MICHELLE MCCLURE: OK. I'm going to roll this into our first theme, which is our climate and weather research. Dr. Chidong Zhang, who is the head of our Ocean Climate Research Division, is going to do the introduction [INAUDIBLE]. 

CHIDONG ZHANG: Hello. I'm Chidong Zhang, I'm here to lead the Ocean, Climate and Research Division. And it's my pleasure to have this opportunity to give you an overview of Climate-Weather Research and, how it's [INAUDIBLE]. So under this research theme, here's what we do. 

We take observations over the global ocean atmosphere and marine ecosystem. We provide our data to our users, and we join science community to analyze our data, to advance understanding of the process and the source or predictability of the climate and weather systems. Then we use our data to assess the environmental prediction, and to guide decision making. The motivation of our research is straightforward. 

Our planet is changing. Global climate change is the most urgent environmental issues our society is facing. It exacerbates many natural disasters, such as droughts, floods, and wildfires. It makes them more frequent, more severe and last longer. 

How can we help society better prepare, and respond to these natural disasters? On top of the global climate change, there are many natural variability. For example in recent times we have El Niño. Which has the strongest global influence as illustrated by this figures. A single El Niño event can cause more than a trillion dollars for the US alone. A good ENSO prediction is needed globally, and PMEL is known to have lead ENSO studies for many years. And it will still. 

On the seasonal [INAUDIBLE], the monsoons cover some of the most densely populated areas in the world. And these figures illustrate the monsoon rainfall in color and the monsoon circulation in vector, for boreal [INAUDIBLE]. Monsoon rainfall is needed for agriculture. Too much of it will cause flood. A failed monsoon will lead to drought. A reliable monsoon prediction will benefit billions of people on this planet. And our observations in the tropics are critical to monsoon studies and prediction. 

Our South seas time scale we have the Madden-Julian Oscillation, or MJO, in the deep tropics. The global influence of the Madden-Julian Oscillation has been very well documented in the literature, as seen last week by [INAUDIBLE]. For example, over North America the probabilities of hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, floods, and lightnings and other high-impact events are all modulated by the MJO. 

Predicting MJO is key to forecasting natural disasters over the US, with a lead time more than two weeks. PMEL is the leading institute for MJO studies. The first complications that connect the MJO to ENSO and MJO to North American floods came from PMEL. 

So the society is becoming more vulnerable to increasing impact of natural disasters. This is how we have to help society better prepare in response to a disaster. Society needs two things-- a reliable prediction and wise policies. And both of them must be built on solid conception, information, and technology. Observations is the only source of the truth for information and technology, so observation is the foundation of what we do. 

This is what we do, PMEL. We make global observations. We send our observations directly to prediction centers in the world, for them to make forecasts every day, and we, together with the science community, to analyze our data and extract scientific information knowledge. We pass on this information knowledge to prediction centers to help them improve their prediction and to policymakers to guide their decision making. We also send our information and knowledge directly to our other stakeholders for their observations. So observations form the foundation of what do we do here. So let's start from there to describe weather-climate research at PMEL. 

Michelle [INAUDIBLE] is bigger. I'm not going into any details. I just want to emphasize that the groups under the climate weather research come to be with substantially a totality of PMEL observation collection. In comparison to other labs and academic institutes, our observations are unique in one sense, that is they are global. 

We observe from pole to pole. We observe from atmosphere to air/sea interface of the ocean. We observe from open ocean to coast. And I give you a proposition-- in terms of the total amount of data, PMEL contributes to the global ocean observing system more than any other single institute in the world. I challenge you, please prove this proposition. 

[LAUGHTER] 

Another unique capability we have is to do integrated research, as Michelle already mentioned. For example, the climate and the weather research benefit from the information coming out from ocean and process theme. Their information help us interpret our climate records in our study of the climate-weather system, how-- predicting the marine ecosystems. 

And we all benefit from our engineering data, to make creative observations. And all that is from our data group, to make our observations available in real-time every 15 seconds. And this end-to-end approach, from engineering design of sensors and platform, to multi-disciplinary observation in the field, to real-time data feed to prediction centers, are our unique capabilities that no other institute in the world has. 

Another unique aspect of our research is, we cover a broad range of timescales. Ocean is important to Earth system on all timescales. I don't have to say much about ocean [INAUDIBLE] and climate. Over the short weather timescale, think about hurricane intensity, which sensitively depends on ocean conditions. Prediction of world climate is the substitution of the seasonal timescale, also known as S threats. And ocean provide a major source of predictability of these types. 

At PMEL, our research cover all those timescales. Each horizontal banner represent a project under weather-- I mean, climate-weather research theme. And the horizontal extent mark the timescale it covered. So we have time-- we have projects that focus on decadal variability to global climate change. We have projects that cover multi-year variability to the seasonal cycle. And we have projects that cover interannual variability always through weather. 

You will hear about highlights of those groups' research in their lightning talks, so I'm not going to give details of them, with two exceptions. There are two projects that will not be covered by lightning talks. So I'll give you a little bit to [INAUDIBLE]. One is BGC Argo. And this is relatively new to NOAA, but it's very important for NOAA to address, its priority in blue economy and the healthy ocean. 

At PMEL, this BGC Argo work is done by the large scale, which are physics of carbon groups. And we have helped NOAA to prepare its BGC Argo strategic plan. And we provide our expertise in instrumentation, calibration, validation, deployment, and data collection, and product development. 

Another project you will not hear from the lightning talk is the Pacific Western Boundary Current project provided by Billy Kessler, who will give a lightning talk on TPOS 2020. And this project has maintained more than 10 years of glider observations from the Solomon Sea. The Solomon Sea is a major pathway connecting South Pacific at the equator. And this project provides the first observational evidence showing the massive heat transport through the Solomon Sea, which is critical to ENSO prediction and ENSO evolution. 

OK, let's talk about our stakeholders. Our foremost stakeholders are the world prediction centers, because they receive our data every day in real-time to make their [INAUDIBLE]. We actually engage in [INAUDIBLE] in research, for example, NCEP, and the US Navy, Environment of Canada, Bureau of Meteorology and other European-- [INAUDIBLE] Center in Europe. 

We have many international partners. Michelle has shown you that the NOAA ship time available to PMEL has been declining through the years, but we pretty much maintain the same level of sea-going activities. And that would not be possible without our international partners. They provide their ship time in many cases. We provide our instruments and expertise in deployment. And we share data, we collaborate, and get analyses. And in some cases, we help them in [INAUDIBLE]. 

We're a part of the science community. And the science community is a major stakeholder of ours. We provide them with our observations, and then we join them, analyze our data, and extract information. We interact with them through our publications, and conference. And those are just examples of the journals in which we published in recent years. And our stakeholders are local, state, and federal agencies, and non-government organizations, industrials, and many scientific programs. Those are just some of the examples. 

Looking to the future, we have many opportunities to [INAUDIBLE]. The New Arctic, Michelle already mentioned. Pacific heat waves. PMEL is a pioneer to study heat waves. Pacific heat waves are likely to be more frequent and more severe, with higher impact. And we are ready to monitor, understand its costs, impact, and its predictability. 

We have not done anything about ocean plastics. But its impact is too high for NOAA to ignore. Once NOAA decided to take on this instance, we are ready to be on the front line to observe and understand its transport, distribution, and impact. 

We're very good at open ocean observations. And we welcome anything-- coastal communities by expanding our expertise, our whole open ocean to coastal areas. And we're going to continue to apply a new observing technology, to make our observation and data analysis more efficient, more effective, and more adept. And finally, we do not-- we cannot benefit a [INAUDIBLE] prediction. So we will try everything we can to make our data to be used more wisely and effectively by regions' predictions [INAUDIBLE]. 

Challenges-- moving forward will not be without challenges. Michelle already mentioned this, that dedicated balance between maintaining long-term time series and taking on new observations. And this is particularly true for climate-weather research. 

And we want to quantify our valuable data. So we have to be creative to track the users of our data, at the same time, comply with government policies. And we need numerical models to help us interpret our data and help us evaluate our observations. By the way, we have very limited model capabilities in-house. We completely rely on external modeling expertise is now very [INAUDIBLE]. So we will have a delicate balance, because in-house and [INAUDIBLE] expertise [INAUDIBLE] operations. 

OK, I'm going to end my talk, leave this question to you, which reinforces the message given by Michelle. Think about it, how the world would be like without PMEL observations. 

[APPLAUSE] 

Based on the schedule, we will not have any questions, because we're going to jump right away to lightning talk. But I guarantee you, we'll have plenty of time to interact and to answer the questions.