Weather Services for the Nation: Becoming Second to None (2012)

1

The Rationale for Further Evolution of the
National Weather Service

During the 1980s and 1990s, the National Weather Service (NWS) undertook a major program called the Modernization and Associated Restructuring (MAR). The MAR was officially completed in 2000. No comprehensive assessment of the execution of the MAR plan, or comparison of the promised benefits of the MAR to its actual impact, had ever been conducted. Therefore, Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an end-to-end assessment (see Appendix A for Statement of Task). The Committee’s first report, The National Weather Service Modernization and Associated Restructuring: A Retrospective Assessment, documented how these challenges were met and identified lessons learned (Box 1.1). Detailed information about the background, execution, and impact of the MAR are provided in that report. In short, that report (NRC, 2012a) concluded:

The MAR was a large and complex process that lasted a decade and cost approximately $4.5 billion. Despite issues, some more significant than others, in the end the MAR was an unqualified success. New technologies deployed during the MAR now provide forecasters with more observations of higher quality. NWS forecast and warning products were dramatically improved in both quality and quantity. NWS now has stronger relationships with many of its partners in the weather enterprise. Changes in the distribution of field offices have allowed stronger connections with local communities. Weather services have great value to the Nation, and the MAR was well worth the investment.

Accelerating improvements in technology and the science of meteorology and hydrology favor a continuing modernization of the NWS and its partners in the weather, water, and climate enterprise.¹ This report presents guidance, based on the lessons of the MAR, for the NWS as it plans future improvements. This report builds on the Committee’s first report, and all information gathered in the process of drafting the first report, including speaker presentations and reviews of the literature and materials provided by the NWS, was equally useful in the drafting of this report. With the exception of the Committee’s recommendations on hydrologic services and numerical weather prediction, topics not covered by the MAR, all of the recommendations in this report are reinforced by the lessons learned from the MAR identified by the Committee in its first report.

TODAY’S KEY CHALLENGES

Twelve years after the official completion of the MAR, the challenges faced by the NWS are no less important than were those of the pre-MAR era. The

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¹ The “enterprise” includes all entities in the public, private, nonprofit, research, and academic sectors that provide information, services, and infrastructure in the areas of weather, water, and climate. The public sector includes the NWS as well as other weather-related line offices within NOAA, other federal agencies, and state and local governments. For the purposes of this report, “enterprise” is often used as shorthand to refer to those enterprise elements outside NOAA that it can draw on in its mission. Within this, the private sector is present in two major areas: (1) services companies providing a broad range of data, forecasts, warnings, and value-added products to consumers and businesses, and (2) infrastructure companies providing systems such as satellites. The non-NOAA portion of the enterprise is now of equal or greater economic size compared to the NOAA portion.

key challenges include keeping pace, meeting expanding and evolving user needs, and partnering with an increasingly capable enterprise. Mass (2012) provides an excellent example of how these challenges have converged to frame directions for the future of the NWS.

Keeping Pace. The pace of scientific and technological advancement in the atmospheric and hydrologic sciences continues to accelerate. As an outgrowth of public- and private-sector investment in weather, climate, and hydrologic research, new observational, data assimilation, prediction, and other technology advancements are exceeding the capacity of the NWS to optimally acquire, integrate, and communicate critical forecast and warning information based on these technological achievements. The MAR focused on NWS observational and warning functions and instituted an operational framework appropriate for that time. Now, as scientific and technological progress continues, critical components within the NWS are lagging behind the state of the science. Furthermore, enormous amounts of data generated by new surface networks, radars, satellites, and numerical models need to be rapidly distilled into actionable information in order to create and communicate effective public forecasts and warnings. The skills required to comprehend, manage, and optimize this decision-making process go beyond traditional meteorological and hydrologic curricula. Hence, the NWS workforce skill set will need to evolve appropriately.

Meeting Expanding and Evolving User Needs. Increasingly, the United States is an information-centric society. Meteorological and hydrologic information in particular is central to societal security and welfare (Lazo et al., 2009, 2011). Unlike some other industries, weather is largely an information-based enterprise. The public expects continuous improvement in public safety and property protection related to severe weather. To succeed, the NWS needs to not only improve forecast and warning capabilities but also do so faster than the rates of construction and population increase in at-risk locations. With broad adoption of the internet and mobile technology, people have found many new ways to access and use weather and water information in their daily lives. The evolution of business processes, such as just-in-time manufacturing, has made the economy more dependent on weather and water information. New business uses have emerged, such as the energy sector’s investment in weather-sensitive renewable sources.

Partnering with an Increasingly Capable At the time of the MAR, delivery of weather information was largely synonymous with the NWS, the broadcasting sector, and the private-sector suppliers of weather data and services that supported the broadcasting sector. Outside of this, the weather, water, and climate enterprise had limited capacity. Today, the enterprise has grown considerably, and now the NWS has many important partners. Private-sector and other

organizations provide sensor data, weather forecasts, and value-added, end-user weather, water, and climate services to a broad set of customers encompassing both businesses and the public, with multiple sources available in many cases. All of these entities rely on core NWS infrastructure and capabilities to provide customized services. Together this combination of the NWS and third parties serves the nation better than the NWS could on its own.

THE EVOLVING CONTEXT

These challenges are made more difficult by the external context, two areas of which are of particular importance:

•   Budget resources are uncertain and will likely be constrained for the next decade.

•   Operational performance standards against which the NWS is measured, including those set by international weather service counterparts and private-sector entities, are increasingly high. For example, skill² measures of NWS global numerical weather prediction models are often compared to the performance of corresponding entities around the world. The European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is just one of several for which model skill is arguably equal to or better than that of the NWS (NRC, 2012a). Such competition can be deemed positive, as it motivates all to improve performance and integrate the latest advances in science and technology. But it can introduce organizational tension when the pressure to meet the competition is not balanced by resources to do so.

There are many uncertainties in the evolution of the external context within which the NWS will function. The NWS will need to consider many factors that will affect the way in which it undertakes its core functions, and possibly even redefine those core functions. The evolving context increases the need for greater agility within the NWS. The Committee foresees the following future developments.

The rapid, transformative pace of technological change will continue. This implies that there will be as-yet unimagined technical applications, as well as unexpected disruptions of the current context and arrangements for the provision of weather- and water-related services. The scale of computing that is affordably available to the NWS and the rest of the weather, water, and climate enterprise will continue its exponential increase. This will make higher spatial and temporal resolution models possible, with ensemble forecasting and probabilistic products becoming increasingly utilized. There is likely to be a continual increase in the number and diversity of services provided by the private sector, fueled by expected improvements in computing and telecommunications technology.

The volume and types of observational data will expand greatly. This is due to availability of data from increasingly powerful satellites (including international sources); the explosion of data from new sensor networks (including the oceans); the proliferation of sensors on devices in the hands of individuals; and new sensors used to support transportation. This will provide opportunities for more coverage and more types of information on the present state of the weather-water-climate system, but it will also present challenges as to how to most effectively integrate and use this information in the service-delivery system.

There will be continued concentration of infrastructure investment and population growth in coastal and riverine floodplain areas subject to severe weather and flooding, a circumstance that will continue to produce the potential for increasing losses of property, and perhaps of life, regardless of whether there are changes in the frequency of severe weather events and improvements in weather and flood forecast and warning skill.

Climate change implies the possibility of changing weather patterns with forecast regimes not well matched to historical expectations (IPCC, 2012). The NWS will need to maintain and improve forecast and warning skill in the face of such change.

The international dimensions will continue to evolve. The World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO’s) World Weather Watch (WWW) and Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) programs will continue to provide the basis for the global collection, analysis, and distribution of weather, water, and other environmental information. The NWS, NESDIS, and the relevant parts of OAR will continue to provide the major part of the United States’ contribution to the WMO programs.

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² “Skill” is a statistical evaluation of the accuracy of forecasts or the effectiveness of detection techniques (AMS, 2000).

The basic concept of the WMO/WWW/GAW is that each of the 183 member countries undertakes, according to its means, to meet certain responsibilities in the agreed global scheme so that all countries may benefit from the consolidated effort. This is a major achievement in international cooperation that requires protection so that the operational work of individual national meteorological hydrological services (NMHS) can continue to evolve and improve. Recent initiatives such as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) are being developed to provide system architectures for data acquisition and dissemination that include, but also expand beyond, the WMO programs (GEO, 2005). These efforts will also be important as observation requirements and applications evolve. Although there may be increasing interplay between countries and their own NMHS and private sectors, the concepts upon which the international cooperation is based are important. The relationships within the U.S. weather, water, and climate enterprise need to reflect and respect these agreements and their standards.

RESPONDING TO THE CHALLENGES

This report presents three main recommendations for responding to these challenges within the evolving context:

1. Prioritize Core Capabilities
2. Evaluate Function and Structure
3. Leverage the Entire Enterprise

Meeting today’s challenges will require large changes over as much as a decade. Fortunately, the MAR established a solid foundation as a starting point, but new methods of tackling these challenges are necessary. The Committee feels their recommendations will guide the NWS in establishing such new methods, going beyond what they are already doing to tackle today’s challenges. The recommendations presented in this report will help the NWS become more agile and effective. This will put it on a path to becoming second to none at integrating scientific and technological advances into its operations and at meeting user needs, leading in some areas and keeping pace in others. It will have the highest quality core capabilities among national weather services. It will have a structure and organization that allows it to directly or indirectly reach more end users, save more lives, and help more businesses. And it will have leveraged these capabilities through the broader enterprise. This approach will make possible societal benefits beyond what the NWS budget alone allows. This report suggests how this can be accomplished, in part building on the lessons from the MAR identified in the first report from this Committee.

Prioritize Core Capabilities

The NWS needs to prioritize the core capabilities that generate products and services only the NWS can provide. Figure 1.1 illustrates the relationships among different elements of the overall enterprise. Central to a successful enterprise is a set of NWS core capabilities, defined as

•   Creating foundational datasets,

•   Performing essential functions, and

•   Conducting operationally related research.

Foundational datasets include collected and integrated observations, advanced analyses either from modern data assimilation or other objective methods, and predictions obtained from deterministic and probabilistic models. Essential functions constitute those activities and services that are mandated by the NWS mission and include product generation (e.g., general weather forecasts, watches, warnings, advisories, and guidance) and dissemination; brokering and provision of weather and water data; international responsibilities to WMO programs; and the creation of critical analysis tools that enable NWS staff to execute its functions. Operationally related research refers to activities that continually invigorate NWS core capabilities with new understanding and improved techniques from OAR and the broader research community (e.g., research-to-operations, or R2O), allowing the NWS to better keep pace with rapidly evolving technology. Such activities also include new research priorities based on issues that inhibit analysis and prediction skill or the production of forecast and warning products (e.g., operations-to-research, or O2R).

As illustrated in Figure 1.1, enterprise partners from the private sector, academia, and other domestic

FIGURE 1.1 Conceptual “hub-spoke-rim” paradigm for defining the relationships between core NWS capabilities (hub and spokes), its partners in the broader enterprise (the spaces between the hub, spokes, and rim), and end users of weather services (the rim). The gray ring around the hub represents the gray areas of responsibility between the NWS and the rest of the enterprise. The intention of this conceptual framework is to articulate how various entities connect to and support weather information services that emerge from core NWS capabilities.

and international organizations help the NWS serve its overall mission by feeding NWS core capabilities with data and services and then help transfer NWS core products and foundational data to the public, decision makers, and other stakeholders. The size and scope of the “hub” of core capabilities is constantly in flux based on the needs, capabilities, and constraints of the enterprise and its users.

Prioritizing roles and defining the breadth and scope of NWS core capabilities require the NWS to make four key distinctions: (1) roles that only the NWS can perform; (2) roles that partners can perform reliably; (3) roles that the NWS performs, but which partners could perform if any partners were available; and (4) roles that initially are performed by partners, but which develop technology such that the NWS could perform the role at little or no cost. This is an ongoing process that will always involve gray areas. The Committee is not suggesting that such prioritization resolve gray areas, but rather that those areas clearly

core to the NWS be prioritized as such, and those that are clearly best performed elsewhere in the enterprise receive recognition and technical and data support—as needed and as possible—from the NWS.

Because the quality of NWS core capabilities underlies the relationship of trust and reliance among the NWS, the public, and the rest of the enterprise, and consistent with Lessons 1, 2, 3, and 5 from NRC (2012a), the Committee makes the following overarching recommendation. (Specific, supporting recommendations for improving the various aspects of NWS core capabilities are discussed in detail in Chapter 2.)

Recommendation I: Prioritize Core Capabilities

The National Weather Service (NWS) should

1. Evaluate all aspects of its work that contribute to its foundational datasets, with the explicit goal of ensuring that those foundational datasets are of the highest quality and that improvements are driven by user needs and scientific advances. As part of this initial and ongoing evaluation effort, clear quality and performance metrics should be established. Such metrics would address the technical components of NWS operations, as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of the flow of weather information to end users.

2. Ensure that a similarly high priority is given to (a) product generation and dissemination, (b) the brokering and provision of data services, and (c) development and enhancement of analysis tools for maintaining a common operating picture (COP).³

3. Engage the entire enterprise to develop and implement a national strategy for a systematic approach to research-to-operations and operations-to-research.

Evaluate Function and Structure

The current structure of the NWS primarily reflects the function of the weather, water, and climate enterprise in the 1990s. Technology, including improvements in communications and computer forecast models, has changed much of the rationale for the present organizational structure of the NWS. For example, marked improvements in computer forecast models and increased efficiency in translating model output into public forecasts may allow NWS meteorologists to increasingly focus their attention on high-impact weather events and rapid response, as well as improving cooperation with the core partners⁴ of the NWS. An in-depth statistical evaluation of performance of the field-forecaster product compared to the numerical model guidance could be used to help define priorities, workloads, and assignments for field office personnel and to optimize the overall performance of the NWS.

The impact from extreme weather and water events is increasing due in part to increasing population, buildings, and infrastructure in vulnerable areas. Being aware of this challenge, the NWS has launched the Weather-Ready Nation paradigm, which emphasizes a broader concept of services and interactions with other partners in the enterprise—from emergency managers to the academic and private sectors.

Meanwhile, the emergence of the rest of the enterprise beyond the NWS has led to multiple outlets through which the general public accesses weather forecasts and information. These outlets, generally in the private sector, are greatly dependent on the core capabilities of the NWS, from data acquisition to accurate model forecast output. Collectively, they have become the primary source of weather and water forecast information for the general public (Lazo et al., 2009).

In view of the directions outlined in the Weather-Ready Nation Roadmap of expanding the role of forecasters and other NWS staff (NWS, 2012), it would be prudent to evaluate the structure of the NWS and the weather-related parts of NOAA, including the development and deployment of satellites in NESDIS⁵ and the role and structure of basic research in OAR. Based on these considerations, Lesson 4 from NRC (2012a), and a Congressional request for a new study to

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3 The Weather-Ready Nation Roadmap defines common operating picture as “a repository of digital, extensible environmental data and forecasts, where all types of information are integrated and related to each other to facilitate their full use” (NWS, 2012).

4 “Core partners” include the emergency management community, other government agencies, and broadcast and electronic media outlets that provide weather and water warning information to the public.

5 There have been policy discussions regarding moving NESDIS procurement programs from NOAA to NASA. Regardless of the outcome of these discussions, the Committee thinks that the development and deployment of weather satellites needs to be included in any evaluation of NWS function and structure.

examine potential efficiencies in NWS operations (U.S. Congress, 2012), the Committee makes the following overarching recommendation. (Specific, supporting recommendations for examining the various aspects of the NWS organizational structure and workforce are discussed in detail in Chapter 3.)

Recommendation II: Evaluate Function and Structure

In light of evolving technology, and because the work of the National Weather Service (NWS) has major science and technology components, the NWS should evaluate its function and structure, seeking areas for improvement. Any examination of potential changes in the function and organizational structure of the NWS requires significant technical input and expertise, and should include metrics to evaluate the process of structural evolution. Such an examination would include individual NWS field offices, regional and national headquarters and management, as well as the National Centers and the weather-related parts of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) such as the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR).

Leverage the Entire Enterprise

The weather, water, and climate enterprise has evolved considerably since the beginning of the MAR in the 1980s. At that time, the NWS was viewed as the primary source of all weather information. Today, the private sector dedicated to generating and delivering weather information is about twice the size of the NWS; the overall non-NOAA portion of the enterprise (including state and local governments as well as academia) is likely equal in size to the weather-related portion of NOAA and other federal agencies—each perhaps on the order of $4 to $5 billion.⁶

The traditional NWS value-chain (what might be called the “primary value-chain”) delivers weather information to the public from the NWS through core partners. The NWS identifies these three categories of core partners: (1) emergency managers, (2) state and local governments requiring close cooperation, and (3) the broadcast and electronic media. These partners are considered core on the basis of their need for ensured access to unaltered NWS information (NWS, 2012). Yet today, there is an increasingly important “secondary value-chain”⁷ by which the public receives weather and water information originating from the NWS but altered or enhanced to improve its accuracy or usability.

•   The majority of forecasts received by the public arrive from third parties rather than directly from the NWS (Lazo et al., 2009). To the extent that this information is altered before reaching the public, it can be considered to have gone through the secondary value-chain.

•   Increasingly, weather- and water-related decision making involves integrating NWS-originated weather and water information with information from other sources through the secondary value-chain. Many needs, including some associated with the core NWS mission of protecting life and property, are thus not served by the primary value-chain alone.

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⁶ These figures are rough estimates, as definitive information is not readily available. The most authoritative recent information on the size of the weather enterprise is about five years old (for example, see Lazo et al. (2009), which cites sources from about 2007) and suffers from incompleteness. The total federal-sector budgets for FY2007 were estimated at $3.4 billion. In FY2006, the NWS budget was $852 million, the NESDIS budget was $943 million, and an additional $200 to $400 million from the research and program support budgets might be attributed to serving NOAA’s weather, water, and climate mission. Of the NESDIS budget, $769 million went to procurement, largely for private-sector services associated with satellite and other observing system development. Within the private sector, based on a survey for this same year, Spiegler (2007) identifies $1.65 to $1.8 billion of activity associated with weather-based services. Based on the growth rate from the prior ten years, the private-sector services market was expected to be around $2.5 billion by 2012. When coupled with the amount spent in the private sector by NOAA (and other federal agencies) on infrastructure (primarily observing systems), the total private-sector market is now more than $4 billion. No figures for other nonfederal expenditures, such as state and local governments, are available. Extrapolating this information to 2012 for federal and nonfederal enterprise sectors leads to an estimated $4 to $5 billion each.

⁷ The terms “primary value-chain” and “secondary value-chain” are not intended to reflect superiority or inferiority of either chain. Instead, “primary” is meant to reflect the mission of the NWS to be the authoritative source of weather, water, and climate information for the nation. The capability of the NWS to reach the public through the primary chain, when an authoritative perspective is required, cannot be compromised. The term “primary” is meant to reflect this critical NWS role.

•   Even core partners, including emergency managers and broadcast and electronic media, now receive substantial portions of their decision-making information from the secondary value-chain. Nearly all television channels, for example, utilize private-sector forecast service providers to prepare their weather information; unaltered NWS information is presented typically only in the case of watches and warnings.

Prior to the MAR, the NWS perceived the secondary value-chain and its constituent organizations largely as competition. The MAR and the subsequent Fair Weather report (NRC, 2003a) changed this. The NWS instituted new policies to avoid competing with or replicating capabilities robustly available within the secondary value-chain. As stated in the Committee’s first report, efforts from professional weather associations—including the American Weather and Climate Industry Association (AWCIA), the National Council of Industrial Meteorologists (NCIM), the National Weather Association (NWA), and the American Meteorological Society (AMS), specifically its Commission on the Weather and Climate Enterprise (CWCE)—have been critical in improving the relationship between the NWS and the private sector (NRC, 2012a).

In the Committee’s opinion, that change has been positive for the nation. Today, the enterprise has developed new capabilities and alternate means for accessing weather and water information. Yet the entire secondary value-chain is built on a foundation of NWS data and services. If NWS core capabilities were to be compromised, this value-chain would be severely degraded. Moreover, the primary value-chain is critical for ensuring a direct path to the public when public safety is at risk. This, too, cannot be compromised. For these reasons, the Committee carefully couples its recommendation to leverage the enterprise with a recommendation for the NWS to prioritize core capabilities supporting both value-chains.

The Committee views the objective of an enhanced NWS-enterprise interaction as a way to enhance the NWS’s ability to accomplish its mission of serving the public. The Committee thinks this is especially important at a time when it is seeking to enhance its service (NWS, 2012). Leveraging the secondary value-chain provides one means to further the NWS’s mission of serving the public.

Achieving this added benefit to the nation requires a fundamental change in how the NWS and the overall enterprise interact with each other. It is not a simple change. The enterprise is not a single entity with clear authorities and responsibilities. Its capabilities may change with time. Therefore, change would need to proceed cautiously and in collaboration with the NWS. The paradigm of enterprise collaboration is not entirely new. The NWS has long relied on the broadcasting sector as a primary means of communicating with the public. Over the past decade, the NWS has begun to extend such collaboration to other areas, such as sensor networks and digital media. The Committee confirms the need to expand the productive interaction of the NWS with the rest of the enterprise.

Regarding the role of the NWS within the broader enterprise, and consistent with Lesson 5 from NRC (2012a), the Committee makes the following overarching recommendation. (Specific, supporting recommendations for how this change could be accomplished are described in Chapter 4).

Recommendation III: Leverage the Entire Enterprise

The National Weather Service (NWS) should broaden collaboration and cooperation with other parts of the weather, water, and climate enterprise. The greatest national good is achieved when all parts of the enterprise function optimally to serve the public and businesses. This process starts with the quality of core NWS capabilities but is realized through the effectiveness of NWS-enterprise relationships. A well-formulated enterprise strategy will also return direct benefit from the enterprise to the NWS, especially in areas of shared research, technology development, observational data sources, and improved end-user access to NWS-generated information.

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