As The Music Stops For Superstorm Sandy Funding, NOAA Left Without A Chair

By Michael Conathan

Next week the Senate is expected to take up and pass the House's version of a disaster relief package for areas affected by Hurricane Sandy, which passed on January 15. The relief has been a long time coming: It has been nearly three months since the superstorm devastated coastlines from Maryland to Massachusetts.

First, action was stalled by November's election, and then House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) refused to bring a Senate-passed bill to a vote before the clock ran out on the 112th Congress, prompting highly critical responses even from members of his own party, such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), and Rep. Peter King (R-NY). Their anger was justified: By comparison, it took Congress just days to send emergency funding to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

But chronology and delays aside, the bill has plenty of flaws in its content as well. In particular, for a package intended to help coastal communities rebuild, it is remarkably light on funding for the federal agency most closely linked to our coastal communities: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The House disaster relief legislation actually came in two parts-an initial $17 billion outlay, which was then amended by adding a subsequent $33.7 billion package offered by Rep. Rodney Freylinghausen (R-NJ). His initial proposal wasn't all bad for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It included $476 million for the agency-just a bit less than the $486 million in the Senate-passed bill and the $493 million requested by the Obama administration. But after the House voted on amendments to Freylinghausen's bill, the agency's funding fell to just $326 million.

In the wake of a storm that shifted sands and wrecked infrastructure from Maryland to Massachusetts, rebuilding and even reconceiving management of coastal landscapes must be a priority. In fact, about 80 percent of the money the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration requested for Sandy relief was for coastal restoration and land acquisition.

After the Senate passed its bill, which included $150 million for coastal restoration and another $47 million for land acquisition under the Coastal and Estuarine Lands Conservation Program, Rep. Freylinghausen put $150 million into his bill for coastal restoration efforts. But instead of following the lead of the Senate and funneling the money through National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration programs, he eliminated all funding for land acquisition and designated the restoration funding specifically for "regional ocean partnerships"-collaborative coalitions of neighboring states that help coordinate and streamline management of their shared ocean space and resources.

So now, unless the Senate opts to delay the bill's passage further by amending it and sending it back over to the House, the Sandy relief package that lands on President Obama's desk will include not a penny for the programs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration identified as its highest priorities.

Rep. Freylinghausen's decision to reallocate the Senate's $150 million landed this funding squarely in the crosshairs of a coalition of Republicans who have made great political hay by lambasting the Obama adminstration's National Ocean Policy, implemented by executive order in 2010. And despite the fact that many of these organizations were actually created during the Bush administration, regional ocean partnerships have come to be viewed as an integral part of President Obama's ocean priorities.

Many regions of the country-including the Northeast and mid-Atlantic areas affected by Sandy-are energized and eager to participate in these partnerships. And granting the money to these bodies would actually give states a greater say in how their coastal restoration funds were spent. Yet despite this clear desire on the part of the states to participate in such programs, conservatives in Congress, led by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA), have made the National Ocean Policy a poster child for government overreach. Conveniently ignoring their well-established commitment to states' rights, Hastings and his allies falsely decry the National Ocean Policy as a bogeyman likely to spawn "job-killing regulations" rather than an opportunity for states to play a greater role in managing their own affairs.

Playing right along, Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX), whose amendment successfully stripped funding for the National Ocean Policy from the House version of a 2013 appropriations bill, filed an amendment to the Sandy relief bill proposing to eliminate all funding for the regional ocean partnerships. His amendment passed overwhelmingly-though advocates for the National Ocean Policy should take some consolation that his margin of victory was 23 votes smaller this time around.

Whether by ignorance, hubris, or calculated machinations, Rep. Freylinghausen's decision to peg this funding to the regional ocean partnerships ensured the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would not receive a dime of funding to restore shorelines devastated by superstorm Sandy.

With Senate passage of the House version of this legislation all but assured, it appears the window has closed for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to receive any additional funding for coastal restoration. And that is a financial and environmental disaster adding insult to injury in a region desperate for relief.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/25/1496361/as-the-music-stops

NOAA: Climate Change Driving Arctic Into A 'New State' With Rapid Ice Loss And Record Permafrost Warming

Arctic sea ice is melting much, much faster than even the best climate models had projected. The reason is most likely unmodeled amplifying feedbacks. Image via Arctic Sea Ice Blog.

"Scary New Report on Arctic Ice" is the Weather Channel's headline for NOAA's sobering 2012 Arctic Report Card.

Everyone should indeed be scared by what we are doing to the Arctic because it will accelerate global warming, speed up sea level rise, and make deadly superstorms like Sandy more frequent and more destructive (see "NOAA Bombshell: Warming-Driven Arctic Ice Loss Is Boosting Chance of Extreme U.S. Weather").

This is what's new up north in 2012:

New records set for snow extent, sea ice extent and ice sheet surface melting, despite air temperatures - a key cause of melting - being unremarkable relative to the last decade.

Multiple observations provide strong evidence of widespread, sustained change driving Arctic environmental system into new state.

Here's a video summary from NOAA:

Two of the most worrisome highlights are:

• Below the tundra, record high permafrost temperatures occurred in northernmost Alaska.
• Duration of melting was the longest observed yet on the Greenland ice sheet, and a rare, nearly ice sheet-wide melt event occurred in July.

The record Greenland melt is scary because if the Greenland ice sheet disintegrates, sea levels would rise 20 feet - and the process appears to be accelerating to a critical "tipping point" (see also "Science Stunner: Greenland Ice Melt Up Nearly Five-Fold Since Mid-1990s"). Indeed, polar researcher Jason Box, lead author of the Greenland section of the report, told the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco:

"In 2012 Greenland crossed a threshold where for the first time we saw complete surface melting at the highest elevations in what we used to call the dry snow zone," he told reporters at the AGU. "As Greenland crosses the threshold and starts really melting in the upper elevations it really won't recover from that unless the climate cools significantly for an extended period of time which doesn't seem very likely."

The tundra warming is scary because it is a frozen locker of carbon whose defrosting will further accelerate warming (see "Carbon Feedback From Thawing Permafrost Will Likely Add 0.4°F - 1.5°F To Total Global Warming By 2100)."

Here is more detail on what's happening in the tundra:

• In 2012, new record high temperatures at 20 [meters, 65 feet] depth were measured at most permafrost observatories on the North Slope of Alaska and in the Brooks Range, where measurements began in the late 1970s. Only two coastal sites show exactly the same temperatures as in 2011.
• A common feature at Alaskan, Canadian and Russian sites is greater warming in relatively cold permafrost than in warm permafrost in the same geographical area.
• During the last fifteen years, active-layer thickness [ALT] has increased in the Russian European North, the region north of East Siberia, Chukotka, Svalbard and Greenland.

The "ALT is the top layer of soil and/or rock that thaws during the summer and freez[es] again during the fall, i.e., it is not permafrost."

The report makes painfully clear why all of these Arctic trends are going to continue - global warming and amplifying feedbacks:

Large changes in multiple indicators are affecting climate and ecosystems, and, combined, these changes provide strong evidence of the momentum that has developed in the Arctic environmental system due to the impacts of a persistent warming trend that began over 30 years ago. A major source of this momentum is the fact that changes in the sea ice cover, snow cover, glaciers and Greenland ice sheet all conspire to reduce the overall surface reflectivity of the region in the summer, when the sun is ever-present. In other words, bright, white surfaces that reflect summer sunlight are being replaced by darker surfaces, e.g., ocean and land, which absorb sunlight. These conditions increase the capacity to store heat within the Arctic system, which enables more melting - a positive feedback. Thus, we arrive at the conclusion that it is very likely that major changes will continue to occur in the Arctic in years to come, particularly in the face of projections that indicate continued global warming.

Anyone who thinks we can delay aggressive deployment of carbon-free technology simply has shut their eyes and ears to the growing scientific evidence.

Related Post:

• Death Spiral Watch: Experts Warn "Near Ice-Free Arctic In Summer" In A Decade If Volume Trends Continue

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/06/1293011/noaa-climate-chang