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Show 26 Mr. CANNON. Thank you, Mr. Eubank. Your idea of a contest reminds me of the prize that was established by the French government for someone, for determining longitude that actually precipitated a great deal of innovation. At this point in time I'll- We'll go down the aisle to my left and start with Mr. Matheson and allow people to ask questions to you. DISCUSSION PREDICTING DROUGHT PATTERNS Mr. MATHESON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Potter, currently the Federal Government is investing significant amounts of money on climate change research. I was wondering how much application of this research is currently structured, how much of this research do you think gives us an understanding of patterns of drought? Dr. POTTER. Well, I think the research is basic research generally and but it is applied to some extent by groups like the Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, and in other places. As Mark said, the capability of making accurate long range forecasts is simply not available within the overall scientific community right now but significant progress has been made over the last 20 years in understanding ENSO, the El Nino and La Nina, and many other aspects of the relationship of the ocean to weather patterns in the North Pacific and in the North Atlantic, and so on. So I think that steady progress is being made and I would certainly advocate that funds continue to be supplied to do that. I don't think that there is an immediate solution on the horizon in the next year, or two years, or perhaps even in the next 10 years, but I think progress is being made steadily. Mr. MATHESON. IS there any new technology that's being tested or research pads for new technology that we could try to pursue that would help us get better tools for predicting drought further in advance when it happens? Dr. POTTER. Other than the general kind of research that's going on now and improving the general climate models, they are getting better all the time in explaining past climates and in shorter term predictions, I don't know of any concentrated effort that is being applied to the prediction of drought by itself. Mr. MATHESON. Mark, did you Mr. EUBANK. I am aware of one group that happens to be here in Utah that is doing a pattern recognition. Now, that's in a very simplified form, but the CIA has used it to do lie detection by monitoring those brain waves and recognizing patterns. It seems to me something like that might be more applicable or as applicable to weather than we have been using. Mr. MATHESON. Again, Mark, you mentioned the issue with the sensors and how only six are soil sensors. I assume from those comments we might have some better predictive capability if we invested in that infrastructure, in snow sensors, and moisture sensors, if we were able to fully implement that type of situation in the west that might give us a little better predictive capability in your opinion? Mr. EUBANK. Yes, and that's a step in the short- term. I think what happens now, if you have some people that are absolute ex- |