The Earth Observation Summit

 Real Audio of Briefing

COL MACHAMER:  Good morning everyone and welcome to the Foreign Press Center.  We're pleased to have with us today Vice-Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher, who's the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, and the Administrator of NOAA, which stands for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

He's here to talk to us this morning about the Earth Observation Summit, which is going to be held in Tokyo next week on April 25th.  This summit fulfills a commitment that was made last year at the G-8 and builds on the first Earth Observation Summit hosted in the United States last year -- last July.  And it will feed directly into the G-8 meeting this year in Sea Island, Georgia, all of which will underscore earth observation as a priority action item.

And with that, Admiral, we're pleased to have you.

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  Thank you very much.  It's, indeed, a great pleasure to be with you today to talk about the Earth Observing Summit, which will be held on April 25th in Tokyo, hosted by our friends in Japan, and to talk to you about the meaning of this event.

As was mentioned in the opening, the United States invited 34 nations on July 31st of last year to come to Washington to talk about the possibility of developing a Global Earth Observing System.

The nations came.  20 international organizations came, as well, voluntarily, and met for a day.  They were hosted by Colin Powell, our Secretary of State, my boss, Secretary of Commerce, Don Evans, as well as the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of the Interior, and the Acting EPA Administrator, so this is an important effort from the United States Government to show leadership in the areas of improving our knowledge and understanding of the Earth's environment and helping the world's nations to improve their economic and social standing.

This effort resulted in a declaration in which the nations agreed to develop a 10-year plan to build a comprehensive and sustained Global Earth Observing System.  And it also set up a sub-group to work as a working group to build the plan and build a framework document.

The Japanese agreed to host the second Earth Observing Summit this April, which is what we're talking about now.  And at that -- at this gathering, remember, it's a ministerial-level gathering we will present the framework document for this 10-year plan.  And the framework document will provide more details of the principles on which the system will be based.  It will provide the benefits that we expect to accrue to the nations of the world, and it will give some indications of where we're going in the future to design such a system and bring it into -- into use, into action.

We're delighted at the partnerships that have developed, the world partnerships in this area.  We now have 47 nations, plus the EC, that have joined this coalition of nations to build a Global Earth Observing System.  And we expect that as the effort moves on that many more nations will join it as well because of the benefits and value to all peoples of the world.

The working group, I might point out, has four co-chairs.  The United States has one of them.  This is called GEO, the Group on Earth Observations.  I am the co-chair from the United States, as an agency head; the Japanese are -- have a co-chair, Mr. Yuki; and the Europeans have a co-chair, Mr. Mitsos; and South Africa representing developing nations, Rob Adam, Director General of Research in South Africa, is acting in that role; and we have a long list of people from the environmental agencies, science agencies, earth science agencies around the world supporting this working group.

So it's a very collegial, prestigious group of people who believe in this cause and are working together to help further sustainable development and all of the issues that are associated with understanding the science of our Earth.

Just a couple of other comments:  Where does it go in the future?  With the framework document, agreed to, we will be working in the next eight months on building the actual 10-year plan, which will be presented at the third Earth Observing Summit, to be hosted by the Europeans early next year.  And that will be basically what we would call the institutionalization of this process.  And we expect that it will continue with an extension of the group that's been working today to build that plan.

I might add that this is not something that is be -- going to start just because the group is meeting.  People are building components of Earth observing today.  We are using them.  They are benefiting the world.  All of the developed nations are using this kind of data to improve their economies and their social structures.  This information now will become available to the world, the world will contribute to it, and we believe will be an enormous benefit, both economically and socially to everyone that's involved with it, all nations.

So it's happening today, things like El Niņo forecasts, where we're able to gain benefits of $250 to $350 million a year, just in the United States alone, from being able to predict climate changes with some accuracy for three to six months in advance. 

To have this knowledge spread around the world, to understand more about other climate signals and variables will improve enormously the economic value of the agricultural industry, energy, all of the things -- tourism, construction, coastal zone development, fisheries, ecosystem management, the ability to mitigate and adapt to natural disaster-type of events.  That knowledge spread around the world would be of enormous benefit. 

So we will be setting the basis for that huge, I would say, improvement in the quality of life for the world in Japan on April the 25th.  I'm very grateful for the support we've had from the 47 nations who have joined this effort, and we think that that conference will be a great success and a milestone in the future improvement of the world economy and world social structures.

With that, let me stop and ask if there are any questions or areas you'd like to investigate further.

COL MACHAMER:  And as a reminder, when you do ask a question, please wait for the microphone and identify yourself by name and news organizations.  Thanks.

Sir.

QUESTION:  My name is Toru Yoshida, with Nikkei Newspaper, Japanese Economic Journal.

I'd like to ask you about framework for 10 years.  So could you elaborate more about the framework?  What is the object of the framework?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  Yes.

QUESTION:  And how much do you invest for this project?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  Okay.  The framework document is essentially an intermediate step, but it is -- it's about an eight-page document.  It's available for you in the press packages and kits, so you can have a copy of the document that's been negotiated.

Right?  Do we have that?

A PARTICIPANT:  The declaration. 

The declaration.  I thought we had the framework in there, too.  Okay.  We don't have the framework.  We have the declaration.

The framework document is an eight-page document.  It's designed to outline the benefits.  So it talks about the benefits for health, the benefits for coping with natural disasters, benefits for agriculture and improved sustainable development, agriculture.  It talks about the benefits of water, clean water.  It talks about air quality.  It talks about energy.

And so it lists the benefits to society, and then it talks about the types of observing systems you need in place to be able to provide the data and products for decision-makers and for industry and for private citizens around the world.  So it has eight pages of principles on which you would base an observing system.

One of the major pieces of it is talking about data -- sharing of data, collectively sharing data.  How would we share the data?  How would it be used?

And remember, this will be a virtual system of systems.  So there will be no central command center where something is run out of a bunker in some individual place.  The systems that are out there are owned and maintained by the individual countries and organizations that invest in them now, such as the satellites that Japan has in the air that look at environmental conditions, the ones the United States has, and China, and Russia, and India as the space backbone of such a system. 

The ground-based systems will be owned and maintained by the countries that invest in them and have them in their areas.  So it is a virtual system of systems.  This document describes the principles on which we can share data, because that's a big, major part of this is building a collaborative framework and international structure that allows us to share the kind of data that can shed light on how our Earth works and how we might predict the future based on that data.

Now, as far as investment goes, there is enormous investment in this project around the world.  If you look at the space backbone, alone, that the nations have put up, I mean, you're talking investments that are in the billions of dollars, if you look at European investments, United States investments, Japanese, Chinese, Russian and Indian investments in space backbone -- geostationary satellites as well as low earth orbit satellites that are able to pick up signals from the surface of the ocean all the way through the atmosphere, temperature and wind speeds, and we will be able in the future to be able to detect various chemicals and composition of the atmosphere. 

We will put buoys in the ocean to be able to measure the properties of the ocean, the heat content, the salinity, the currents of the ocean, the amount of plankton and algae and phytoplankton, the basis of life in the ocean. 

You will have sensors on the Earth that detect biological signals, signals that we can use to detect outbreaks of disease and perhaps get ahead of them, sensors that would help us determine water quality along our coasts and water quality inland that would give people the types of knowledge they need to be able to have sound environmental and developmental policies that would, that build an economy.

So that's -- those are the description of the principles on which you'd base this.  That's what the framework document is about.  And then the next piece will be the architecture itself -- how the systems will fit together that, many of which are partially in place.  There's a need to bring these together and make a coherent whole out of them.

But for observing, just to indicate the importance to the United States, the President and my boss announced $100 million additional money for observing, that start with this budget -- in the fiscal year '05 budget that we have on the Hill, there has been an extra $50 million added above the investments we have already made in observing systems and another $50 million for next year's budget in '06.

So there's significant interest on the United States' part, and I might add that Europe has indicated new investments of several hundred millions of dollars in a global monitoring GMES, they call it, Global Monitoring for Environment and Security.  So there's considerable interest in investing in this. 

And the other point that we want to make is, part of this is capacity building, so the issue is for nations that may not have the technical ability to either use the data and understand the products or be able to support some of the sensors on the ground that need to be placed, one of the major groups in my working group is a capacity-building group to help with the translation of knowledge and data to the nations that will need to develop the technical ability to benefit from it.

COL MACHAMER:  Yes.

QUESTION:  L.K. Sharma, Deccan Herald, India.

From your initial remarks about the institutionalization, I'm not very clear whether it will be a operational intergovernmental organization with its headquarters and its own facilities in addition to the work of coordination among the existing space-faring nations?  Will it have its own dedicated facilities with the cooperation and with just the kind of coordination and exchange of data?  Will that be on commercial basis or just as a friendly gesture?  So these details, I think one is not very clear at the moment.

UNDER SECRETARY LARSON:  And that's why we're having these series of three summits.  So we're in the process of determining some of the answers to the questions that you have just raised and they're very important ones. 

It's -- as I said before, it's envisioned at this point not -- that there will not be some central headquarters where there's an operational center for this.  It will be a virtual system of systems.  But we are also envisioning some sort of a future secretariat or arrangement where the coordination and cooperation can take place on a, you know, on a personal basis with not necessarily technical centers, but an organizational center, so that we can maintain and monitor what's going on.

But the arrangements for setting this up very much will have to be individually -- individual contributions from the nations and agreements on what level of data will be exchanged.  And that is part of the final plan that will be presented next February.

But what we are presenting today are the principles on which we will work for the future. Specifically -- the specific answers to your questions, come back here in January and I will answer those questions for you.  Thank you.

COL MACHAMER:  Who else?  Yes.  Deon, South Africa.

QUESTION:  Deon Lamprecht, from Media 24 in South Africa. 

Admiral, what -- what's the major achievements from your last working session in South Africa you'll be taking forward to Tokyo?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  The decisions that were made, the last meeting we held of the GEO group was in South Africa, and the nations of the world joined in South Africa to talk about some of the issues that were just mentioned and just questioned.

The issues of agreement to the benefits of the system and the types of social and economic issues to which they were to be applied to were agreed upon.  That's a big step because everybody has a different idea of what an Earth Observing System is and what it would do for them, so to get the world collectively to agree to the list of issues to which this applies, and then the list of types of sensors and systems that would be -- contribute to it, is enormous.  So that's agreed upon in this framework.  It's listed very specifically what types of benefits we're going after and the types of systems that are going to help support that.

The issue of agreement on data sharing and data transferability, the declaration that you will see is a very simple statement.  It just says, "We will look for sharing data."  What you will see in the framework document is a further elaboration of the kinds of data and how we will go about that.  It's not the complete answer, but it goes deeper into discussing the high-level data, the data that nations would be willing to share.  And every nation has a different business model on data.  So this is a very important area of negotiation, and I think we're making a great deal of progress on it.

COL. MACHAMER:  Anyone else?  Yes, go ahead.

QUESTION:  As an Administrator, what have you, sort of, identified are the main gaps at the moment?  You have very rich experience of cooperating with other nations, as well as your own, and U.S. capabilities are quite substantial.  So what are the existing gaps in the observation system at the moment?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  Yes, and that's a very good question.  In my view, and obviously, people may have different opinions, but I think the largest gap that we have for the global -- a global system is observations of our oceans, the oceans of the world.

Remember, the oceans cover 70 percent of the Earth's surface, and much of that is unmeasured and not understood.  The oceans are the heat engine of our Earth.  They play the role of moving heat from the Equator to the poles.  They do it with various currents that you're all familiar with.  And as they do that, they affect monsoon systems; they affect hurricanes, they affect precipitation inland, they affect a great deal.

So we need to understand more about the oceans.  And that's a major gap that we're filling, thanks to cooperation, and India is part of our network for putting buoys in the oceans to measure the temperature and the salinity and the currents at various levels, from the surface of the ocean to the bottom of the ocean, very important.

The next area that is extremely important to us is our upper air sounding information.  Much of the network -- I won't say much of -- but some of the network has been allowed to deteriorate in the last 15 to 20 years, and we must restore that network in certain nations.

And it is -- I have to make the point is that -- when we talk about an Earth Observing System, we need the whole Earth, which means that just about all nations that have -- have to provide some access for sensors and data or this doesn't work.

So it's very important, no matter whether it's a rich nation or a poor nation, developing nation or developed nation, to come to the table and to join this -- join in this effort, in order for them to benefit and for the world to benefit from the data.  So there are many land areas that aren't covered as well as they ought to be that could be covered.

Now, I was talking mostly physical sensors.  We have substantial development to do in chemical sensors.  As I mentioned, we're starting to get instruments on satellites that allow us to do things as to measure chemicals and composition of our atmosphere.  More needs to be done on that area.  More ground sensors need to be put in place for that particular exercise, so chemical sensors are important.

And biological sensors are lacking -- even further behind.  Right now, most of our observation in biological indicators is done on an ad hoc basis with individual sampling.  People go out into the field; they take samples; they bring them back to the laboratory and examine them.  It's nowhere near being a real-time system, and it lacks adequate coverage around the world.  But we have, you know, some very smart people in this world who are developing biological sensors.  Put them in place on -- at various observing stations around the world, use our information technology to connect that together, and we will have a very, very powerful instrument.  It's like an EKG of the Earth:  getting the data, putting all the sensor points, as they do when you go to the doctor; and getting a full scan of what's going on.  That's what's needed at this point.  But those are the major gaps that I see in the system today.

COL MACHAMER:  Let's go over here on the left.

QUESTION:  Thank you.  Mineko Tokito from Yomiuri Shimbun. 

I was wondering, you've listed storm predictions and (inaudible) predictions in your agenda.  I was wondering if earthquake predictions and observations were also included, or if you plan to include them.  Thank you.

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  Oh, yes, yes.  And I apologize for not mentioning that.  This is a full -- I represent the ocean and the atmosphere because of NOAA's background, but the USGS is a partner.  This is a land-based system, too.  So this includes, you know, seismic station monitoring, earthquake monitoring, tectonic plate motions -- all of the things that we depend upon to determine what's going on on the land.  And we have -- in fact, our architect for the U.S. is Ivan DeLoach from the USGS and he is an expert in land measurements, particularly in earthquakes and that area.  So we are very much interested in that as well.

QUESTION:  With respect to research network, what kind of organization in the United States will be main player at the NOAA and the USGS?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  We have an interagency group that's set up that includes 15 of our agencies, and so we see it as a full-court press.  It's a full U.S. agency involvement.  And we have NASA and we have the National Science Foundation for research.  We even have the Smithsonian Institution in part of this for research.  The EPA is a huge player, and I might mention that that's our cabinet level representative, Mike Leavitt, Governor Leavitt, former governor and now Administrator of the EPA, will be the head of our delegation on April 25th in Tokyo, and he'll be assisted by Jack Marburger, the President's Science Advisor, and by Ambassador Baker, who is the leading official for the United States in Japan.  So we will have a delegation that includes a wide variety of folks.

In the Department of Interior, I mentioned you've got the Department of Agriculture, when you talk about forestry and agricultural issues.

Just about every agency that's involved with natural resources in some way is on this team of 15 agencies and I can -- we can give you the list of our agency names.  I don't want to go from memory here to try to go through all of them.  But anybody that you can think of -- Department of Energy -- anybody that you can think of that has a connection with natural resources or our environment is involved in this.

QUESTION:  A couple of questions.  One is, with apologies to your civilian service, how do you maintain a firewall between the civilian users of space and the military users, because some countries are really particular about it?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  Yes.

QUESTION:  And, number two, do you see it as a substitute for GMES, or should they continue with this kind of -- will it make it irrelevant once the system or systems is coming into place?  Why is that regional system necessary?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  Okay.  Well, let me try the first one. 

This is designed to be a civilian domestic system, so it is not designed to be -- to infringe on any national prerogatives in terms of national defense issues.  The data that we're talking about is data that we normally view and see in our everyday lives.  It's not designed to detect military secrets or get into any sensitive issues.  So that's one thing.

And we coordinate that within our country to make sure that it is -- our Defense Department signs off on what we're doing.  So when I say we had all these agencies that I mentioned, the Defense Department and our security agency are looking at it to make sure that they are comfortable with it.  And other nations are doing that, too.

Now, how do we do it today?  It is much easier to do today, due to technology.  The United States -- our successor to our current satellite systems, Low Earth-Orbiting Environmental Satellite -- we have two systems today.  We have a military system and we have a civilian system that do this, and they are separate systems.  We are going to have only one system in the future that does both military and civilian requirements, meets both. 

And the data and the compartmentation and the security is such that the civilian data will go to the civilian users, and if there's something that's militarily sensitive, it goes only to the military folks.  Information technology allows us to do that today.  So that it's not -- it's not too hard to segregate from one system or from one set of sensors, data that is shareable by the world versus data that a country may wish to hold to itself because it views it as militarily important.

Now, we would encourage, obviously, some common standards -- that's part of the effort that's going on -- for sharing data that the world would agree is not militarily sensitive, that's definitely needed for domestic uses in the economy and the environment.  Now, so that's the first part of that. 

The second, when you ask about the GMES, GMES, for the Europeans, is basically their entry.  They will provide, basically for the world, satellite systems, some on-ground systems, and that will be, you know, a contribution to the world system.  So I view it as kind of a very necessary development. 

And they are looking in the same way, as I mentioned of our polar satellite system that does military and civilian work, they are looking for the similar type of compartmentation.  So they will build a system that may have some sensors that would be of use for their security and many others that would be of use to the world for environmental and economic data.

QUESTION:  When you talk of this unified system, are you talking of only lower orbit, or geosynchronous also?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  We are talking the whole thing:  geostationary and low Earth orbit.  And I expect in the future to see UAVs doing some work in collecting atmospheric data remotely.  It would be a very efficient way to do it. 

QUESTION:  But do you expect the existing civilian agencies to give up their control on these space --

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  We don't expect anybody to give up control.  The control of the satellites will continue to exist as it does today, with the Indian Space Agency, European Space Agency, the satellites NASA runs, the satellite NOAA runs.  What we are envisioning is a place where people plug their data into a network, a virtual network, so that there are protocols and availability to all of the science and policy centers around the world that need the data.

QUESTION:  But I don't think it is really possible that DOD will put its own transponder on a civilian spacecraft.

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  Well, as I say, the distinction between a civilian spacecraft and a military spacecraft is blurring at this point with the compartmentation of data streams.  So this NPOE Satellite, as we call it, the National Operational Environmental Satellite System, Polar System that we're putting into place, will have military sensors and civilian sensors on the same satellite.  They'll have it actually on the same satellite, not two different satellites with one system but the same satellite.  And I think the world is going in that direction because it's cheaper to do it that way.  And you will see more of that happening.

We need to be agreements worldwide that there will be certain levels of data that are civilian use and we will share them, and that's the critical part of the --

QUESTION:  I don't understand.  Why are you taking this approach?  And later on, if, sort of, opposition to militarization of space does get the momentum, the future President of America does agree that, yes, we should keep the civilian aspect apart.  If the things are getting so mixed up that the spacecraft level, it will become impossible because the vulnerability of your satellites will increase if there is a military transponder on your satellites, I mean your agency satellites, for example.

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  There is always the consideration of vulnerability of satellites, and the issues of militarization of space.  I think that's something that the world has to discuss.

And we're looking at peaceful civilian uses with this system, and vulnerability of satellites -- if the satellite is military and civilian, and it jeopardizes some of the civilian uses, that's an issue.  I agree with you.  We must work that out.

The biggest part of this problem is not the technical part.  It is getting the people together to talk to each other and decide on how to share and how to work together.  It's, again, the same issues -- social, you know, socialization of some of these problems that we share commonly. 

And more talk is -- and it's working in this group that I'm in.  I can tell you that people first started a year ago very hesitant and with many of the concerns that you've raised here.  And as we've talked and worked through it and looked at various language and types of structures, people are becoming more comfortable with the fact that there will be some level that we can share openly and that will be agreed upon worldwide.

COLONEL MACHAMER:  Anyone else?  In the back.

QUESTION:  Russian -- ITAR-TASS News Agency.  I have a question.  What contribution do you expect Russia can make to this system?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  Russia is extremely important to this system for a number of reasons.  First of all, Russia has satellite systems that -- and great experience in satellite systems, so those are very important.  And the Russian Space Agency is a player in this issue.

Russia's access to Arctic areas and to a great part of the northern land mass, many of the observations that we need to determine what's happening to the heat content in the Earth and what's going on will be particularly dependent upon Russian participation in providing physical data to the Arctic, in particular, and to northern latitude areas.  So it's very important.

Russia -- and, of course, Russia brings -- they have a wonderful meteorological service, you have a marvelous ocean service, you have the space expertise.  Russia brings a great deal to the table and they are a major player in this effort.

COLONEL MACHAMER:  Anyone else?  Yes, ma'am.

QUESTION:  Akemi Yoshimoto with Kyodo News.

Just the same question for Japan and Japanese, what do you expect of Japan?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  I expect -- Japan has been very supportive in the ocean research side.  As I mentioned, the buoys that are maintained on the Pacific that allow us to now predict climate changes, because of El Niņo, they are maintained -- the western side of the Pacific is maintained by Japan, a very important contribution to the world.

Japan also -- well, first of all, they're the co-hosts, or a co-chair of this group, which they have agree to support this group.  That's a very important contribution.  They're hosting this summit in Tokyo.  And from a technical side, in addition to the ocean work, the satellite technology that Japan has and the satellites being put into place are very important.  Many more environmental parameters are being placed on Japanese satellites now, so they're becoming very, very useful for the world, as well as for Japan and for that region.

The other piece that I might mention is the Earth Simulator, the new computer, relatively new computer, that is funded and invested in and created in Japan is the largest in the world.  I've had a chance to view it.  It's a 40 teraflop machine.  It's well above anything that we have in the United States, and it is being offered by Japan to use for research for atmospheric and ocean circulation.  We have several people in NOAA that are working on projects with Japanese colleagues in this area.

It's a very important contribution.  The data needs to be put into models; models need to be built; and then you have to have products that come out that people can use.  And supercomputing is an extremely important part of the whole system in this, you know, the value of Earth observation.

QUESTION:  Deon Lamprecht, Media24, South Africa. 

Admiral, obviously, developing countries can be some of the biggest beneficiaries of this system.  But as you know, probably all of these countries lack the infrastructure, the money and the resources to make -- what kind of -- how can they contribute to this system in a practical way?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  Yes, in a very practical way, the developing nations of the world, they have a very important role to play because they have access to land areas where sensors could be placed, and relatively inexpensive sensors, not -- we wouldn't expect that developing nations would contribute to satellite systems, for instance, but to have very, what I would call, relatively inexpensive, easily maintained ground-based systems or systems that can sample the atmosphere where they are, and then provide that to the world is extremely important, because of the access to the territory.

And the benefits coming back, obviously, they would then get the benefits of having data from nations around them, from the rest of the world, and you'd be able to do a much better job at monitoring water, monitoring energy, monitoring agricultural products, floods, how to control soil moisture issues, harmful algal blooms, fisheries management along the coast, all of those things depend on having more than the data from one area, but you need everybody contributing, or you don't have -- or you don't get the value from the system.

So that's why capacity building is really important, and we very much value South Africa's effort to bring other developing nations, the developing nations that are in the region, into the group because from there, there will be -- great benefits will accrue to the world, and great benefits to the countries that are involved.  This is the basis of every reasonable economic decision that's ever made.

In the United States, the kind of data that NOAA provides is the underpinning for 30 percent of the GDP, $3 trillion.  People don't -- you don't do anything.  You don't plant crops.  You don't drill wells.  You don't build a dam.  You don't put a building in a place.  You don't put a road in the wrong place.

All of those decisions for the wide use of resources are based on understanding everything around us, from the air, to the soil, to the moisture content, to the vegetation, all those things can be fingertips for developing nations.  And the aid money that comes in will then be used much more wisely, in my view, for bringing up the economies of people who need this kind of a bootstrap operation.

QUESTION:  This collaborator of research, as far as El Niņo, the little Christ, is concerned, has been going on for long.  What is the current status of our joint capabilities?  To what extent the problem has to be tackled?  And to what extent, you know, will you welcome the forecasting capabilities and warning against these things?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  Mm-hmm, El Niņo.  The El Niņo effort began about 20 years ago.  And the El Niņo that occurred around 1982 to 1983, it was a severe El Niņo, and it -- sort of the world scientific community said, we need to solve this problem.  So the entry from the United States is the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, and they still do the work today.

The British, the French, I believe the Italians, as well as the Japanese, came together and did some research and decided that a buoy system on the Equator would be necessary because this is a phenomena that develops on the Equator.  The temperature of the water on the Equator begins to get warmer in the central and eastern Pacific.  It gradually moves to the east, and it shuts down the normal circulation, atmospheric circulation, and then changes basically the climatology for the next three to six months to a year, depending on how long these cycles take to run out.

So that's the genesis of it.  We - it took about 20 years to do the kind of work to get to the point where the United States was willing to, in 1997 and '98, actually make a prediction, so, and we're very careful meteorologists and climatologists, very careful about making predictions, because they're criticized when they tell you it's going to rain and it doesn't.

So by 1997, after, you know, about 15 or so years, we were able to make a prediction.  We predicted the 1997-'98 El Niņo, and it was accurate.  And we have now been predicting them ever since, three to six months in advance, and they're accurate.  So we can tell you when an El Niņo -- we're in an El Niņo neutral condition right now, by the way, just for interest's sake, so there is no excess climate signals because El Niņo, so we're in a neutral period right now.

But that is just a piece of what's going on in the oceans.  You have a Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and you have a North Atlantic Oscillation, you have an Artic Oscillation, you an Antarctic Circumpolar Wave.  These are things that people have gone out and gotten bits and pieces of research to know that there is something happening there.

But we don't have the continuous observations to put it all together because it's a system of systems that when El Niņo's -- something is happening with El Niņo, there is also a lot of other things that are going on.  And if we could determine what those were, we could get much more accurate predictions, I predict, up to decadal type of climate information, climatology if you're --

You know, my favorite example is the biblical story of Joseph, where he was able to determine that they were going to have seven very good years, and then seven very bad years, and convinced the leadership that they should act on this forecast, and he was right.  Of course, it was -- in those days, it was divine inspiration, but today we have our brain, so we have some divine inspiration from our brains.

We have enough technical knowledge, if we'd put these things in place, to be able to -- in my view -- to be able to do that, to tell people, kind of, this is what the 10-year cycle is going to look like.  Here is the way things are going.  It's going to be bad.  You don't want to be planting cotton in Arizona this year, you know, that's not a good thing to do.  Or rice isn't going to do well in this area because it's going to be dry for the next three years.

That's available to us.  I mean, that kind of thing can come out of this system.  That's where we are today.  We need -- El Niņo is good, but that's just one piece of something that we could really, really, really gain benefit for the world on.

COL MACHAMER:  Okay, one last question.

QUESTION:  Okay, thank you.  China's Xinhua News Agency.

I'm just wondering whether the UN environmental program in Geneva has done something similar to your program, and are they actively involved?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  Yes, they are.  The UN environmental program is a partner in this group.  They're one of the now 26 international agencies that are involved, and UNEF is a big player.  They are -- they need the data.  They're very much interested in this collaboration, and they will -- they're -- in fact; they're helping facilitate some of the meetings between countries to set up the collaborations that are needed to make this work.

COL MACHAMER:  You look like -- have you got time?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  I have time.  I have time.

COL MACHAMER:  All right.

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  If people are interested, I've got time.

QUESTION:  Okay.  Thank you very much.  ITAR-TASS News Agency again.  Can you give a forecast when such -- such system can appear, in what time?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  Well, as I say, this international consortium that we're building is looking at a 10-year plan to put it in place.  So the first thing you say, well, 10 years.  We'll have it in place in 10 years, okay.  But, you know, what will be in place in 10 years is the question.

And the other end of that is that we're not waiting for a 10-year plan because people are doing this already.  Instrumenting the ocean -- I mentioned the ocean is a gap right now.  Right now, we have 13 nations that have agreed to put buoys in the water to measure ocean temperatures and salinity.

They're called Argo buoys.  And the world scientific body believes we need 3,000 of these buoys in the ocean to be able to tell what's going on -- they're drifting buoys.  They drift.  They go down to 2,000 meters.  They measure the pressure, temperature; they come up; send it to a satellite; it goes back to a computer facility, a climate facility, and people start to figure out what's going on in the ocean.

We now have 1,123 of these buoys in place.  The United States has agreed to fund half of the world's buoys in this area, and we have pledges from the other nations to actually complete this system by '06 to '07.  So we will have in place a large part of the ocean gaps covered in the next two years, the next two to three years. 

So that's a big piece and that will help.  That will help quite a bit understanding what's going on and that will automatically be -- and by the way, the people that have put these buoys in the water and have put money against them, the developed nations, have agreed to share that data.  So that data, right now, is being transmitted to anybody that wants to pick it up and use it in their computer models and their understanding of weather and climate in their country.  So it's moving.  I mean, it's going.  Whether we have the summit or not, it's happening because people see the benefit of this.  And, in my view, it will continue.

So the pieces will gradually come online, and in ten years I think we'll have a pretty good connective system and able to share a lot of the things that are ongoing now in -- and particularly India is leading in the Indian Ocean particularly with instrumenting what's called the Indian Ocean Dipole, which is the counterpart to El Niņo.  There is a similar type of phenomena that takes place on the Equator in the Indian Ocean that influences the weather and monsoons and precipitation in Southeast Asia and along -- or in Southern Asia as well as African -- Eastern African -- and Australia.  So that's an important piece of it.

So it's going.  I mean, people are doing these things right now, as we speak.  So it's the collaborate nature of it, getting to share the data and filling in the gaps, is what we need to work on.

QUESTION:  The vast number of U.S. Navy, which has supplanted British Navy, which used to be the biggest at one time.  Do they feed into your system, any of this sea surface temperature and that kind of thing?  I mean, really rudimentary kind of data.  Do they feed it?

UNDER SECRETARY LAUTENBACHER:  They do.  They do.  U.S. Navy ships take measurements, weather measurements and sea surface temperature measurements, and they feed them back to a central computer facility, and that's available to the civilian, you know, things that are not militarily sensitive, if you're not worrying about hiding submarines or something.  But the normal sea surface temperatures and that sort of thing come back into the system and they're available.

We also use merchant ships.  Merchant ships will go on track and they will take samples and drop what we call XBTs in the water and get sound profiles along our shipping lanes.  Of course, the shipping lanes are only a very small part of the ocean, but that's going on today.  And the United States funds some of that, as well as some of the other developing -- or developed nations that do that.  So we -- that data is available now and it will get better as we get more ships doing it.

COL MACHAMER:  Okay, Admiral.  Thank you very much, sir, for a very informative and interesting discussion.  Thank you again for coming.