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Capitol Updates

NOAA Panel Holds First Meeting

The NOAA Panel on Climate and Global Change described in the autumn 1987 issue of EarthQuest, held its first meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, on 6 and 7 January. The multidisciplinary panel of 12 university and national laboratory scientists was established last year by the administrator of NOAA to provide scientific advice and broad program direction to NOAA'S Program on Climate and Global Change. Program implementation within the agency will be overseen by a Board of Directors, a group which evolved from the initial Task Force for Climate and Global Change
(see EarthQuest, Vol. 1, No. 1).

The panel met with NOAA Board of Directors, which represents activities of the five line organizations of the agency: National Ocean Service; National Weather Service; National Marine Fisheries Service; National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service; and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. A central office will be established to provide a coordination mechanism within the agency. That function is currently being carried out by the NOAA Office Of Climate and Atmospheric Research. This office is directed by Michael Hall, who also serves as chair of the board.

The January meeting was taken up with presentations on ongoing and planned activities of the line organizations that are related to the national global change effort and with an initial review of the draft plan of the nascent NOAA Climate and Global Change Program. The panel laid out its own plans for its first year activities and established an executive committee of five members (John Eddy,chairman;D.James Baker; Francis Bretherton;James McCarthy;and Gunter Weller). The full panel will meet next in Washington, D.C. on 13-15 April

NAS/NRC Committee on Global Change

The Committee on Global Change, chaired by Harold Mooney of Stanford University, continues development of a scientific plan for U.S. participation in the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme(IGBP). Working groups on terrestrial and marine aspects of biological systems and dynamics met in January in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in February in Cambridge, Massachusetts, both under the leadership of Margaret Davis (university of Minnesota). A working group on biogeochemical dynamics led by Michael McElroy(Harvard University) also met in Cambridge in February. In parallel, Robert Dickinson (National Center for Atmospheric Research, who also serves as chairman of the National Research Council's Climate Research Committee[CRC]), is developing, with the aid of CRC members and other experts, proposals relating to interactions between climate change and the hydrologic cycle. William Clark (Harvard University) is similarly consulting with a broad community of experts on the rapidly emerging connections between IGBP and social sciences and policy. These activities, which were reviewed at a meeting of the committee's Executive Committee in early March, are designed to provide input for a working session of the committee scheduled for Tucson, Arizona, at the end of March.

It is expected that a draft scientific plan will be developed at that meeting. The draft will be extensively circulated for review within the broad community concerned with the global change effort to provide a basis for development of a final draft by the community concerned with the global change effort to provide a basis for development of a final draft by the committee in May and June. A comprehensive and well-coordinated initial plan is expected to be published in late summer. As indicated earlier, the committee believes that this plan will need to be revised frequently-at least annually-as the scientific program and the plans of other nations and the Special Committee for the IGBP evolve and mature.

Interagency committee on Earth Sciences (continued from page 12)

search and the Federal Oceanographic Fleet Coordinating Council-and recommended that both continue. There was general agreement on this point; however it was recommended that the task group review the groups' charters periodically. Peck suggested formation of a new subcommittee on ground water, for which the Corell task should define the membership, charter, and appropriate lifetime.

Peck described the International Decade of Natural Hazards Reduction, giving appropriate credit to Frank Press, president of the National Academy of Sciences, for its initiation. He noted that the United Nations has now adopted the program, and he believes that CES needs to review it and develop recommendations for implementation. Copies of the National Research Council report on this issue were distributed to the committee. Johnson noted that the program would require substantial agency efforts.

The next meeting of CES was planned for late February or early March

Watts can be contacted for more information at USGS, 104 National Center, Reston, VA 22092, USA