Weather and War: Forecasting Investment May Pay Dividends

[IMGCAP(1)]Programs now on the books for federal agencies to improve their weather forecasting capabilities may prove to be among the best investments the government is making in light of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.With the military poised to go in harm's way, many high-tech weapons systems require solid information on weather conditions, said Richard Spinrad, technical director to the Oceanographer of the Navy, based in Washington."We've got some very sophisticated weapons which, because of the precision of targeting, are very affected by wind [and] air temperatures," Spinrad said. "Sometimes the 'go-no go' for missiles depends on the temperature at the target. ... The better we can forecast, the better the targeting is."The federal government will spend about $865 million in fiscal 2002 on weather systems, technologies and services, according to Federal Sources Inc., a market research and consulting company in McLean, Va.Among its major weather-related investments, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in September 2000 initiated a six-year, $64 million project with Raytheon Co. of Lexington, Mass., to build a high-performance computing system. The system, which came online this spring, allows very large, complex computer programs to run with greater efficiency, making it easier to process larger volumes of weather-related data. "Weather forecasting and climate research require the most demanding and complex computing that's out there," said Jill Matzke, director of sciences marketing with SGI of Mountain View, Calif. SGI, formerly known as Silicon Graphics Inc., was selected by Raytheon as its subcontractor to provide supercomputer hardware, software and services for the NOAA project. In addition, SGI in September 2000 signed a separate contract with the Navy to provide the same supercomputer technology to the Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center in Monterey, Calif.In simple terms, the modeling programs use historical and current weather data to run simulations over and over, each time making small changes in underlying assumptions, said Mike Clancy, chief scientist and deputy technical director for the Fleet Numerical Center.Data is gathered continuously all over the world, from satellites, ships, buoys and other weather and ocean outposts, Clancy said. Using the input, the weather models are run at least twice a day, sometimes more, to generate forecasts that can cover almost a week at a time.Some of the models cover global forecasts, while others are regional models with higher spatial resolution, he said. The regional forecasts cover areas of particular Defense Department interest. The system at the Fleet Numerical Center was scheduled to reach full operational capacity by the end of this month, but the terrorist attacks have delayed plans."We have heightened security precautions, only essential personnel [are in], and we're doing the things we have to do to support DoD right now," Clancy said.The weather forecasting models depend on accurate data ? lots of it. SER Solutions Inc. is one of several firms gathering, digitizing and collating climate information to strengthen the underlying equations that drive the modeling.SER, based in Herndon, Va., holds three contracts, with a combined value of more than $7 million, to digitize historical data gathered by the federal government for more than a century. The company is providing the data conversion as part of NOAA's Climate Database Modernization Program."It's very important when you're looking at weather technologies to [be able to] pull content from an unstructured environment and load it into a structured one," said Rita Carroll Joseph, SER's vice president of the public sector.The historical data, once entered into the system, also allows meteorologists to test and improve their forecasting models by examining how well the models could have predicted weather that actually happened."You do it using regression analysis; you track backward, then move forward to develop the predictions," Joseph said.Several federal agencies play a role in gathering, analyzing and disseminating weather data. The Fleet Numerical Center principally serves the Navy, Clancy said, but provides its forecasts to all branches of the Defense Department and other government agencies, including the general public through its Web site. The Air Force has its own forecasting offices for its mission requirements. NOAA, which includes the National Weather Service and is part of the Commerce Department, is the agency most familiar to citizens, especially during hurricane season. And NASA has a significant investment in weather technology, both in input (satellites) and output (forecasts).One emerging trend in weather forecasting is the interest of private-sector companies in generating predictions for their own use.Historically, weather has been the sole province of governments worldwide, said SGI's Matske. But in Europe, governments have been under pressure to lower costs, and this is one area that may produce spinoffs to the private sector. In the United States, private enterprise is becoming more interested in developing its own, specialized forecasts in industries such as oil, Matzke said.The need for timely and accurate weather forecasts are "the raison d'etre for this office," Spinrad said of his office, a military position that has been in place for 160 years. Predicting weather conditions has always been crucial for the military. During World War II, about 1,000 Marines lost their lives at Tarawa in the Pacific, Spinrad said, because the Navy couldn't predict the tides correctly. The tides came in about six inches lower than expected, stranding landing craft well off shore and leaving men to wade through water under enemy fire.One sad part of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is the beautiful weather forecasted for that day, he said."My guess is that somebody within the terrorist organization had been taking a close look at the forecasts for when they could be assured that Washington, New York and Boston would be under visual flight rules," Spinrad said. "To be able to inflict the kind of damage they did, the planes had to be able to take off on time. It's not very often that [all three cities] are clear at once."XXXSPLITXXX-Mark Twain would likely reconsider his famous observation were he alive to see the government's numerous weather and climate research and forecasting programs. A case in point is the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.The NCDC, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is the world's largest archive of atmospheric and climate data. The agency registers data gathered by the National Weather Service, military services, Federal Aviation Administration, Coast Guard and volunteer observers. It also collects data from around the world.Until recently, these priceless records ? more than 150 years of data ? have been interesting as historical documents, but not particularly helpful in weather modeling and simulation. That's because all those records are on paper."We have got in the neighborhood of 100 million pieces of paper," said Steve Doty, program manager for the Climate Database Modernization Program. "They don't do anybody much good sitting in the basement of this building."The database modernization program, now in its third year, is a two-pronged effort to produce digital images of the documents and to key in the raw data they contain.Doty said most of the weather databases begin after World War II. Now the agency is working on adding daily weather observations from as many as 10,000 weather stations gathered from 1895 to 1948. Also, a new project just under way, called the Forts project, will add data taken from Army fort observations from 1820 to the 1890s.SER Solutions Inc. of Herndon, Va., Information Manufacturing Corp. of Rocket Center, W.Va., and Image Entry Inc. of London, Ky., are the contractors working on turning these historical documents into usable data. Doty estimated the work will take four or five more years. The data center will spend about $12.5 million in fiscal 2002 on the project, he said."It's an incredible deal. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, almost once in the life of the nation," Doty said. "Some of it's pretty mundane, but the collection itself will give us insights into stuff like the Dust Bowl and what led up to it, so we can predict if it could happen again."