At today's Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) questioned Dr. Neil Jacobs, nominee to be Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere.
00:00Thank you, Chairman. And Chairman, I just want to start by just expressing my deep sadness for the tragedy in Texas. Just really horrific. And as I'm a parent of a seven-year-old and nine-year-old little kids that are going to camp this summer, I mean, I know so many parents and families are, you know, are just so heartbroken and feel shattered by what has happened.
00:25And I express the urgency of trying to figure out not only how we can better predict and have an early warning system, but how to get that information out to people as quickly as possible.
00:36In my home state in New Jersey, you know, we suffered from Superstorm Sandy, from Hurricane Ida, other things like that.
00:43Dr. Jacobs, you and I talked about this briefly, but, you know, just building on what you talked to the chairman and others about, these early warning systems, there's been talk about even using, you know, even just using sirens similar to what we've done for tornadoes in this country.
01:00As far as I know, we don't, do you know of any usage of sirens when it comes to flooding in the United States at this point?
01:07Not to my knowledge, but I do know that some systems that have been deployed in Spain and France, they essentially network a flow meter to a siren, and if the flow rate exceeds a certain amount, it triggers a siren.
01:21Depending on where the upstream rain falls and the rate of rain rate, it doesn't give you a whole lot of lead time, but it's certainly better than nothing.
01:30Even just a few seconds or a few minutes can make a huge difference.
01:35Is that something you would work with us here in Congress to think through and figure out how best to be able to deploy some of this?
01:43Absolutely.
01:44Another part of this in terms of being able to understand where flooding might happen and what communities are most vulnerable is about hydrological modeling.
01:55And, you know, I worry about this because in New Jersey we have had concerns about whether or not we are up to date with the latest modeling.
02:04A lot of the models that we've seen sometimes use outdated data from decades ago.
02:10There's been talk about trying to invest in LIDAR technology, and I would like to get your thoughts on that as well as whether or not that's something for the federal government to be able to take on.
02:21I agree.
02:23I believe this is a federal mission.
02:25A lot of it right now, the capability is state by state.
02:29So some states have more sophisticated data and flood inundation mapping than others.
02:34Hydrological modeling is extremely challenging and technical because you're essentially using one model to initialize another.
02:41So the hydrological model could be perfect in its equations, and if the atmospheric model puts the rainstorm in the wrong place, then the secondary model is not going to be right.
02:52So that is critical.
02:55But the hydrological models, to be successful, need the most updated digital elevation.
03:01And the only way I know to really get that data as accurate as possible is through LIDAR.
03:05So I think having access to LIDAR data to optimize that and having a nationwide flood inundation mapping capability would be very, very helpful.
03:16It doesn't seem to make sense to me that we would have each state do their own, right?
03:19I mean, it could create so much asymmetry in the data.
03:22But having, like, a baseline federal hydrological data that we can draw from, does that make sense to you?
03:28Am I thinking about it right?
03:29It does make sense.
03:31And, you know, it's if the capability stops at the state border but the roads don't and you need to deploy assets on the other side of the state border, you need to actually have that information.
03:42Especially when it comes to hurricanes often affecting multiple states simultaneously.
03:46And am I correct that we don't necessarily have modeling that combines both the forecasting for hurricanes as well with the hydrological data?
03:58We don't have modeling that combines the two, which seems like that would be incredibly important.
04:02Is that correct?
04:03It is.
04:03So I'll give you a great example of Hurricane Florence that made landfall in the Carolinas a few years ago.
04:10It put down almost 36 inches of rain, but it also was in one place for almost three days.
04:16And so you have that storm surge and the water from the rain can't drain east because the winds are pushing it west.
04:23And those two models, the storm surge model and the hydrological models from the rainfall, need to be coupled.
04:29Yeah.
04:30I want to switch gears here.
04:31I'd like to just read a sentence here and get your thoughts on it.
04:34It's a quote.
04:35Quote,
04:35It's extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.
04:45For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.
04:53I just wanted to get your thoughts if you agree with that statement or not.
04:57Well, obviously, there's a lot of natural signals that are mixed in there, too.
05:02And so in the absence of any natural signals that might dominate that, yes, there's human influence is certainly there.
05:09So you see human influence being part of the concern when it comes to climate change, when it comes to extreme weather?
05:15Yes, there's influence.
05:16Yeah, I think it's important for us to just be able to think that through because as we're trying to assess predictions and trying to do forecasts, it's important to understand causality.
05:27And so we're trying to understand what is causing the warming of ocean temperatures that affect hurricane strength and other aspects of this.
05:36So I just want to continue to make sure that we're pushing this forward.
05:39We're letting science drive our decision making in so many ways.
05:43So I hope that that is something you can commit to if you're confirmed.
