Good evening, Burlington. This is Gene Bergman. I'm the Ward 2 City Councilor, a progressive, very proudly a progressive and we are here for the third of our monthly shows on the progressive agenda. And I am very happy to be joined tonight by all of our counselors, Milo Grant and Joe McGee and Zariah Hightower who's just coming in. And we have had over the last couple of months some people from the community to talk about police oversight, somebody from public assets to talk about statewide issues, particularly about inequality and ways that we can address that at various state and local levels. And tonight we're going to talk with the four of us about our agenda. And I'm going to start with our newest member, Milo Grant. Thank you. And Milo, hi and congratulations. Thank you. We only have a half hour or so. Let's get right into it. Get right into it. First of all, I do want to very quickly thank my supporters. I've been very humbled by the trust that people have put in me, so it means a lot. The committees that I will be working on are going to be the licensing committee, REIB and the public safety committee. I would like to really encourage people to look out for REIB, the Juneteenth celebration this year. It's going to be fantastic. There was a wonderful presentation that is posted online on board docs. If you don't know how to navigate board docs, please reach out to us. And we will be happy to help you do that. But it will be held primarily downtown with shuttle buses bringing people in from all over the city. So I think it's going to be a really great event. And they're bringing in an organization called OK OK, founded and run by an individual who has a long history, haven't grown up in Burlington, returned to Burlington. So I'm very excited about that. In terms of public safety, I want to continue as a former police commissioner. The commission is very near and dear to my heart. I want to support and protect that commission. And also when we start to talk about the commission's role with oversight and accountability, I think we can all say we're going to be talking about that a lot. The chief's report this week. So once a month, the chief of acting chief Murad does a report. And it summarizes part of the report summarizes types of incidents. So drug overdoses are just through the roof. It is I just don't really have any words. It's dramatically up. We've all been talking about this, that there we don't have sufficient resources. We don't have a sufficient plan. Things such as the cahoots model are moving a little bit slowly. Although we now have the money, but it's a matter of who's going to administer this model. How is it going to be set up? The vetting process is missing, but I do encourage people to look at the chief's report. We're looking at stolen vehicles being way up. Last year at this time we had 55, 2021 we had 16, 2020 we had 18, 2019 we had 16, 2018 we had zero. And so far this year we have 105. I don't often agree with the chief, but I agreed with him when he said that it's not victim blaming to say to the people of Burlington. We cannot at this time leave your car running with the keys in them. This is literally how cars are being taken. We don't have any sophisticated network that's driving cars and putting them on, you know, sending them overseas. That is not as what's happening. People are grabbing these cars when nobody's looking, driving away with them, living in them, using in them, etc. So we just cannot do that. We must always lock our doors. Do not leave your car running unattended. Even for a second. Even for a second. I think some of the colder weather we had in January when people were warming up their cars. That's when we lost a lot of those. Mental health issues still high. Larceny still high. Still continues to be a lack of coordination, lack of follow-up. One of the other things I'll be learning about is the ComSTAT process. And I'll be attending my first meeting this week. And just briefly what ComSTAT is, what? Well, I will hopefully learn more about it. We'll touch base then with other folks. It meant to kind of look about how different parts of the city in different departments are looking at our crisis. Drug crisis. And what is being done. And too much fentanyl. Too much meth. Too many overdoses. And I will leave it at that. Well, we have a lot to do on public safety. Luckily, we have at least spent a lot of time over the last many years trying to develop an alternative to the solution is just put more cops everywhere and think that that's going to solve things like overdose problems. I will quickly say, I don't like that word alternative. They want to use it in some of the position, the special director that'll be like at a deputy chief level, call it alternative. This is part of our community safety response. Got it. Makes sense. And we shouldn't make it seem like I just think that the word alternative doesn't give the full credit to how important these positions are. They are part of our community safety response. Okay. They're just more appropriate for some things and others, but we shouldn't look at it as an alternative. I guess it's part of that transformation word that used to be thrown around. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Milo, for that. Let's turn to, so you are our newest member. Luckily, Zariah, you got here just in time as the oldest member of this caucus right now. I'm the oldest member of this caucus. Yes. I love it. Black women is the newest and the oldest. I love the oldest. Woo! The senior. Yeah. And maybe I'll talk to you. I'm very grateful that Milo joined the council. I feel like she and Joe are just breaths of fresh air in terms of helping us think about public safety. So I'll focus on housing, which is kind of my bread and butter and where I started, even though I did spend a lot of time thinking about public safety the past few years. And I think there's maybe three big things that are happening. One of them is, of course, two of them are things happening at the state level now. We've just had a dramatic increase in folks who are houseless in Chattanooga County. And so the city is currently not prepared to deal with what happens when the Motel voucher program ends or wanes, I guess, is the more appropriate word for what's actually happening. And so finding a way to be prepared for that. It's going to happen regardless of what we want. And so having some alternative housing for folks, even if that's unideal. So talking in CDNR, which I chaired, which Joe is on, on how we can provide folks a place to stay. What do people want CDNR? CDNR is Community Development and Neighborhood Revitalization, which is this wonky committee that mostly works with CEDO, which is Community Economic Development. So definitely I think that's going to have to be kind of a short-term, high-priority issue because it's really hard on city staff, it's really hard on folks who are houseless to just have to have the same interaction over again if you have nowhere to go but you can't stay here. And is the administration stepping up sufficiently at this point? Honestly, we're in the opposition. So a good, and they used to say loyal opposition, but a good opposition is both praises when it's due, and we just heard an example of that, and criticizes and calls for more when it's due. I will say the Democrats of a party have been allies in working on this, and I will say the administration has maybe been a little bit slow. I was glad to see obviously that Elmwood, which was done like an initiative led by the administration, but at the same time, I think especially around camping, I think there's politics to that that the administration doesn't feel good about, and so they've been quite frankly obstructionist, I think our Democratic colleagues would agree in terms of moving the needle on. So there are particulars in terms of the housing and relationship to the houselessness issue that we should be at least thinking about. You mentioned camping and the motel. Yeah, so I think one other thing is just we've got a lot of housing. Sometimes we forget, but it's like we've got so much housing that's going to come in, both with the pit being scaled for development and then with the south end zoning, and I think just being, I originally ran for city council because there was a scale back of some of the inclusionary zoning that I saw while I was on the development review board, and so just making sure we keep those things strong and also have housing that is specific to helping folks exit situations where they're experiencing houselessness or where our inclusionary zoning, which is really for families that make minimum wage and other. So making sure that there's strong protections for that type of housing that we are building is kind of a more long-term view. And then the last thing that I'll just speak to is we had passed as a city overwhelmingly just cause eviction, and that is making its way through the legislature again. So fingers crossed that this time with a democratic and progressive majority that if the governor does decides to veto that, that that will still come to pass in Burlington. And I do think that once we, like I think that's going to be a whole ordinance on itself to figure out which I'm excited about and I hope that that comes to pass, but I think that will also start to help us build other tenant protections because you can't really do anything to help tenants until they've got, until they can't be elected for no cause because if you don't have that, you can't add anything else. I mean, and my understanding is that the state of New Jersey has got a just cause eviction statute in there that has been there for a long time. I know because the folks in New York state have been fighting very hard for, just read an article in The Nation about the rights of tenants. We would certainly not be the first. There are millions of Americans who live under just cause eviction laws. Joe, the middle child. You were elected in a special election and have been, so you've had actually three victories and you're in the middle of the, this term right now. Two, thankfully. Only two elections. Thankfully I haven't had to do a third yet. There we go. I stand corrected. So what is on the plate generally speaking for you? Sure. Yeah. There's so many pressing issues in the city and we're working together collaboratively on community safety, I think, is front of mind for so many people right now. And a particular area that I'm focusing on as a member of the caucus is really around harm reduction and addressing the substance use crisis and the overdose crisis, particularly as Mila mentioned, the overdose numbers that we have seen this year are outpacing. This time, where we're at right now, is outpacing where we're even in June of last year. And so this points to a drug supply that is increasingly dangerous and unpredictable. And there are a number of things that we can do to reduce harm for folks who are using drugs to save lives. Last year we lost 237 Vermonters to overdose. That's up from 217 people in 2021 and significantly up from the numbers of folks that we lost in 2020. And so, you know, this crisis is getting worse. We have evidence-based approaches that have been implemented in other parts of the U.S. and around the world that would go a long way to saving lives and keeping folks alive so that they're able to access support. Housing is a crucial piece of that. So really working on a Housing First model, which I think is something that we're really pioneering with the Elmwood shelter community, I think we've seen folks transition out of the pods already. And so I think I would like to see that model replicated as a reasonably quick way for us to provide shelter for folks who are unhoused right now and sleeping outside. I understand that there are concerns that folks have around camping and encampments in the city. It's hard to see. It's hard to be confronted with the ways in which society is failing so many people right now. I know folks have concerns about finding discarded syringes in our parks and on the streets. And I think the Parks Department has done a good job of working with the Howard Center street outreach team and with Substance Use Policy Analyst at the city to come up with solutions for increasing the number of sharps containers that we have in the city so that we can safely dispose of those syringes. And a core piece of this that I've been working on for a number of months and will continue to work on is standing up an overdose prevention center in Burlington. And we've seen this working in Manhattan. They've got two centers in New York City operated by an organization called On Point. On Point has reversed over 700 overdoses. They've helped connect folks with services. And we've seen there are 200 overdose prevention centers operating throughout the world. Not a single person has ever died as a result of an overdose prevention center. And we're seeing numbers of discarded syringes going down, numbers of overdoses where folks are using a loan and in unsafe settings going down. Transmission of HIV and hepatitis C is going down in areas where those services are offered. And this is really, you know, something that we could start here in Burlington. We have people with the expertise to start an overdose prevention center. But we really need support from the state to be able to do that. I think we've seen that when we take this harm reduction approach where we take this approach of investing in supporting people rather than criminalizing substance use or criminalizing houselessness, we see far better outcomes long-term for folks who are struggling and better outcomes for the community. Vermont spends $57,000 a year to incarcerate somebody. So a question that myself and I think all of us are asking is how can we better invest those resources to support our neighbors who are struggling right now and really start to ask those questions about transformation and those non-police responses that are so crucial. And Tamilo's point about the language or an alternative, it's, you know, I think in a perfect world where we're trying to make these changes, we want these responses to be a primary response in a number of situations. And so looking forward to seeing the crisis response team started and, you know, we're going to have a number of conversations, I think, in the next couple of weeks here at the council level about that. So I encourage folks to tune in there. We've got activity on harm prevention that will be in front of the council that you've been really active on. We've got a number of housing issues that are going to probably be in front of the council in the coming future ordinances or through CDNR and we've got public safety oversight and then the comprehensive and smart way of making a safe community as part of this plus the racial equity work that people can get involved in. Just briefly for me, because I'm trying to be this facilitator here, but so I'm really happy that we moved through the democracy charter changes, the ranked choice, the all resident voting and then the flexibility of the voting places in this last term. The charter change committee of which I chair is going to have the opportunity to work with us all around public safety because the needs of the community have not been met just by the defeat of the proposal that we supported very strongly and I think a significant number of people supported oversight despite a massive campaign against it. So the fact that almost 40% of the people of Burlington voted for it says that there is a real appetite for oversight. So we'll see that starting in May and in June with joint committees of ordinance and charter looking at things and obviously the commission is going to be really central to that. Briefly, the other committee that I'm on and the work that I've really been focused on is around climate change and so what is very clear as we sit on North Winooski Avenue is that transit equity is a tremendous issue for folks. The ability to get the places that we need to get in an affordable way needs to be front and center because people can't get to work on the buses, the buses don't run on time, cars are expensive and we are for many, many positive environmental reasons reducing the amount of parking in the city. So there's a lot of tension. So that's something that the Transportation Energy and Utilities Committee is working on. We've made some progress here on North Winooski Avenue where there's been a lot of dynamic tension on that. Briefly, the other thing has to do with carbon emissions that we've been working on and both the McNeil plant which we will have in front of us the district energy question and it's a complicated issue but the role of biomass is very complicated and doing it right is really complicated and I'm actually pretty excited that we're hoping to have a symposium sponsored by the Duke Committee to talk about the burning of biomass and its impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Straight science so that we can know what is right and what is wrong and then we make policy choices. So looking forward to doing that and looking forward to actually allocating some money to get some experts including critics of the burning of fuel. This is something where Massachusetts has just eliminated the sellable credits for biomass and it will change the market dramatically if that spreads. The other thing is the airport. We get daily reminders from the F-35s of not only the military aspect of that but the tremendous emissions that are spewing out of those planes and there's a lot of very good active people both in South Burlington and Winooski and also in Burlington who are questioning airport and airline emissions and their role in the climate crisis and so we've been pushing that. I've been pushing that but as I said I've gotten good support on all of these issues from my democratic and independent colleagues on the committee and that's been really good and as a result for example we unanimously passed as a council a resolution to fund mass transit to call for there to be mass transit funding that's sustainable and equitable and it's making its way somewhat through the legislature and I think that we played a part in that so we'll continue to do that and our budget will reflect some real choices that we make about mass transit. Okay, we've got about ten minutes left maybe a little bit less. Milo, let's do like a lightning round this is only half hour so sort of a lightning round of something that you really want folks to hear that they want you to know. I would like to really encourage people to watch more meetings. I think this is a major problem it's a major problem in the central district people aren't keeping themselves informed and because they're not actually watching the meetings and what's happening in the meetings you're more subject to misinformation and I think that one of my goals and I'd like to think that we all think about getting more people to vote. It is literally voting brings power we don't vote the way we should which is why we don't get the attention we should in the central district our numbers are half what they are say the new north end it's about half right? So it's and also the south end and that is why they get nice things. We got five minutes to go lightning is going to strike down there she took some of your thunder I think the other one is just a reminder that folks are struggling I think sometimes in Burlington we can forget because we have a lot of and a lot of the voters specifically middle class, upper middle class and homeowners like me we don't see the increase in rent prices it just doesn't hit us in the same way and so I think just remembering that post-pandemic we see that in all of the things we just talked about mental health, finances like folks are really struggling and just having empathy around the issues that we're talking about whether it's housing, whether it's community care I think just want to remind folks that just because they're not struggling doesn't mean the rest of the community isn't really understanding how hard it is for people right now the rents are so outrageous they are just exorbitant they are unbearable and they're a big reason why we're losing young people we are losing a lot of 20 somethings greed is a terrible thing rents are high everywhere but they can get literally for the same amount better conditions Joe I guess I'll just take this opportunity to plug the fact that the four of us will be at Vivid Coffee on Cherry Street tomorrow Wednesday the 26th yeah 26th from 8 to 9.30 on Cherry Street so I look forward to seeing folks there and having conversation about concerns that you have and many of the things that we just discussed here this evening and we're going to try to do that on a regular basis right? yes for me and it goes nicely with the rest of y'all the interplay between government and movement I don't think can be can be understated or be overstated it's really in order for any real change to happen it requires people to be organized and active and engaged including voting but not necessarily alone voting and so we can only do so much when the airport wanted to expand into further expand into the Chamberlain neighborhood and exacerbate the housing crisis as well as the climate crisis I worked with a group of people who opposed that and they were successful in South Burlington and we in Burlington helped that the just cause is an example of that the oversight does not happen without an active people saying this must stop and harm prevention we've got tons of folks crying for change and demanding change and as a result we're bringing things forward so we are not saviors we are just part of a bigger piece and I want to thank you all for being there with me on Mondays it would be terrible without you I think and I want to thank CCTV because otherwise all you get is Fox and the rest of the corporate media we can't have that and get anywhere and we will continue this conversation next week or next month I should say we're trying to do this every month and get some other voices and so with that I thank you all and I guess that's a wrap


Recording. Hi, everyone. We are live on the community forum. We are going to wait just a few minutes to allow folks to drop in here into the WebEx. So please stand by. Hey, everyone, if you're just joining us, you're in the right place. This is the community forum. We're just going to hold on for just another couple of minutes while we allow people to log into WebEx. Hey, everyone, this is the community forum. We are, I still see the numbers are climbing numbers of participants are still laddering up. So we're going to give it just another couple of minutes and then we'll get started. Right. So it looks like our participant numbers have started to level off. So I just want to welcome everyone. Hi, everyone. My name is Wendy mim. I'm the new communications lead for the earth science division. I'm going to be serving as the emcee for today's community forum. I'm going to hand the mic over in just a moment to Dr. Karen St. Jermaine, but just want to get some housekeeping things out of the way first. Just noting that today's meeting is being recorded so that folks who can't join us live can view it later. I also wanted to point out that there is closed caption available. If you'd like that If you look closely at your screen. There's a tiny little bubble that looks like a quote bubble. You can click on that and get the closed captioning. So our last community forum was back on April 21st. Our last forum was way back in April. So it's really good to gather the earth science community together again. Karen's going to be sharing some important updates today. Here's what she'll cover. She's going to go over NASA's response to the earth system observatory independent review board report. She's going to talk through the cancellation of the geocarb mission and then she'll cover a handful of additional miscellaneous SD updates. We anticipate there may be some questions. We're going to hold those to the end. You'll also see there's a Q&A box at the very bottom right hand side of your screen. It's a little box that has a question mark in it. And so if you've got a question click on that box and you can type your question into the box and we will try to get to as many of those as we can once Karen is done presenting. So without further delay, I'm going to hand over the mic to Karen St. Germain. Hello everyone. Let me just do a quick sound check with you Wendy. Is that sound okay Sounding clear Great. Well, good afternoon everyone. It's great to be with you this afternoon. It's actually been kind of an exciting day here at NASA headquarters. We hosted Vice President Harris and the President of France President Macron here at NASA headquarters to celebrate Over 40 years of partnership between the US and France in space and and look ahead and anticipate the the fruit of the partnership as we continue forward. So it's been an exciting morning here. All right, I am going to do my best here to Share a briefing. All right. Can anybody let me know if the If this is clear if the presentation is being shared. Not up yet. I'll let you know. Oh, all right. Let me try it again. Not yet working. Okay. Well, hang on folks. Perhaps send those to Kate.  There they are. Okay. You see if I can put it in presentation mode. Is that working now. Yes. Okay. Fantastic. All right. Always an adventure. All right. So, so Wendy Walked through the logistics and the a bit about the agenda. So let's go ahead and jump right in. So I'm going to spend the The majority of the time this morning on your system observatory and the independent review board that we just That we chartered early in the year and that Just gave us a report a few weeks ago and we're rolling out both the report and our response this week. So you may know that NASA charters independent review boards under two different kinds of circumstances. The first kind of circumstance is when When When a mission is is is seeing experiencing real challenges or where there's a problem or a perceived problem that NASA wants an independent set of eyes on The other set of circumstances in which for which NASA will convene an independent review board is when we're taking on something that is large and complex. And it's that latter case That was that drove us to want to get an independent set of eyes on to the on the earth system observatory. So I'll start with a very big picture view and then we'll we'll we'll dive in. So it overall, you know, the earth system observatory is the heart of NASA's response to the decadal survey. And and we believe that we can actually we can achieve the decadal survey threshold science requirements within our current appropriations and the President's budget request. And of course, if critical issues arise that that cause us to deviate from that will go back to the Committee on our science and applications of the National Academies. So Just a reminder of what is the earth system observatory. That's our Not just the name, but the approach we're taking to the missions that are responding to the decadal survey and in particular the decadal. Sorry, the designated observables. These taken together will provide really key information to understand everything from, you know, the open questions around climate change. And and how the earth system works all the way to applications of that information, whether it's fighting forest fires, disaster mitigation, improving weather forecasts, those sorts of things. So these are the elements, the major elements, again, taken from the designated observables. And, you know, this was Again, designed to fundamentally address those designated observables. So in in in summary, the AOS Atmosphere observing system is intended to address in combination the aerosol clouds convection and precipitation designated observables and really get to understand aerosol properties profiles, cloud profiles and and the effects on everything from climate to air quality and to address one of the one of the most fundamental open questions about Feedback mechanisms and climate change that that relationship between aerosols and the and the formation of clouds in particular surface biology and geology is is a get a mission looking at the Earth's surface and, you know, everything from vegetation to snow reflectivity to active geological processes. So that's that'll be an extraordinarily capable system. Mass change measures, of course, the large scale dynamics associated with, you know, changing mass distribution. Often that's associated with water movement in any of its forms ice, liquid, and so forth. And then surface deformation and change that's looking at at Earth's surface dynamics. And in that one, we are, we are keeping an extended study phase, because it really follows on to NYSAR, which we are still working on getting to launch. So, with that, there are a couple of really important key aspects of not just what we'll do with the Earth's system observatory, but how we'll do it. So, oh, and you know, actually, let me let me back up one slide there. Two slides actually the, the entirety I want to make sure I say this explicitly. The US system observatory as I said is a is a response to the Decadal survey, but it of course stands on the shoulders of of our program of record and of course to very very important upcoming missions I already mentioned NYSAR. But in two weeks we will be launching SWAT and, you know, at later on down the line will be launching PACE. Those two ocean missions really complement the new missions created in the Earth's system observatory. So now when we go forward, when we get to how we're going to do the work, we will use the ESO data in conjunction with observations from other NASA and international systems or missions to look at the interconnections in the Earth system. What do I mean by open open source science and the new NASA policy? I'll just give you some highlights of that. What that means is all mission data, metadata, software databases, publications and documentation shall be available on a full free open and unrestricted basis, starting in phase B with no period of exclusive access. Also science workshops and meetings will be held in an open way to encourage broad participation and and they will be documented in public repositories. In addition to that approach to the science, we've also recently initiated it within the last year to studies to inform how we handle data as again as an integrated observatory. So we have a data processing study and this is to examine how we will set up the data system for this entire observatory and promote open science principles. And then of course what we refer to as a latency study that's more associated with getting data down from the satellites and to where it needs to be to be operated on in a timely way to support the broad range of science and applications. So again, we've got a latency study across the board to minimize the product latency. And so those two are ongoing efforts to inform how we move forward with these missions. Okay, so now back to the independent review board. Last July so independent review boards are generally chartered at the level. And the we chartered this independent review board in July of this year. And the idea was to have them proactively assist us with the assessment of our current plans and objectives for the next generation Earth observing satellites. You know, which, which we, which are designed of course to propel us forward in terms of scientific knowledge. We had 12 members. We had 12 members of the IRB and they spent something like 800 person hours on the review which was conducted over the summer between July and September. And of course, they reviewed all of the mission elements of the Earth System Observatory. They reviewed technical concepts that were developed during preliminary formulation for robustness and the ability to satisfy the mission's essential requirements again traceable to the decadal. We also asked them to help us understand if we have appropriately adopted lessons learned from our experience with other previous large and strategic science missions. So the overall scope of, I'll just go back. The overall scope was to look at the requirements and ask the, and the, and the concepts and ask the following questions. Is the architecture overall meeting the intent of the decadal survey and is it aligned with agency broad agency needs in a broader sense. And there were a whole host of questions underneath that associated with a lot cost alignment for the various missions and, and are those costs aligned with the with the cost targets that were established in the decadal and and budgeted by NASA. Or is the science for each element aligned to meet the threshold requirements in the or the threshold needs identified in the decadal. So we asked them to comment on the integration and, and asked if there were any fundamental, fundamental, you know, obvious descopes that we should be considering, and so forth. So that was essentially how we, how we framed up the, the, the IRB is to look at the whole set of missions, not just what we're doing but how we're doing it and identify any issues associated with our, the content, the costing, the programmatic approach, the science and data approaches. So I'm going to walk through at a high level, their, their findings. Now, they had a lot of findings and recommendations and I'm, I don't, I'm not going to walk through every one of them there were 33 different recommendations. So what I'm going to do is, is sort of highlight the nature of those, those findings and, and our response to them. So this is a little bit of a distilled version, just for the sake of presentation. So, you know, overall, the IRB found that the missions are positioned to deliver important science. And it's a combination of advanced capabilities, making use of very mature partnerships and in, in particularly in certain cases, providing critical continuity. They recognized that there's an inherent tension between staying within cost targets and maximizing the science and that is always true for our missions. They also identified that, you know, the Decadal Survey actually identified mitigation strategies in case we had that really probably should say budget pressure mitigation strategies. And they recognized in this review that many of those have already been exercised in part because of course when the Decadal Survey was released, we did not anticipate major perturbations like COVID. And they, and they, they advised us that if we, of course, we, we've got latitude in implementing the missions associated with the Decadal, but that if we deviate far in terms of the balance and cost targets, or in terms of the science will be able to that we should, we should ensure that we socialize that and go back to and talk with the Academy about that. So our response to that is that, you know, we concur. And we under, you know, we agree that the program of record has seen some real challenges, COVID, inflation, and so forth have strained the budget and, and of course you all know delayed the start of Decadal missions. And, and we're still working to get some missions from the prior Decadal off the ground. So we've endeavored to put together a program that achieves at least the threshold science anticipated in the Decadal Survey, but we do agree that that the upcoming NASA midterm review will provide very valuable feedback on those targets. So the, in terms of alignment with the Decadal, they, they found that the science priorities are met by the current plan. But again, recommended we collaborate with CSAS, we concur and agree and we will plan to do that through the midterm. All right, then they had a series of what I'd call cross cutting kinds of observations and recommendations on how we're structured and, and the resources. So overall, they thought that our approach of prioritizing early involvement and integrated science and applications teams with data management teams is the right way to go. And generally, you know, one of the things that they, that they highlighted and you see it really called out in various ways in the recommendations here is that although they think this is the right approach they don't actually think where they recognize that there's more work to do in this area. So, so they recommended that we an ESO wide effort to define data system and software requirements for integrating cross mission science, developing programmatic, stronger programmatic integration, stronger science integration, stronger applications integration, as well as the data management. And, and that that we put in place a structure, a programmatic structure to drive that forward to drive the integration forward. So, NASA's response to that is that we concur with their recommended recommended approach of prioritizing this early involvement and deep integration across the missions. And, and we concur with their recommendation to designate a set of leadership roles focused on that integration. And we will expand that coordination across program management, data management science and applications and, and ensure that that that that happens right now as we're moving into, moving into phase a. Okay, then they had, they had a series of mission specific recommendations. I'll start with mass change. Overall, they, they thought that the plan which is essentially like a grace follow on follow on that it meets the threshold recommendations, but they were concerned that to meet the cost target. We had identified an approach that was fairly high risk. And they recommended that we take that we look at opportunities to enhance the redundancy in certain elements of the mission and and drive to a longer lifetime for this mission. They also recommended that because we know this is going to be a long term, you know, an observation that, that will be needed on a sustained basis. They recommended that we work with international partners to develop a plan to ensure continuity of the measurement. In other words, they recognize that a single mission solution is not a long term solution. So we concur with these recommendations, and we're developing plans to address and assess in particular the accelerometer and redundancy concerns and we'll do that in phase a. We recognize that there may be costs and schedule implications for that. You know, so implications for how quickly we can get that to orbit and, and, and gap risk, as well as that that may cost more than the decadal told us we should dedicate to this mission. And so we'll, depending on those outcomes of phase a will socialize that through NASA. And we are engaged with our European partners on a longer term strategy for mass change observation and we, we agree that that is a an important thing to do. All right. On a OS, the atmosphere observing system. So overall, they found that the current plan actually exceeds the detail, the decadal science recommendations at the threshold level exceeds the threshold. But they also said they think it's going to cost significantly more than the cost target identified in the decadal. They recommended implementing a OS as a single integrated project and, and also considering these scopes to bring costs and better alignment with the, the cost targets. In other words, they were concerned that that that we had more content in this program than we can afford in this project than we can afford. And they wanted us all to also to investigate opportunities for aligning launch dates. So the NASA response is, is that we, we partially concur with these findings and are taking the following steps. We are going to work to bring the costs into alignment with the resources through adjustments of scope. That will mean that we'll be probably moving closer to the threshold science identified in the decadal. In order to, to save both, both costs, but also cost risk. And that's that cost risk is related to the fact that there were a couple of elements in the EOS, sorry, AOS architecture that were at a lower TRL level. And, and they said that's, that's a really. Well, my words, a bit of a dangerous thing to do as part of a larger program, such as AOS. So they made some specific recommendations on how to continue to meet the decadal threshold science, but eliminate the need to mature technology in the, in the program. And they also said that we should assess, assess options for efficiencies and spacecraft in the approach to buying the spacecraft for the AOS mission. And where we, where we did, where we differ from the IRB and is that we don't actually think combining these into a single program is necessarily the right way to go because it's so complex. And the AOS, just the two core missions that we're, that we're developing here in the US have, I think the number of seven instruments for international partners, two different spacecraft, it's very complex. And we're concerned that that's, that'd be a real challenge, especially once we get into implementation where the focus has got to be on execution. So, but we do agree that integration across those missions is critically important, as it is across all of the ESO missions. So we're going to work this in the context of the larger cross cutting ESO program management. Okay, surface biology and geology. So generally the IRB found that the SPG capabilities are as they're planned meet the decadal survey threshold recommendations. They wanted to make sure that we are paying attention to the alignment again with SPG there are two different capabilities, two different, there'll be two different spacecraft and they asked us to pay attention to the alignment in time of those launches. They also had some specific technical recommendations and, and in particular, ensure that we're procuring some long lead parts and developing backup solutions for key technologies that those are more engineering issues, I would say. And then they also recommended that we expand validation efforts across the board. And NASA agrees with these recommendations and we'll, we'll take action on them as we move into formulation for the surface biology and geology mission. A couple more cross cutting kinds of findings. They, you know, one of the things that the IRB really focused on was the importance of collaborative partnerships, both, both within NASA across centers and they, they particularly noted the depth of the collaboration across NASA centers, but also with international partners and you, you see our international partner flags, or logos down at the, at the bottom of the page. And they, they recommended that we continue to explore opportunities, both with traditional partners and non traditional domestic and international partners, including ESA in particular they called out with a focus on future mission sustainability. And, you know, and that's, that's of course something that we're, we're also very focused on here. They, with regard to the centers, they suggested that we take another look at the work assignments and, and the workforce availability across the centers, just to make sure that we've achieved the best balance of technical capabilities. And NASA concurs with these recommendations, we're taking steps to review the center work assignments, study, we're always open to additional, you know, new partnerships. And of course, evaluating the workforce, because we want to make sure that when we, when we lock in these programs that we're going to be able to execute them. You know, the, we want to execute them on the currently planned timelines and that's that's really critically important. It's important to get these missions up this decade, because in 2018 we will see the rollout of the next decadal survey, and we don't want to have the NASA or science budget heavily encumbered trying to finish these missions. So we really want to, to get them moving through so the next decadal isn't in the position that we were in. All right, a few other lessons learned in general comments. They recommended that we should should charter a review of past lessons learned with a particular eye on on how to apply them to the Earth System Observatory. They, they thought that we should engage more broadly in in cross cutting science and improve the, you know, the word is morale but I think it's really improve the connections and the, the, the, the depth of partnerships across the science community. And one way to do that that they mentioned is through science lectures associated with the science we're going after and so. They suggested we assign an SRB chair for each mission. And, and do that soon so that they can hand over what they found to those SRBs and, and then, you know, establish understanding of the rules of engagement for those SRBs. And then they also talked about the importance of a communication plan and, and, and keeping communication with the community current and making sure that folks really understand what it is we're trying to do and how we're trying to do it. So that's the, the overall missions could be successful and sustained. So, a response to these is that we concur with these recommendations and we'll take the following steps. We are establishing a staff review of lessons learned. You know, that says ESD and ESM program staff what, what I really should say there is the entire ESO team will review the lessons learned with an eye toward how we can better implement the ESO. And those are lessons learned again from previous larger or complex missions. They are taking to heart their, their recommendations about holding science lectures and establishing other ways to improve the interactions in the science community. And, and we are in the process of establishing SRBs as we speak so, and as well as the communication plan so we concur with those recommendations. But, so that's the end of the, that was a sort of a speedy high level review of, of the IRB their, their major findings as I said, I didn't try to walk through every detailed finding here. Because, or a recommendation because there would have been 33 of them, it would have taken a while. But, but I think this this sort of roll up is captures the essence of, of what they, what they did and, and so before I move on I would like to, to just send a real shout out and word of deep appreciation for both to, to the entire IRB team, but in particular to Walid Abdeladi and Jeff Yoder, who agreed under some pressure from, from me and, and my boss to accept this assignment and do so over the summer. Probably at the expense of some vacation time with their families. And they did so because they, like we believe it's really deeply important for us to get off on the, on the right foot with these ESO missions. And, and deliver, deliver the missions and deliver the science and deliver the applications that the ESO promises. So, so again, thanks very much to Jeff and Walid I don't know if you're listening today so folks if you see either one of them give them my, my thanks. Right. So, let's, let's go ahead on to the next topic and, and of course, you know we did. We did announce yesterday the decision to cancel the geocarb mission in conjunction with expanding our greenhouse gas portfolio. And certainly the driving factors there were technical concerns, particularly associated with the payload development that were that the payload has been a very, very challenging, all, you know, along the way and, and then of course associated with that. You have technical concerns you also have costs and schedule performance concerns associated with them and these were, I'll say, well outside of family in, in SMD missions. And then, you know, the other thing is that there, there's an increasing, you know, the, the, I'll say the landscape for greenhouse gas observation is different now. There are more data sources coming online. And, and so that that affords us the opportunity to take a step back and assess the best path going forward. So, you know, I guess there's one other part to that you know I mentioned the cost performance. NASA is, is, is really committed to being good stewards of the taxpayer dollars and part of that is, is, is sometimes having to make really tough decisions about how to move forward so. That's where we are there. But, you know, the other thing I want to emphasize to the community is that this doesn't in any way represent a backing off of our commitment to continue observing greenhouse gases and understanding how they are changing over time and are driving climate and driving the earth system. So, I'll talk a little bit there about a couple of new things. One is, we of course, launched emit to the International Space Station. And, although that emit is a isn't is a mineral mapping mission intended to identify the composition of aerosols in the atmosphere, another important climate related and or science related area of investigation. We also now clearly see that emit can identify in particular methane plumes and also large carbon dioxide plumes. And I'll show you a little bit of that in just a minute. But we're also continuing the the orbiting carbon observatory three on the ISS we're going through program review now and we've and and we believe that that will be extended. So, in our community announcement on the earth system explorers that we posted. Gosh, it was about a month ago identified greenhouse gases as an area of focus in that first solicitation and as you'll recall, earth system also, that's a new program tied to the Decadal Survey. And then there were seven observables that that the Decadal Survey identified as candidates for earth system explorers greenhouse gases with one of them. And we've, we've decided to emphasize that in the first announcement there. And then, you know, through a whole of government approach that we're advancing in collaboration and deep collaboration with EPA and NOAA and other US agencies. We're working hard on the integration of greenhouse gas data to inform decision makers at all levels and to advance science. So, so we'll, we have an intensive effort that it will be starting up there very soon. And and then ongoing continued collaboration, of course, with our team in Oklahoma. So, all right, now let's go ahead to the rest of the ESD updates. So we've got a lot of great stuff going on. The OMS-LIM launched on November 10th. Of course, it's hitching a ride from our NOAA pals on JPSS-2. The, you know, OMS-LIM will continue to provide high-resolution ozone and aerosol profiles. You know, as it has been and we're continuing that contribution in the future for JPSS-3 and 4. So that's a sustained observation. I mentioned EMIT launched to the ISS. That was our EVI-4 mission. And it was launched aboard SpaceX CRS-25 on July 14th. And as I mentioned, that's a mineral dust mission. And what you see over to the left is the spectral first light. So of course, you know, you're looking at an image on the top panel, but an imaging spectrometer like EMIT measures the spectrum associated with each one of those pixels. And of course, every surface on Earth or, you know, atmosphere or constituent has its own spectral fingerprint. And so EMIT's ability to measure the spectral fingerprint in every one of those pixel areas really allows us to distinguish different types of, you know, different functions on the Earth's surface and, sorry, different aspects of the Earth's surface as well as different atmospheric constituents. Oh, and I just, thanks to my team, they sent me a note in the chat there that the J2-Omps activation and on-orbit functional tests were successfully completed for both the nadir and the limb just about a week ago on the 22nd of November. So great news there. I promised you a little bit of a look at what we're seeing from EMIT. And again, this is not part of the primary science mission, it's an augmentation element that we're going after here, which is what you're looking at. There are methane plumes, and over on the right-hand side, you see the models in the red curve modeled signature of methane, and then over on the right, the blue is the measured. So those two plumes that look purple and yellow or purple, yellow and orange on my screen, those are methane plumes, in this case probably coming from buried, I believe, buried pipelines. I think that's right on this one. So that's been a really exciting new capability that we're just beginning to understand and exploit. All right, upcoming launches. So super excited about the upcoming launch of SWAT. It's now scheduled for, gosh, I think it's the 15th of December. Yeah, the 15th of December. And unfortunately, that happens to land right on the same day as our Earth Science Town Hall at AGU. So we're going to have to divide and conquer there. But we're really, really excited about the SWAT launch. And for those of you who are maybe not following SWAT as closely, there are a couple of really exciting things here. The SWAT will provide the very first global inventory of Earth's surface water. The thing that's unique is that it's an imaging altimeter and that the spatial resolution is improved dramatically from our legacy altimeters. You know, the way I think about this, and I think it was maybe Nadia Vinogradova Schiffer who came up with this analogy. She said, this is like for oceans and ocean altimetry and satellite oceanography. This will be like going from Hubble to Webb in terms of the clarity and the increased fidelity of what we're able to observe. In particular, eddies and currents that we think are really important in the role that oceans play in climate in transporting heat and also carbon vertically in the oceans, as well as around the world. But inland SWAT will be able to see inland water bodies, lakes, reservoirs, rivers, that we've never been able to see with an altimeter before. That's going to allow us to monitor water levels and address flooding. For example, you know, today from space we can see extent of flooding. SWAT will allow us for the first time to understand how deep is that flooding. So a lot of incredibly exciting new capabilities coming out with SWAT. And again, that launch is coming right up. With Tempo, the launch is targeted for March of 2023, apologies for that, probably late March. And it will be the first ever space-based instrument to monitor air pollutants hourly across North America during the daytime. And it will be hosted on a commercial geostationary spacecraft. So this is another extraordinarily exciting capability and also of real interest to our sister agencies in the federal government and at the state and local levels. This will provide incredible insights into human health, but also is related to other issues that we're dealing with like wildfires and the pollutants that come, the air quality issues that are attended to those. So really important mission coming up. All right, let's see, what are we talking about next? Oh, yeah. So we've got a couple of recent and upcoming tech demos in July. We launched the CTMFD. This is demonstrating a carbon nanotude volometers. So the idea here is to demonstrate a technology to measure total solar irradiance and important climate and earth science, earth system science variable. But to do so in a 6U CubeSat, right? So this is a really, you know, could help us make this measurement far more affordable. Also, the multiband uncooled radiometric imager, MuriFD, that will launch sometime, I believe, in December. And again, demonstrating a two-band longwave infrared radiometric imager using an uncooled focal plane array. This is really important because the cooling is one of the drivers of cost, complexity of life in a longwave infrared imager. So we're trying to see if we can get performance that is comparable to the Landsat tiers. So really exciting new tech demos. Thanks very much to our ESTO team. And now let's see the, let's see. Let's go on to your system observatory. These are the Explorer missions. So I mentioned these earlier. It's the same graphic in the middle, but it's different words around the edges. So, you know, previously I talked about the five Earth System Observatory missions that we're building and, or that are part of the core Earth System Observatory. I mentioned the Earth System Explorers. This is the competitive layer to the Earth System Observatory. These are the Explorer observables that the Decadal identified. There are seven of them. And we're really very excited to be moving out on this announcement as well. So we released a community announcement on October 4th. It'll be open to all observation types recommended by the Decadal. But we, as we indicated in that announcement, greenhouse gases will likely be one area of emphasis. And the idea is to, again, launch these two by the end of the decade or shortly at the beginning of the first of the next decade. And so the idea here is to bring that innovation to augment the core missions. Over on the right, you see our approach to how we're going to implement the Earth System Explorers. So these will be PI managed cost cap missions at $310 million in fiscal year 24 exclusive of the launch services. So in other words, NASA will provide launch services separately. These will be a two step selection. So in the first announcement, we'll select up to four proposals to go into step one. Those will be approximately nine month phase A concept studies. And then we'll have a down select to go into step two, which is actually building out the mission. And we'll select up to two missions. And again, so the idea is that likely one will focus on greenhouse gases. Those two missions will have a slight stagger in the phasing and funding. And that's why you see a slight stagger in the launch dates. All right. Landsat next. So landsat next is the plan there is a constellation of three identical observatories. And, and they are approximately just equally distributed in orbit. So, so 120 degrees apart. That constellation then does it provides the full nine day global revisit frequency that today. We get from the combination of landsat eight and nine with expanded spectral bands. And at 21 in the V swear and five in the tier. And again, we're, we're, we're driving to launch by 2030. So we where are we on this we held the KDP program management council yesterday. And we have upcoming a community forum on December 8th. Let's see the, and then that that community forum is specifically focused on the landsat next instrument suite RFI that we released. And I apologize that these dates aren't on here. So let me say it slow. We released the RFI on November 3rd. And I believe the RFI closes today. So then on December 8th, we'll have a community forum that is is is really focused on that RFI the RFPs for the instruments would be then anticipated in the spring of 2023. So, you know, we are we are really excited. Many of us got to attend the the PCORA conference. And, and celebrate 50 years of of landsat continuity. But, you know, we're just we're just as excited or even more excited about what landsat next is going to to allow us to do again across the board in science, but also opening up. A host of new applications areas because of the, the reef, the combination of the refresh, the, the increase in the spectral bands. And, and having them all on one platform the improvement in the spatial resolution and the the signature accuracy and and an interest and measurement quality that has made landsat next the gold standard. For all of those years. So really excited to be moving forward with landsat next. All right. What else 2023 is NASA's year of open science. And, and kicks off a transition to open science or call or tops to energize and uplift open science across the scientific community. This is again an investment in increasing the visibility of open science and integrating open science into themes at large scale events and conferences. Capacity sharing will be producing a lot of online free and open science curriculum at to to teach across our community, not just the principles of open science, but some really practical, provide really practical information on how to do it. And, and, you know, creating, I'll say with a small C certification process that people are certification training that people can go to, to get really trained on on how, how that's going to work. We're also tackling the incentives associated with open source science because, because it is a change in the way of doing business. You know, so we'll be looking to work from NASA and with partners on establishing ways of recognizing great contributors to the community who contribute through the open sharing of their work. And then, you know, just moving the whole the whole community towards openness. We think is going to be critical for, for increasing the pace of discovery and use of our, of our scientific knowledge for, for welcoming more participation in science in a variety of ways for sharing that knowledge that today is hidden locked up in, in individual teams around the world, and, and so forth. So this is a really important SMD wide effort that earth science is leading, and we're leading for two reasons. One, because of the sheer volume of data that we have and two, and probably the larger element is the demand from wide variety of users of our data that makes, makes earth science the logical lead for, for this effort. Okay, and earth action strategy. So I think this is, well, it's my second to the last slide. So this is something that our earth science leadership team has been working on for, well over the last year. It's really about driving the impact that we get from, you know, about a billion and a half dollars that we invest every year in observations and research, and, and make sure that we're delivering that impact to meet the needs not of federal agencies, state, local and tribal governments, but also individuals. And so, so we often express this as a pyramid and let me start at the bottom because, you know, everything starts with when you're when you're talking about earth science, everything starts with observations. Of course, we, you know, in a forum like this, we tend to focus on the space based observations, but also the airborne observations, the networks of ground observations are critically important and the, and the, and the foundation for what we understand about how the earth system works today, and, and, and how it's how it's changing, and, and what it might be in the future. Resting upon that is our investment in research, analysis, modeling, and app, applications, incubation. And, you know, that's, that's the work. That's a lot of the work that we have historically done in extracting the meaning and the value in the, and the, and the science out of our observations. As we move up in the period pyramid, we're looking to, to develop what we're calling earth action solutions. This is, these are, these are efforts to scale NASA science and tools for a broader reaching in enabling climate response. Through national and international partnerships. And then, at the top of the pyramid, not because it's most important, but because it can only happen if everything underneath it happens is the earth information center, which is physical and virtual place for engaging with our observations and earth action solutions. Another really important thing I want to draw your attention to is over at the left, we think there are lots of benefits for science, as well as enabling decisions. And that's that that that circulates, you know, that's that circulation you see over on the left. We often think about science informing action. And of course, that's critically important. But we actually think that when, when individuals, when agencies try to make use of our data, they learn things or they can tell us, they can tell us where we got it right and where we don't yet have it right. They can feed their data that they collect on the ground back into our science. So we think that feedback loop from the users of our information back into inform the research that we fund. Maybe the observations that we make, certainly the applications and the actions solutions that we develop that that's a really important feedback mechanism to to energize it. And I don't say that to imply that it doesn't exist today. I know I know that there are a lot of people working in that space, but we think that it could benefit from from more attention there. And then just looking at the bottom, there are major applications and themes that that we're focusing on, again, often in partnership so I don't have a lot of other agency logos on here, but that should not lead you to believe that they're that we aren't really working those connections. I mentioned earlier greenhouse gas monitoring. That's, it's not quite fair to say that's new, but it's a significant increase in our emphasis. Wildfires, health and air quality, sea level, energy efficiency and infrastructure, agriculture and crops, disasters, water resources and biodiversity. These are all areas, thematic areas that that will come to life through this pyramid. So we'll through this through the strategy will broaden our partnerships across the range of government and non governmental partners. Again, that actually this also is traceable back to the Decadal survey recall that the Decadal survey talked about the importance of continuing to invest in the synergy of science and the use of science. And, you know, I could go on about examples there, but I won't I will just close this slide with one really important announcement. Today, we just announced a new senior executive position, the new associate director for earth action within the earth science division. So that's a that's a new posting available today. It's open through January 3. And I hope some of you on the line will consider applying for that position we are really excited. That will be the senior leader on our team that's driving this strategy forward. All right, one, I'm going to, I don't think we shouldn't have done it this way. I don't want to end on a sad note. It's sad for me, but of course, deep congratulations to Pam Malar. She has been named the laboratory of atmospheric and space physics, first deputy director for strategic development and communications. So Pam is heading to last, of course, you all know Pam and love her as the director of ESTO the earth science technology office she's been in that position for the last five years and just done incredible work. She's received two Goddard Space Flight Center director awards and has been recognized for exceptional achievement in for diversity and equal employment opportunity. Pam has been just one of the. She's been part of it. I, you know, I think of her as part of the bedrock of my team here at our science. So I'm really going to miss her but Pam deep appreciation for your leadership over over many years. Most recently as the director of ESTO but of course, your, your contributions to, to NASA and to earth science did not start just five years ago it's been a long career so we wish you all the best as you head off to last and and with deep appreciation. And I think that is where will will wrap up the formal remarks here. So, with that, I think I will stop. Let's assume I can find a way to stop sharing. Stop. There we go stop sharing and so Wendy back over to you. Yeah, so we've got, we've got a lot of questions in the chat we probably won't be able to get to them all we'll try to get to as many as we can. And also lots of thank yous in there for you Karen so you're going to say something. Sorry, I forgot to do something really important, and I wouldn't mind if before we go to questions we could just do that now is we've got my. I say my because I'm so proud of them and I love them all but our NASA earth science leadership team on the line right now. And folks, I know you're not all in in a place where you may be able to turn on your cameras but if you can perhaps turn on your cameras. So we've got Katie Boggs who is our acting flight director, Julie Robinson who's joining us from Europe and I guess it's not too late there yet Julie. Let's see from our RNA team we've got Jack K and David Considine from applied sciences Lawrence Friedle and Emily silent glassman from esto we've got Pam who I just carried on about Pam if I'd known you're on the line I don't know I just tempered my comments, I'm teasing, I'm teasing I meant every word, and Mike sea bloom is is there from esto as well, and representing our data side of the house is Katie veins. And Kate Beckers hiding she is our, our executive officer and co host, and of course you all met Wendy, who is our new new since last week spoke new head of our communications and efforts here in earth science. So, with that, I know we're going to questions now team be prepared because it may be appropriate. I don't know yet what the questions are this is always the fun part, but we may. I either I may ask you to take on a question or you may volunteer to take on a question. All right. Thanks, Wendy back to you. All right, thank you. All right, so scrolling back up into the top there was a question posted by either George or Jorge I don't know how to pronounce your name Vasquez asking whether there was any discussion concerning the balance between continuing support for current missions, versus the development of new missions. There was any discussion. So, I'm not sure at what point so so of course, the decadal survey took on that question explicitly when it when it sought to balance the, the investments that they that they thought that we could make in the new decadal missions. And of course they they had well in mind the the program of record and the competitive lines of our budget. So, so yeah they the decadal. Originally, gave that a lot of thought and through that IRB process. The IRB team also the IRB team also took on this question. And, and I'm going to actually offer the mic over to Katie Boggs from who was as I mentioned our acting flight director. Yeah, so, like Karen said, the decadal had taken on and said, you know that if we had financial or, you know, budgetary constraints that we should, you know, first delay the big missions and and to get the new one started in the competitive area. In the IRB report, you'll see that they found that we actually already made all the adjustments that have been recommended in the decadal. Including, you know, things like having to push out a couple of things because we we've had some challenges due to COVID in our in our bigger missions. And so that's that was the high level finding there that is like we've already done everything that the cattle has said to do as far as that was concerned getting the balance. All right. So if we're good on that one. Let's pivot to the next one. There is a question from Russell about whether there has been any thought been having been given to repurposing the geo carb scientists. And then he cites some very real human impacts there. Yeah, you know, first let me say that that decisions, you know, like this one are decisions that that are that are really challenging. They're hard. They're hard for us to make the hard for for everyone involved, because we all believe so deeply in what we do. And we're all personally invested and and I want to say, you know, some of you may know my my personal history. I have this experience in my background as well. From, you know, from the early days, you know, from the end post mission, which was was restructured as JPSS.  That said, you know, this information is very is very new. And, and now that it is is is open out in the open, we can we can work with the team to, you know, to talk through all of all of these issues. So I think, you know, the, I think the one thing I would say is that we're just starting the discussions with the Oklahoma team to understand the implications and assist them in any way possible to You know, work through the applications. Thanks for that Karen and also a follow on question also from Russell. He is asking about collaborating with Oklahoma partners asking specifically what does that mean from what I understand the instrument team and research team are being defunded you respond to that. So again, it's it's just it's it's really early days. Our team is is in in communication with the Oklahoma team to again work through work through those those issues. We, we do care very much about the people who've invested time and energy we know that they're, you know, they're They're real human impacts here but we are just we've just starting that conversation. And of course, you know, we'll follow and support Oklahoma's lead on that. I should also say that that, or perhaps I can say that while we're, we are bringing the geocarb project to a close. We, the full contract value will remain with with the university there so that we can do this in an orderly way. Excellent. Thank you. Okay. Another question in the queue comes from Kevin, who is asking about what role do international partners missions and information systems, such as EU co2 and Merlin co2 to etc play in NASA's greenhouse gas strategy. Right sorry I'm just scrolling and looking for that question can you just read that one one more time. Sure, sure. What role do international partners missions and information systems, for example, EU co2 and Merlin, etc play in NASA's greenhouse gas strategy. Absolutely. So, so international greenhouse gas observations are a key key contribution to the strategy, both in terms of the science and actually making data more broadly available, collaborating on the science, the tool development and so forth. So, yeah, international partners, national partners, all very, very important to that strategy and I see Julie has her hand up. Julie, did you want to comment on that one. Sure, I was just going to say that that's why I'm here in Europe at SEAS, the Committee on Earth Observing Satellites because we're working with international partners on everything from what are the most interoperable ways of combining data from different satellites, talking about the commercial sector and I would, you know, a large portion of this meeting is really focused on how do we best cooperate in climate change measurement and greenhouse gas measurement in particular. Thanks Julie. I also noticed that Jack has mentioned he could add something that might be useful as well to the conversation Jack. Yeah, thanks. I do want to be sure that folks are aware of certain opportunities that we have that support international cooperation. Every other year we run a solicitation for US participating investigators for people to be involved. It's a small solicitation, but we've been doing this for a while and I think we did one selection in Roses 22, the next would be Roses 24 and those are for five years. So that's something that we do. There's also with, there are certain things that like in the land cover land use change area, the multi-source land imaging program where we specifically support people to be able to look at the investigations from different providers and try and figure out how to integrate them together because that's especially for like Landsat and Sentinel type observations and a variety of other things that we do and we should note that there's really no solicitation that we do that limits people to only look at NASA data. There may be some, we'll say look at that, you should look at NASA data, but it's always in the context of other data and if there's science benefits to be gained by looking at integrating non-NASA data with NASA data, that's for a game for people. And there are some things that we try to look at what I call cooperative calibration and validation and are there things that we do especially with our field programs where we can sort of be mutually beneficial. So like there's a long history of cooperation with the European Space Agency and sort of integrate the calibration and validation for ISAT and CRIOSAT and a variety of other campaigns that we've worked things together mutually beneficial ways. And so I don't want to list them all that would take more time than I should spend on this, but there are lots of opportunities for engagement. Excellent. Thank you, Jack. Okay, another question in the chat comes from Emily. The question is how does weather fit into the NASA Earth Action Strategy major applications themes and needs? It's a major focus area that's not listed. And I know Lawrence may be able to chime in on that one. Great. Thank you, Emily, for the question. Certainly we recognize that weather factors into all the different applications that we have. And so when you list it there, yes, we understand that weather information, weather knowledge factors into all of the ones that are listed there for the EIC. So there, their weather will be sort of factored in there. And certainly the Earth Science Division does lots of research when it comes to weather and advancing knowledge about the weather. And so I would say instead of needing weather to be listed as a separate application, I would say think about it as it's going to be integrated into all of them. At the same time, as we move into this Earth Action Solutions, we'll continue to look to see to look at weather in the context of that work, especially as we are engaging with other federal agencies and companies to sort of see what might be a unique role for NASA in that space that's not already covered by others. So, so that's sort of the EIC at the current form. Obviously, it's going to be evolving in terms of our thoughts related to it. So that's why you don't see it as a separate item at the moment. Okay, thank you. And then we also have a question specifically about the Earth Information Center, a general question from Twilight just asking what more is there anything more that can be shared regarding a new Earth Information Center? Yeah, so I will start there. I will, I will start taking that one. First, if you want a little more, you know, we do have a, the beginnings of a website that just talks about the plans there. It's at science.nasa.gov slash Earth Science slash Earth Information Center. You can just Google it NASA Earth Information Center, you'll get there. So we're, you know, we mentioned the thematic areas and of course that last question was about about weather in that sense. We're building up the content for those, for those thematic areas now, and, and developing the concept for the first instantiation of the physical space of the Earth Information Center that we'll plan to roll out to open up next year. But it's, you know, it's intended to be, and I'll talk for just a minute about the physical instantiation. The idea is, you know, as you all know, better than most, the information that we, the observations we make and the, and the information we get from our integrative models and so forth, that's, there's a lot of data, a lot of, of information and often visuals are the best way to convey that information. So a big part of what we'll do in the physical location is actually just make those, those observations, those model outputs, those tools, those interactive tools available for people to, to work with. It'll also be an educational space. But the, you know, the concept is, is still evolving and developing and, and you'll, you'll hear a lot more about this in the coming months. And I should also mention this is a, a whole of NASA effort. We've got expertise from across the NASA centers that, that is, that is, that is coming together to pull this off. You know, Earth Science, we have strong Earth Science presence at, at five or six of the, of the NASA centers. And a lot of that is coming together behind as the, as the intellectual engine behind the content we're building. So, but you'll see it evolving rapidly over the coming, I would say, couple of years. Excellent. Thank you. I wanted to point out one note in the Q&A box that Molly asks about information of where we can find the SES position that Karen mentioned earlier, and Kate posted a link in case that would be helpful to folks on the line. Okay, the next question I have is from Chris. It's got a few components to it, so bear with me. The U.S., primarily via NASA, has built up a significant infrastructure to measure greenhouse gases, primarily through the OCO missions, but now also with funding from geocarb, with the loss of geocarb in the aging situation and limited capabilities of OCOs relative to upcoming next-gen international instruments. Do you have a desire, oops, I lost it, to keep the science team in place? And if so, how? Especially given that 310 million is like may not be enough to make a competitive greenhouse gas instrument that can complement CO2M. And that one, I'm going to open that one up to Jack, if you're able to comment now. I'm probably not the right one to talk about what one does with the teams that were funded as part of the missions. I can talk to where we have competitive opportunities for post-mission teams. So like we've currently got the science team for the OCO missions that we compete every couple of years where we compete that, but that's different. That's more for data exploitation than for the team of people who were supported by the missions to help make sure that those missions would be able to produce the products. Obviously people could pose the solicitations that we have, but that's a different kind of work than what was being done by the team members who were really working on making sure that those missions were producing products. Wendy, I can comment here as well. So again, as I mentioned, we're still in the very early process of managing the transition from geocarb, but we are also increasing our investment in greenhouse gas. I'll say analysis and tools in the President's budget this year. We have funding for greenhouse gas center, which is in some ways a subset of the Earth Information Center. And that's intended to do the data integration and work the science of greenhouse gases. So that's a new effort that will be starting up pending appropriations. So there are a lot of pieces here that are all moving. None of this is a baked transition. We're going to have to figure it out as we go along with the community. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Karen. All right, so we have another question in the box from Kevin. It seems that many CalVal resources and infrastructure tend to be developed one mission at a time. Could there be perhaps a formalized support mechanism or competitive opportunity for development of CalVal resources or infrastructure that could support multiple ESO missions, the program of record and maybe even with partners in industry. So we're going to start with Jack and see where we go from there. Okay, I'll deal with part of it. Maybe not so much the competitive opportunities, but to say that, you know, yeah, some of the missions that we have have contributed to developing their CalVal, some of their CalVal things like, you know, just as one example, say, you know, SWAT help develop SWAT, but, you know, a lot of the instruments that support calibration and validation are supported and ongoing basis through the research program, which we really do on behalf of all ESD. So there are some things that are, you know, facility or quasi-facility sensors like UAVSAR and its rough shoots. So UAVSAR is something that's really critical to a number of missions. And so that's supported and we're looking to evolve the technology. And similarly, there's the LVSYDAR and there's a variety of passive sensors, like the, you know, the Averis and, you know, high-test and prism and things that we've come to see that one sees that support the research and calibration and validation. So some of those capabilities exist in an organized way and in sort of intentional way. Some are principle investigator instruments that come through the research program, and some may be things that will come up through the missions where they have unique things. I can't really, I think, get into the competitive part of it. There are some competitive things that we've historically done for instruments, but they haven't been, that was before ESO really, so like when we do the AITT solicitations for sort of a future generation of instruments that could support a variety of activities. Whether there's something specifically for ESO, I think, I can't really speak to that. But it is important, I think, to recognize that a lot of the things that one can think about wanting for calibration and validation are likely to be there. We do have to think years ahead because, you know, as some of these instruments age, they may have limited lifetime and, you know, we need to make sure that the instruments that we have today will still be around and ideally improved by the, when we get to the missions of the future that have more capability and may put more demands on calibration and validation.  So those are conversations that we have, but there's always more that one could think about. All right, thanks, Jack. And I think we have Katie Baines on the line as well, who may be able to further add some more detail. Yeah, so can you hear me okay? Yes. All right, so I will answer this from more of a technical perspective rather than a scientific perspective. In the Chief Science Data Office, we've been thinking about the ESO mission missions as a joint observatory for a while now. And one of the things that we've been talking about is doing shared infrastructure across missions and providing some level of managed service that can services and data co-location that can be utilized by all missions. So this is definitely where our head is from a technology perspective, providing equal access and unified access to all observatory resources from a single place, from an infrastructure perspective, and also providing a space for collaboration for scientific research as we move forward in these missions. So yeah, that's, I hope to talk more about this in the future, but this is exactly where we've been looking, not just for CalVal purposes, but for data integration purposes, algorithm development purposes, reprocessing purposes. Everything that is part of our technology stack, the data systems has been looking at a unified solutions and better streamlining and efficiencies for ESO missions. Excellent. Thanks, Katie. All right, so we are actually at time. We're going to try to cram in one more question. It's from Evan. What is the status of the EOS platform drifting orbit RFI workshop reports? And I believe Julie's on the line and can take that one. Then we'll have to close out. Sure. So, uh, Lucia Susie and also the different project scientists across the missions are working hard to compile that report together. We've been getting some quick looks of that. I think it is going to address the open action from the past scene review. And then we'll be moving on into the next stages of that evaluation process. Excellent. All right. Thanks, Julie. And we are over time now. I think everyone for joining us and Karen, especially for all the remarks that you gave today and appreciate everyone taking part. Have a great rest of your day. Bye now. Thanks everyone for joining us.


Israeli tanks moved along the border with Lebanon on Oct. 8, as tension mounted between Israel and Lebanon's powerful armed group Hezbollah, following the deadliest attack in years by Palestinian gunmen on Israel, the scale of the attack prompted fears that a wider conflict could break out between Israel and other factions opposed to it in the region, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, an armed party backed by Iran that has previously clashed with Israel, Hezbollah on Sunday said it had launched, guided rockets and artillery onto three posts in the Sheba farms in solidarity with the Palestinian people.