[Music] Congratulations to PMEL. I'm so delighted in you
reaching this big milestone of 50 years. Congratulations PMEL on 50 years. Many thanks go out today to all who served during my time and thereafter
and all who are serving today. Congratulations, PMEL, for a half century of outstanding
ocean science and observations. PMEL is one of the premier oceanographic
research centers in the world. It's been wonderful to see it
grow over the years. When I first went to PMEL
in the late seventies, the
facilities were a far cry
from the way they are today. We had offices in a motel. We did our research in an abandoned
aircraft hangar out at Sand Point on Lake Washington,
and we made do. But there was a sense of excitement
in doing new things that could make a real difference to society that I think
brought all the PMEL people together. It made me feel that I really would enjoy
and love working at NOAA. In 1997 to 1998,
there was a major El Niño. We were all concerned
about getting proper warn
ings out to Southern California
and Western states about heavy increased rainfall and flooding, and PMEL
provided the information that we needed coming from the tropical buoy array
that they had established in the in the Pacific. The development of the Tropical Atmosphere
Ocean Buoy Array, or TAO Array, starting in 1985 and led by
PMEL, was a key element in a new observing system
for oceanic and atmospheric measurements that dramatically helped
improve our understanding and prediction of the El
Niño. There was an opportunity
to use the PMEL data to bring the vice president and others out
to make the warnings and the PMEL group provided that
basic information and, in fact, it was one of the more successful
responses of a state, California, to the El Niño warnings. It was the data from the TAO Array that really helped scientists
understand, in three dimensions, what are the ocean and atmosphere
dynamics that we call El Niño. Very complex system and has global effects
in weather patterns.
There are so many cool things that
came out of that lab when I was there. Particularly, what stood out in my mind
was the work with the uncrewed systems, the Saildrone,
the Gliders, and the Argo system. I mean, coming from a data assimilation
background, those observations are priceless
and had a huge impact. They were pioneers
in developing the Slocum Glider; autonomous vehicles,
small ones, that you can deploy easily, that can cruise the ocean on their own
for days, weeks, months, making real
ly valuable measurements
of temperature and salinity in areas that we otherwise don't
reach scientifically. They were the first office I saw
that was using uncrewed systems where they were integrating different
sensor packages on the Saildrone uncrewed surface vessel as well as the Oculus
uncrewed underwater glider. The innovation in them inspired me
to establish NOAA's new Uncrewed Systems Operations Center,
as well as leading the development of a NOAA Uncrewed System
Strategy and strategic pla
n. And in 2021, one of NOAA PMEL’s Saildrones
actually intercepted a category-four hurricane. Data from within the storm at ocean level
was tremendously valuable and an amazing get. Things like the Arctic Report Card, a lot of the eDNA work
that you do is amazing and I think has huge applications
all over the globe. And then the DART system; we wouldn't have tsunami warnings
if it wasn't for that. One of the important things in terms
of public service that PMEL has done is to have established
a
tsunami warning network, which is today all over the world, led by PMEL. In 2011, the tsunami generated by the Tohoku
earthquake off Japan was first detected by a DART buoy
25 minutes after the event. That allowed NOAA to generate
inundation forecasts for Hawaii and the Pacific coast a full six hours
before the tsunami actually struck. This is a great example of work
that was done by PMEL that grew into a global monitoring system. These data gathering buoys
provide continual monitoring to alert
the world
to a major underwater event and provide early warning
to coastal communities. And the number of stations
positioned around the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico,
and in the Caribbean grew to 39 stations in 2008. And congrats on that. The DART array of seafloor
observatories has been hugely valuable and expanding the warning times
that shoreside populations have to get out of the way
when a tsunami is coming. Another side of PMEL is the work that they've done on ocean acidification. The
ocean gets more acid as the carbon content of the atmosphere increases. And this has a big effect on fisheries
in the Northwest Pacific, but also in the Arctic,
where PMEL studies have shown us how the ocean acidification can affect the fisheries there
and the Alaskan communities. One of the things I thought was
fascinating was the work of a number of scientists at PMEL in this program,
Ecosystems & Fisheries-Oceanography Coordinated Investigations, or EcoFOCI,
specifically in the Gulf of Alask
a, Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands,
and just recently the Chukchi Sea. So important because the fish stocks up
there are the largest by volume and some of the largest
by economic impact in the country. So the science has never been
more important for the lives and livelihoods of the fishing communities
in that region and really the economic prosperity of our nation. So I have to call that work out
as being something really notable in terms of public benefit. Congratulations, PMEL, on 50 years. It w
as an honor and privilege
to work for such dedicated scientists. Thank you so much for your service
and keep up the amazing work. Please continue in meeting the needs of
the future, which I believe will be many. Thank you very much, and please keep up the good work. Congratulations, PMEL. Thank you for all the important research
you do that just not only benefits the public, but improves the health of our planet. So congratulations to the PMEL team
for 50 years of truly outstanding
foundational
ocean science observations. Congratulations, PMEL. And here's to another 50 years
of groundbreaking research. [Music]
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