 lanes of traffic heading outbound and 20 miles down the road they will be six lanes. where do you want the cloak to flow. do you want it back toward the city where you have resources to take care of the people or just let them go out into the countryside and sit out there several hours? again, without the built infrastructure to take care of that in terms of transportation, contra flow, i don't think, gets you out of those particular instances. what you need, of course, is a phased evacuation where the people in the greatest jeopardy have the opportunity to get out first. where galveston county and galveston island have that opportunity to get ahead of the traffic stream. then you do not want to evacuate certain areas of harris county which are more than 50 miles from the ocean and which are not going to be subjected to devastating high winds or flooding of the kind that would put life in jeopardy.

>> mrs. chapman-henderson, do you want to add to that? >> yes. and i'm only familiar with the building code mitigation aspects so i could hardly endorse those aspects. and our partnership wiis probab evenly divided on other insurance issues. with respect to evacuation, it seems the way we would like to look at it is in an ideal sense. differentiating between those that reside in a flood zone or not is step one. we always urge citizens and throughout i think that is union formed that if you live in a flood zone you have to leave because there are too many variables in life safety being a challenge there. beyond that, the homeowner or the business owner or anyone who is seeking to take shelter from a storm that is coming, they

have knowledge of what their house can do -- a performance forecast, for example -- then they can confidently make decisions about evacuation and take themselves out of the ov overevacuation problems. i think you were talking about for florida where the east coast of n. ended up heading west and causing problems. people spent the night in parking lots and were more vulnerable because we really don't know ultimately exactly where the storm will make landfall. so, when we work with consumers -- which is our primary action and we have an experience in epcott at disney world where we bring guests, or more than a half million have come through to experience a virtual storm and engage in game playing to do decision making around good decisions for structures and different aspects of the question of hurricane safety. and we fiend that people do not

nknow that there are difference in building codes with respect to how things are built. their expectation is that it would be built properly in the first place. a very common question we receive is, you mean, you know the notion of roof shape, people say why do we build a house that isn't aerodynamic shaped on the roof if wore in the wind zone. so i think the public's expectation is that we would do it right. but they don't understand that the building code is designed to an minimum legal standard. they don't know that there are different historical strengths to codes and more than codes are better. so, they don't really possess the information to make sound evacuation decisions. as a result, they just leave. if we could get to a place where people understand what they have and what it can do, how they can

be safe and they can stay put, shelter in place, stay off the roads and leave them available to the respond doors aerrespond remove themselves from the definition of catastrophe and we receive thousands of calls when almost it is almost too late. i remember during isabel people from maryland calling us saying am i am the flood zone? so we have a great amount of work in terms of bridging gps and equipping -- gaps and equipping people with first an foremost am i in or out of the flood zone and am i going to survive and that has a strong length to evacuation and how we could improve performance in evacuation. >> with the amount they are having to pay for homeowners insurance now if you are in a coastal area, you would think that people would be asking

about those things when they buy a house. >> absolutely, senator. one of the things that is very promising as we have done in florida, south carolina and soon mississippi is programs to harden homes. and there is a definite length between the hardening and retrofitting of activities that address the strength of roofs, windows and doors and incentives for discounts in insurance. those areas that have the highest insurance rates although they compete with texasor high rates another looking at often up to 50% insurance discount or credit on the insurance with the wind portion of the insurance premium. so, there are those that report the average savings in florida from the hardening program is $773 per year. but in southeast florida it is closer to $2,000 per year.

that is a tremendous incentive as you can imagine for people who have older homes to purchase shutters that are tested and approved and invest in high darn wind shingles and high impact garage doors and i . thank is why that has been successful because of the ability to shelter in place. there are a lot of of lettelett people who reside in miami. one elderly citizen who described her experience of being psychologically traumatized for each year following andrew, but because she was able to receive a matching grant from the program she could rest easy this season because she had taken all the steps necessary to harden her home. >> senator hutchinson. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'm very pleased to be here, because i think what you and senator martinez are doing is

very important for states like ours that are hurricane prone. i also have maybe a more far-reaching and not yet proven suggestion in a bill that came out of the commerce committee a month or so ago to look at not only ways that we are able to better predict the impact and the course of the hurricanes, which you all are doing, but also are there ways that we might consider through research mitigating the effects of those hurricanes with some kind of enter very long. so -- intervention. so i hope my bill passes, i hope your bill passes, and i want to put my opening statement in the

record. >> without objection. >> i have tried to ask my staff here what has already been covered so i'm going to try not to duplicate. i do want to ask dr. wells -- because i had the personal information while we were all just watching ike by the minute, i was amazed at the accuracy of where it would hit, when it would hit, intensity, that your ranger computer was able to model and sharing with all of the federal agencies, weather service, local and state emergency services. it was the best i have ever seen. so, i want to ask you, what did you learn from what you were able to get? is there something more that can be done that we should explore, or is there something new that you think should be added for

this year's hurricane season? because the ability to track the way you did -- and what was amazing was to look at it after the fact that everything you predicted was exactly where and when you had predicted it would happen. now, my question is we are going into hurricane season, and what more should we be doing, can we be doing, and what is this new ranger capability going to do for the rest of our states that are so vulnerable? >> dr. spinrad has also talked about their success running a model on ranger. we were running the hydrodynamic storm forecast and we were sharpg the computing -- sharing the computing resources. there are 60,000 processors to share. "new york times" had a nice graphic that showed ranger in relationship to all the other super computers a couple of

months ago, and it was the sixth largest and all of the other super computers shown in the graphic were at national laboratories or seminar federal large facilities. this is a university resource that is shareable through the n.s.f. with many other investigators researching a very wide variety of problems. it is a highly adaptive computing resource that we can use for our hydraulic and hydrodynamic models as well as the hurricane forecast groups. >> i know you were sharing with noaa. is there anything more that would be able to, between noaa and the technology that you h e have, that would get any better or more helpful information to the people on the grounds who are trying to prepare? >> exactly. i was about to say probably the area that we haven't explored to the degree that we need to are some of the ways we can

visualize the information from the models, the outcome of the model, and put it into a context where individuals, where the public, can really assess their perfo personal risk. i think there are lots of model outputs, maps, various other ways of displaying these results, but they just don't always capture the imagination of the public in general and they cannot see themselves in their homes as being vulnerable to this particular event we are attempting to give them the model results. we understand that and we can place first responders in the field and i can provide information to mayor thomas in galveston saying here is what your community is going to look like tomorrow. but i'm afraid we are not doing as effective a job of changing the attitudes and personal comprehension of risk that citizens have. and i think that modeling verbal station -- and -- visualization

-- and this could be cinematic, three-dimensional, really dramatic ways of presenting that information both on storm surge and wind damage and from inland flooding where people see their neighborhoods and their residences as affected by the event. that is the future of this. we can get to that level of demonstrating what the impact is going to be. you hear the people after the event saying i knew this was going to be a very bad hurricane, as bad as camille and carla but i didn't think in my part of town or my neighborhood or my house it was going to be as bad as it was. >> one of the things about hurricane ike was the heavy flooding -- not a tsunami but that forceful flooding. i flew over the area on the

other side of galveston, boliver peninsula and i was thinking this must be a new construction area because there's nothing here. it wasn't a new construction area. >> the material was 10 miles away in chambers county. >> that is why all you saw were sticks in the ground. and there were no turned over refrigerators, no debris. nothing. so, i thought, well, it is new construction. and i realized, no, i'm in the heart of boliver peninsula where the new houses were, yet the debris had gone 10 mills up. and that is what people are not prepared for. i grew up in galveston county, so i was going through carla and

camille. so that is what you are talking about. people can't visualize that they are going to come back and see sticks in the ground and not a broken air conditioner, not a broken sink, not a -- nothing. it was unbelievable. is that what you mean when you say people are not prepared for what is actually going to happen in their immediate neighborhoods? >> they have the general concept that this going to be a bad event but they cannot personalize it and see it in terms of own geography and where they live. and i think we have now and we will have better in the future, a means of doing the modeling that predicts that impact and the means of delivering that information more effectively. we probably need to study how people respond to different kinds of information that is given to them. i don't think there's enough research to show how people

concept i conce conceptu conceptualize this. i think we need to take a careful look at that, because we could have the greatest science and have the best knowledge of the physical dimensions of the impending event, but if we can't communicate it, it won't make a differen difference. >> let me ask one other line to anyone who wishes to respond. in the bill that i'm putting forward it is trying to study the present and the past to see if there is any future in weather modification. in other words, just as an example. i don't know if this is possible but i think we ought to be looking at it. if you see a certain type of hurricane 100 miles out in the atlant atlantic, is there something that could be done there that

wouldn't stop it but might make it less powerful when it comes in florida or into mississippi or florida or texas, or alabama? is there something that we have not looked at from the past that would give us an indication of maybe a mitigation of the impact? b because the damages are so much higher now because of the intensi intensity. so, my question is to anyone. yes. >> senator hutchinson, it is a very important question and one that as your bill states got a lot of looking at in the 1970's. but then there was a drought so to speak of weather mitigation activities. i would like to make four points with regard to modification. number one, you really need good numerical forecast models to do weather modification of hurricanes because you need to know the modification you are going to try to impute to the

hurricane will have the intended effe effect. that is a challenge in and of itself and really requires the best research and forecast technology you could have. we have run simulations of tornadic thunderstorms, of hurricanes, and we know through simulations that there is no question you can change the course of a hurricane, kill it off, kill off a thunderstorm before it produces a tornado. but that brings me to the second point. how do you implement that change? that is really an engineering problem. and there have been some far-ranging, you might say, approaches proposed all the way from launching ballistics missiles in thunderstorms to doing all kinds of things in space for hurricanes. that is the real challenge, how do you deliver the disruptive influence. we know in simulation models we don't say how we do it, we just cool the ocean temperature. but the question is how do you do that. the first point is you have to

have good forecast models to know the change you are trying to achieve is the one that will occur. you will get what you ask for. then how do you deliver the newspaper? the third one is -- how do you deliver the influence. then the unintended consequence. hurricanes, have very positive aspects in terms of bringing fresh water inland. there is a lot of flooding but they are an important source of water recharge in the hydrology system. and we don't know why hurricanes exist. we know why weather occurs. it is the atmosphere's way to try to reduce imbalances. but hurricanes, we don't know why they are there or what purpose they play. so, that has an interesting implication in the climate system. if you got rid of all hurricanes, for example, what impacts might that have on the climate? that is where numerical models might come into play and we can resolve hurnricanes, we can runa

100-year climate simulation and when a hurricane forms we can kill it off and compare that with the swaituation with where the hurricane can continue. so the third point is unintended consequence. the fourth one is ethics and legal issues and i know you run in this in texas, we do in oklahoma and kansas where you do rainfall enhancement or hail suppression and somebody in texas says you bled all of the water out of my clouds in the oklahoma panhandle and the farmers get upset. so it brings in interesting legal challenges as you cross state lines and geopolitical barriers. but i do think -- and i read your bill and i think it time for the nation to get serious about weather modification and as we are bill pointed out, there really is no compelling evidence that this works. but we have much more powerful observing systems which we need mobile radar, ground based radar, aircraft and especially

numerical models. so i think the scientific community is poised to address the calendar you bring across -- challenge that you bring across. there are some interesting nonscientific and ethical and legal issues. but the other point i would make in closing is when you study modification of the weather, the kinds of questions you ask have great relevance to some of the other issues we deal with in terms of predictability of the atmosphere in general and how you do data simulation. so we might think of it as modifying hurricanes or doing weather modification, but in is a lot we can learn in other areas of challenges in weather forecasting when we're studying weather modification. so, it has a double-barrelled positive effect on studying the issue of weather modification, but all the other things we can get a great benefit from that. >> i wanted to go to dr dr. spinrad, but that is the purpose of the bill, not only to

see what might have an effect but what are the unintended consequences. and i think that even today when you have clouds in one area we need to know if it effects another area adversely and i think that is because we did take a pass on getting data, real really, many years ago, we really need to know now more where to go and what the consequences are. dr. spin rrad? >> i would like to add two points of emfasces. if we look to hurricanes, it soenl in the last -- it is only in the last self yeaveral years have begun to understand el nino and la nina on hurricane development and something that is emerging now we are discovering that dry air masses off the sahara have a strong

influence on whether hurricanes will form. five years ago we had no idea of that. so, i would say the research that goes in understanding the system and development of any weather phenomenon would have to be addressed whether it is to improve the forecast or to engage in any modification. my second point is an emphasis on the unintended consequences and i hope we would include some understanding of the consequences to the ecosystem itself. there are some indications, for example, that because hurricanes have major stirring effect they re introdu reintroduce nutrientses into the gulf and there are potentially beneficial consequences of hurricanes to the productivity of that environment. so it is the physical consequences and societal consequences but also the ecosystem consequences. >> i think all of those points are well taken and would be part of any kind of study. basically what i want to do is start getting the data and then

from that know if we do modify or don't modify that is when you start getting into the consequences. but it just seems like not knowing is not very enlightened. so, hopefully we can do something about it. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator hutchinson. earlier, dr. spinrad, you were talking about the importance of measuring the winds at the surface of the ocean as a means of trying to predict the direction and intensity of hurricanes. and we used to have a satellite that measured that, but that satellite is either on the blink or is about to go out beyond its designed life. and there was an attempt to get another one in there called a

scatarometer and the short name was quick scat. since we don't have that capability, how do you fill the gap and what are noaa's plans for next generation of a quick scat is it >> surface winds are important. i think there's been some debate as to the full value of those data in terms of improvement of the forecast. nevertheless, i think most of our scientists and forecasters would say having those surface winds is of value. quick scat in packfact is fuele run through 2011 if all things go well. we are in discussion with nasa about very madevelopment of the generation ocean surface vector wind sensor which would fulfill the same data requirements as quick scat. we have ongoing discussions for

data availability from a scatar scatarometer from the european system called a-scat. as i mentioned earlier, there are additional approaches that we are testing, one of which is the use of unmanned aerial systems which week actually fly into the hurricane and directly acquire the near surface winds. the other is a new piece of equipment we have installed on aircraft in the air force aircraft the step frequency microwave raid ometometer raid . so there are a variety of approaches at hand. we believe with the viability of quick scat currently we have the time to develop the solutions to get the surface winds. >> earlier you testified about

the computer models and the super computer with regard to intensity and direction. what about the hurricane models that model what is going to be the economic loss for the insurance industry? mrs. chapman-henderson, do you think that, since the insurance companies have their own computer models we ought to have a public domain computer model? >> i think that it is is fair to say there are, when it comes to the models, more is probably bett better. and having private sector models and having that information and findings from the models available is essential. as far as having a public model, i think it is like any model, as long as the data and assumptions

and everything that go in the models are accurate and correct you will get a good product from them. one of the things that i have heard -- and i'm not a modeler -- but what i have heard in the work that we do is that it is important for us to not overrely on models. they are predictors like anything else of economic loss. i think that what is very instructive and i think mr. nutter could probably add a lot of value to this conversation as well, is that when we look at the models' performance after a storm there are some excellent track records in terms of, you know, this was anticipated, this amount of economic impact was forecast and that is indeed what occurred. and often they are more conservative than what actually happens because of the duration after the impacts of the storms and costs that are not anticipated. ironically, it seems like we

come away -- and i think this is true out weather side, engineering side, economic side -- we get this sense that we learn things after a storm and develop a set of beliefs. for example, in hurricane andrew we learned that hip shape roofs perform better than gables. what happens is we labor under those beliefs and that is good. but we learn something new each time. with respect to you talked earlier about hurricane wilma, the rule of thumb -- and i think we find comfort in society having a set of conclusions. so, what has always been said is the storm makes landfall you can expect to lose a category of, you know, if it comes in as a four it will go down to a three or a two. but take wilma, after all of those years of telling homeowners or citizens it comes in as a four but the time it gets to you it is a three, we like these pat beliefs because

they give us comfort but they are not always true. wilma came in as a weak one or two but increased and came out on the east side and caused more damage on the east side than the west. so, the way i look at models is, as long as the information that goes in is excellent, we can be guided by them and certainly on economic impacts that has been proven. but we have to keep an open mind because every major catastrophe -- and i have been arson them for 25 years -- we learn something altogether different about what the outcomes are going to be. i don't know if mr. nutter wanted to add. >> senator nelson, i have served on the advisory board for the international research center which is affiliated with florida international information where the public model in florida was developed. t florida has an interesting approach to evaluating the

models and having a commission that i think is chaired by or staffed by academics from the community. it is a responsible approach to trying to understand the dynamics of teahese models. it seems one of the real values of the public model where emphasis ought to be placed is what the public values are here. by that i mean what mitigation might benefit from ici -- from g the public model. the hard,ing the public model hasn't focused as much on and would be valuable in doing so. so there is a great utility in a model that would look at the impact of storms and help everyone understand the im papa and what you could do to minimize them. >> does florida have a public model today? >> yes, developed at florida international university and

funded by the state of n. through the insurance -- by the state of florida through the insurance compadepartment. >> to what degree do the insurance companies and reinsurance companies use the model to determine loss and therefore to determine what the premiums are? >> i don't think the public model is used by them. there are private models that are used. and those models all have to go through an accreditation process that is commissioned in the state of florida. so, to the extent they are private and have proprietary information they are subjected to the review under the state of florida to see the assumptions that are made. i think the public model is used primarily by the insurance department as a guideline, a guide post in looking at what the insurance companies file and what reliance they place on the private models. >> do you recall about, either you or ms. clapman-henderson,

what year the public model was developed by florida international university? >> i would say four years ago. there may have been a couple of years ago of development but i think it has been in place four years. i could be wrong on that and i will check and submit a more accurate statement for the record. >> ok. dr. droegemeier, what is the relationship, if any, between climate change and hurricanes? >> that is a very good question, senator. we tend a lot of times to think about climate changing the nature of hurricanes. for example, the intensity and frequency is frequency. but it is a twtwo-way street. hurricanes can impact climateless. recent studies have suggested that with the climate changing as we believe it is as the records indicate we are seeing a shift not in the total number of

storms but keeping the numbers constant but a larger number of more intense hurricanes and smaller number of less intense hurricanes. so we see that shift in the atlantic. there is also some sense of the hurricane, the power of the hurricane being greater the last several decades than prior to that. those are some evidences that we are seeing but it is a challenge to draw definitive conclusion so the work needs to be ongoing. flipping the coin around and looking at the impact on the climate system of hurricanes the last few years we have seen as dr. spinrad mentioned some new discoveries, the role of hurricanes changing the balance of currents in the ocean because they bring up a lot of cold water from beneath. when after you lot of hurricanes in a progression, i think four or five in the atlantic, that

has a longer-term impact on the climate system, the conveyor belts of moisture and -- rather, of heat and energy in the ocean. that has an impact on the large global system. so it is not just the climate changing the hurricane but the hurricane and that is something we have not been able to study because climate models have not been able to resolve hurngs so without the hurricane in the model you are missing an important piece. but that is changing with the more powerful computers getting to resolutions and understanding the tradeoffs. so i would say overall that the notion of how hurricanes are impacted by climate and impact of hurricanes on the climate system is really in its in ffan. where we're seeing results that are compel bug moling but more needs to be done. >> i agree with that and it would seem that in the legislation you have introduced to fund additional research

related to hurricanes there is reference to climate change. from looking at the value there, to the extent the climate models can be more regionalized, the resolution can be more tailored to local areas it would be of greater value to local officials in addressing issues associated with climate change. >> well, let's say that we have an increase of one foot in the sea level. now, what does your professional opinion tell you that is going to happen to the storm surge level and the inland flooding? yes, sir, dr. wells. >> i wanted to jump into the last conversation -- your one foot estimate may be quite conservative. one thing we do at the center for space research is we are the

lead investigator for the gravity recovery and climate experiment. the two-satellite mission that is looking in the greatest detail at the loss of water from green land and antarctica. it is showing -- and i think observations are showing that the rate of relative sea level rise is increasing more dramatically than some of our previous modeling would have shown just two or three years ago. and that estimate that they only rise a foot or two by the end of the century may be off by a factor of 50%. we could see a considerably larger rise than that. i think this has tremendous impact on what we want to do in the future as we think of what sort of mitigating steps we are going to take because it is a moving target now. i have friends who are studying barrier systems that ahave lookd at everything that has formed

and they are seeing evidence the sea level is rising faster than the last 7,500 years. barrier island didn't exist at that period along the texas and louisiana coast. we are getting into a period of instability as this increases. and if we're going to have large built infrastructure like a dike plat placed in these areas we are going to have have to ask if the trends continue what are the effective countermeasures that we can take. these are tremendous impacts on the coastline and i don't think we have fully comprehended at in stage what the future holds. certainly the modeling is going to help us determine that. >> mr. chairman, if i can add, there is an important component that has to be introduced into this discussion in addition to the climate change impacts. we recognize that there are

periods of several decades when we see increased and decreased frequency and intensity of hurricane, the multi-decadal oscillation and the question is how much of that is continuing to happen. so, as we have the discussion with regard to climate change impacts, we have to look at what we believe are the naturally occurring multi-decadal patterns that mother nature introduces herself. >> dr. spinrad, representing noaa, are you familiar with a satellite on the ground named discover which would give some more precise measurements on climate change? >> i'm familiar with that, sir. in fact, i had the pleasure of talking with former vice president al gore about that particular satellite just a few meteorologi months ago. i think there are clear benefits to the kind of observations that we would get from a satellite

such as discover. i also believe that we have looked very carefully at our priorities for remote sensing, the satellites that we currently have in the hopper, if you will, to be put up and the launch schedule. and i believe that we can't afford to compromise that schedule. i think that we should have a more rigorous debate and discussion about how and whether and when we should consider launching that kind of capabili capability, but not if it crow mices what we have all very -- compromises what we think are the needs at hand now much the national research council put out just a couple of years ago what they called their decadal survey identifying what they, the nation a's premier scientis, believe the priorities are for earth observations and we have tried to use into as our guide in defining what satellites we should put up, when for what

observations. >> i think we are going to be able to get that satellite up because now the department of defense has a need for another instrument to replace an aging satellite at the la grange point between earth and the sun to measure solar flares. and the radiation effects on the earth to warn earth before the solar radiation gets to earth. so, i think increasingly -- we just put language in the department of defense authorization act that the air force is going to study this and i think this might be a way that we can kill two birds with one stone. let me ask mr. nut ter, how is

the insurance industry addressing climate change? clearly it has an enormous impact on the insurance industry because of all the property that you ensure insure on the coast? >> at times i'm proud of the industry and at times disappointed on this. a number of reinsurers have funded private research as well as talked publicly about the need to address climate change. swiss re and munich re stand out as companies that have been a paragon about this. we see an increasing interest to understand the science including working with performance such as on this panel. the willis insurance group fund academic research through a network. the institute for business and home safety, which is a companion organization to flash

as i mentioned it my statement is funding a research facility. i would hope our industry in the united states would commit more to research and looking at climate change pause there is no question the implications for the changes and their policyholders is critical to understand. so, a closer relationship between our industry and the community government and private research is critical. >> a decade ago european insurance companies were getting more interested in the effects upon their economic activities than were american insurance companies. are european companies still taking the lead? >> no question about it. allianz, munich re, renaissance re, a bermuda based company,

which is re, have all stepped forward to fund research and promote a better understanding and by that i mean public research made available to others and funding research looking at the health and property life exposures related to climate change. the industry in the united states historically has a business model that tends to be retro expespectiv retrospective. they look at actuarial data and trend toward. i say the europeans are more progressive in trying to understand future events and impact upon themselves as well as their policyholders. >> i want to conclude by asking anybody that would like to respond, one of the problems that we have here in the senate is the fact that senators from states that are not coastal states tend to think that

hurricanes are not their prob m problem. and if they don't come from california, they think that earthquakes are not their problem. now, we are focusing on hurricanes here, but that is just a fact of life and that is human nature. you all want to suggest for the reco record, on a hurricane bill that senator martinez and i have proffered, that seems to meet with widespread support, what is it that you would recommend to us as to how we go about getting the attention of these senators who are not from coastal areas that are threatened by

hurricanes to support it? >> i think that first and foremost as taxpayers we all need to be concerned about the impacts of hurricanes because of the significant economic impact to all of us. on a more practical level i think you can go state by state and identify impact. one from hurricane ike and the flooding that occurred in ohio. more than a billion dollars this insurance losses happened in ohio because of ike. in pennsylvania, after hurricane ivan. west virginia after different storms. the hurricanes do not come to the coast and, as you know, stop. they move through and they cause damage throughout the united states. and i think it is again one of those things where sometimes looking back at that and instead of thinking forward. but i believe we can provide a very detailed analysis in the

case of economic and societal disruption that follows hurricanes well inland to places that are not traditionally thought of. ohio springs to mind again because of last year. >> senator, there are national disruptions to the consequences of hurricane landfall in particular areas. you only need to look at the high proportion of the petrochemical and refining activity that occurs on the texas-louisiana coast, and we have had not had the event that would create true distortion and disruption of that. that is the kind to go up the houston ship channel, for instance. >> we have talked mostly about landfall. we have talked about impacts on the coast. i would remind you that greater than 95% of the imports and exports travel by sea. saying that a hurricane has safely turned to sea is not quite appropriate when we talk about the impact on that

maritime commerce. almost everything we buy and sell takes advantage of that. there are studies that have shown the impact of adverse weather on the cost of goods and products wherever we buy them in the united states. >> i think it is a very important point and it is why such an integrated research approach is needed to understand the linkages. some are long-term. in terms of good an services. the supply containing, some of them are decadal impacts that require massive rebuilding, reallocation of wealth if you will from some part of the country to another and sustaining impacts are very long-term and we really don't understand that nearly as much as we should. we can give excellent examples as you have heard here but i think the interactions of all of those different components of our society are something that are very complicated and something we don't have a handle on. so, the research you are talking about, i think, by its nature will build upon these stories

and give credibility to and deeper understanding of their impact on our society. >> senator, if i might add, this is a country of shared values and two of the shaus we talk about -- values we talked about are mitigation, ways to reduce damage to property and loss of life and certainly research in this area is going to have an extra effect on other kinds of properties in non-hurricane areas. the other shared value is responsiveness to people that have had a disaster that have faced that. the government has been generous in coming in in dealing with temporary housing and disaster response. >> i would just add that in the direct answer in addition to the excellent comments that you have made to this question of why should senators from non-coastal states be interested in the damage of hurricanes, it is also

the fact that most of the cost is borne by the american taxpay taxpayer, wherever that taxpayer happens to live. because, clearly, we have seen in the case of hurricane katrina almost half of the economic loss of that hurricane was borne by the federal government in its efforts to try to bring that part of the united states back to life. i want to thank you all. this has been an extensive and very thorough discussion of the iss issue. you have illuminated this issue enormous enormously. the record is quite full and that is thanks to your expertise as presented here today. so, thank you and, and with that the meeting a adjourn adjois ad.

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highest court the supreme court. . today on c-span is "washington journal" our guests include tony fratto and mark plotkin on national politics. and then john mercurio looks about governors' res