The rationale for the establishment of a U.S. GEWEX Program Office and collateral infrastructure with a U.S. CLIVAR Program Office is discussed in a previous report of this panel: NRC, 1998a. GEWEX-CLIVAR: Coordination of U.S. Activities. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 22 pp. This report states that: "There is no interagency mechanism within the United States to ensure that this type of coupling [between GEWEX and CLIVAR] will occur, nor is there one to ensure that the individual GEWEX activities within the United States are coordinated. A high degree of coordination between GEWEX- and CLIVAR-related activities would help ensure that the advances in one program directly feed into the other, minimize duplication of effort, and promote the most efficient avenues for progress. Despite the somewhat higher infrastructural burden that may come with enhanced coordination, the reality is that programs such as GEWEX and CLIVAR cannot work collaterally without having collateral infrastructures. One practicable vehicle for bringing about the necessary inter- and intra-program coupling may be the establishment of a U.S. GEWEX Program Office that parallels and is closely integrated with the one being discussed for CLIVAR." Following the publication of this report, this set of issues was discussed at length at the March 18–19, 1999 NRC GEWEX Panel meeting in Irvine, California. For a summary of the discussion at this meeting, see: http://nationalacademies.org/basc.