NOAA BUDGET HAS INCREASED
Overall budget is increasing – no tradeoffs will be necessary
NOAA, 14 NOAA, Office of Oceanic & Atmospheric Research Headquarters
2014
http://research.noaa.gov/AboutUs/OurBudget.aspx
On March 4, President Obama issued his proposed
2015 budget for NOAA, which totals
approximately $5.5 billion, an increase of $150.5 million, or 2.8 percent above the FY 2014
appropriation. NOAA requests a total of $462.2 million to support the continued and enhanced operations of
OAR, an increase of $31.8 million or 8.3 percent above the FY 2014 appropriation.
information in the NOAA FY2015 Blue Book and in the OAR Budget Highlights.
You can find more detailed
NOAA spending has increased – tradeoffs empirally disproven
Malakoff, 13 David Malakoff, 25 March 2013 Stormy Politics, Emerges Mostly Intact
http://news.sciencemag.org/2013/03/congress-completes-work-2013-spending-bill#NOAA2NOAA Endures
The bottom line: Thanks to Superstorm Sandy, NOAA will have about $5.2 billion to spend in fiscal
year 2013, some $300 million more than its 2012 total. All of that increase, however, comes from a
Sandy relief bill approved earlier this year that specifies how the agency must use the funds. The result is that
some of NOAA's research accounts will still feel pain from the automatic cuts known as the sequester.
ARCTIC EXPLORATION NOT UNIQUE
Arctic exploration is not unique and the link is empirically untrue
Ocean Today 14 Ocean Today May 19, 2014 "Arctic Exploration"
http://oceantoday.noaa.gov/arcticexploration/
The Arctic region includes a vast, ice-covered ocean. This pristine yet rugged environment is one of the least
explored and understood places on Earth. Due to climate changes, summer Arctic ice cover is diminishing, and
scientists therefore believe it is vitally important to get a better understanding of this environment and what
impact future changes might bring to our world.
Operating from the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy, NOAA scientists have been involved in
studying the sea ice, the water column, and the sea floor. Their missions have used the latest
cutting-edge technology. One recent expedition sent a remotely operated vehicle, equipped
with a high definition camera, as deep as 9000 feet, providing us with a never-before-seen view into the
frigid waters. By using the ROV, multi-nets, and bottom trawlers, scientists were also able to collect samples of
creatures in the water column and o n the sea floor, some of which were previously unknown. A technique called
ice coring was also utilized to help gather information on sea ice algae. All of this research has helped create a
more complete understanding of the Arctic food web, and the linkages that exist between the ice, water, and sea
floor in this harsh environment.
Scientists aboard the Healy have also been mapping the Arctic sea floor. A multibeam echo sounder
has been used to create three-dimensional views of the bottom of the ocean. These maps can help scientists
understand the geological aspects and the climate history of the Arctic.
NOAA will continue Arctic exploration
NOAA 14 NOAA, Office of Ocean Exploration and Research
2014 Arctic Ocean Exploration and Deep Sea
Research http://explore.noaa.gov/Exploration/ArcticOceanExploration.aspx
OER continues to engage USCG, NSF, USGS, BOEMRE, and Canada to pursue Arctic mapping and Arctic
biodiversity and census efforts.
OER will exercise persistence in its efforts to increase understanding of the Arctic through
charting of the Arctic region and exploration of science frontiers. We will continue to engage
our federal and local partners, academia, non-governmental organizations, international
entities and the private sector (a) to promote cooperation, leverage and sharing of data,
observational platforms, and intellectual resources and (b) to facilitate more comprehensive
attainment of NOAA’s Arctic science and ecosystem-based management goals (pdf, 1.2 Mb)
and the National Arctic priorities (pdf, 479 kb).
Future arctic action will be significant
NOAA 14 NOAA April 21, 2014 NOAA releases Arctic Action Plan
Responds to the President's and our
constituents’ call for greater coordination in this ever-changing region http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/features/actionplan.html
Earlier this year, President Obama released a plan for moving forward on his national strategy to
advance U.S. security and stewardship interests in the Arctic. Today, in keeping with the goals
and tenets of his strategy, NOAA unveils its Arctic Action Plan—a document that provides
NOAA scientists, stakeholders and partners a roadmap to make shared progress in monitoring,
understanding, and protecting this vast, valuable, and vulnerable region.
Climate change is making the Arctic a greener, warmer, and increasingly accessible place for economic
opportunity. However, climate impacts such as sea ice loss and rising ocean acidification are straining coastal
community resilience and sound resource stewardship. Impacts are also being studied outside the Arctic, as
NOAA scientists and colleagues work to better understand the region’s influence on global weather and climate
patterns.
NOAA's science, service, and stewardship mission uniquely positions the agency to provide State of Alaska and
Alaska Native partners, industry and community stakeholders, and federal and other local officials with Arctic
environmental intelligence—timely, reliable, and actionable information that helps them plan for and adapt to
economic and ecological impacts, including disasters.
The document provides an integrated overview of NOAA’s diverse Arctic programs and how
these missions, products, and services support the goals set forth in the President’s National Strategy for the
Arctic Region. The plan also provides linkages to other agency and interagency plans crafted with constituent
input, to include the National Ocean Policy, the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee Five Year
Research Plan, NOAA’s Arctic Vision and Strategy, and more.
This plan also contains an appendix listing more than 80 actions that NOAA will take in 2014
and 2015 to support our Arctic-related missions and mandates and to further our scientific
understanding of the region
ARCTIC EXPLORATION IS COOPERATIVE
Arctic exploration is done cooperatively – science diplomacy turns the link
NOAA 14 NOAA, Office of Ocean Exploration and Research 2014 Arctic Ocean Exploration and Deep Sea
Research http://explore.noaa.gov/Exploration/ArcticOceanExploration.aspx
Since 2004, OER has regularly co-sponsored the Russian-American Long-Term Census of
the Arctic (RUSALCA) expedition with the NOAA Arctic Research Office that involves more
than 40 international, interdisciplinary scientists exploring the Arctic's deep Canada Basin and
other areas, to monitor the flux of fresh and salt water and to build an inventory re: the distribution and migration
patterns of marine life in a key area for study of global climate change. Notable on one expedition was the
setting of one American and one Russian mooring buoy on the Russian side of the narrow and politically
sensitive Bering Strait.
In 2005, an international team of scientists from the U.S., Canada, China and Russia sailed
on the icebreaker USCGC Healy to explore the Arctic Canada Basin, one of the deepest parts of the
Arctic Ocean. With divers, photographic platforms, a remotely operated vehicle, ice corers, nets and trawls,
scientists studied the abundance and diversity of life from sea-ice surface to thousands of meters deep on the
seafloor.
OER supported four international ECS Arctic mapping expeditions between 2008 and 2011,
involving the icebreakers U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy and the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Louis S. StLaurent. In 2012, the ninth cruise aboard the Healy in support of the U.S. ECS Project occurred. (See the ECS
section of this website for more details.)
Cooperative exploration improves relations
Crane 14 Kathleen Crane U.S. Mission Coordinator, Arctic Research Office NOAA
2014
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/aro/russian-american/
July 23, 2004 marked an historic day in Arctic research and exploration as well as RussianU.S. relations. On this date the Russian research ship, the Professor Khromov, left Vladivostok, Russia
packed with U.S.and Russian, funded scientists to begin a 45-day collaborative journey of
exploration and research in the Arctic.
US cooperates in the arctic
NOAA 2 NOAA August 15 - September 8, 2002
Arctic Exploration
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/02arctic/welcome.html
This summer, an international team of 50 scientists from the United
States, Canada, China and
Japan, participated in a collaborative effort to explore the frigid depths of the Canada Basin,
located in the Arctic Ocean. Due to the region's heavy year-round ice cover, this expedition was the first
one of its kind
BIODIVERSITY
Arctic exploration is essential for biodiversity
NOAA 14 NOAA February 11, 2014 Ocean Explorer http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/arctic-basin.html
The Arctic Ocean is the most inaccessible and least-studied of all the Earth’s major ocean basins. Although it is
the smallest of these basins, the Arctic Ocean has a total area of about 5.4 million square miles (14 million
square kilometers); roughly 1.5 times the size of the United States.
The deepest parts of the Arctic Ocean (17,850 feet; 5,441 meters), known as the Canada Basin, are particularly
isolated and unexplored because of year-round ice cover. To a large extent, the Canada Basin is also
geographically isolated by the largest continental shelf of any ocean basin. The Chukchi Sea provides a
connection between the Canada Basin and the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait. However, this connection is
very narrow and shallow, meaning that it is likely that unique species have evolved in the mostly isolated Canada
Basin. The Bering Strait acts as the only Pacific "gateway" into and out of the Arctic Ocean, meaning it is critical
for the flux of heat between the Arctic and the rest of the world.
Exploration of the Arctic Ocean has become increasingly urgent because the Arctic
environment is changing at a dramatic rate. Scientific communities now generally agree that
the Arctic is in need of additional measurements and observations to accurately monitor and
predict future changes. Arctic sea ice cover extent has decreased by about three percent per decade over the
last 25 years and observations from submarines indicate a loss in ice thickness in all parts of the Arctic. Climate
models predict that Arctic summer sea ice cover might be lost by 2100, which would turn the Arctic Ocean into
an ice-free ocean for several months per year.
Obviously, one visible result of changes in the Arctic is the rapid loss of glaciers and sea ice.
Less visible are the impacts on living organisms that depend upon glaciers and sea ice for
their habitat. Loss of these habitats can also have direct effects on human communities. The
Bering and Chukchi Seas and associated marine life are thought to be particularly sensitive to
global climate change because these seas are places where steep temperature, salinity, and nutrient gradients
in the ocean meet equally steep temperature gradients in the atmosphere.