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centers provide Navy with historical data critical for air and 

 ocean modeling in tactical METOC systems. Through this 

 partnership easy access to important data is gained from around 

 the world that might not otherwise be readily available. Navy 

 strongly supports continuation of the government -run national 

 data centers. 



In the area of remote sensing. Navy, Air Force, and NOAA 

 have long shared the task of collecting and processing vast 

 quantities of atmospheric and oceanic data from civilian and 

 military satellites. Few civilian oceanographers realize that 

 the sea surface temperature fields used routinely in their 

 research have been processed at the Naval Oceanographic Office. 

 DOD, NOAA, and NASA are now converging the civil and military 

 satellite programs into a single system that satisfies their 

 different requirements and v;ill be considerably less costly to 

 the taxpayer. 



The National Ice Center, located in the Washington area, is 

 another good example of military/civil partnerships. Operated 

 cooperatively for nearly 20 years by Navy and NOAA, with Coast 

 Guard joining last year, the Center provides ocean and Great 

 Lakes ice analyses and forecasts for Navy and civil users around 

 Che world. 



A unique collaboration between Navy and the national 

 Geographic Society is the "MARCO POLO" educational program. Each 

 year selected students and teachers board Navy survey ships for 

 about two weeks to learn the basics of at -sea navigation and 

 ocean data collection, as well as study the history and geography 

 of the areas they visit. 



Public access to Navy information has been an active and 

 important issue in the Naval oceanography community over the past 

 decade. In response to enormous changes in the world's 

 political/military situation, major changes have been made in 

 classification, foreign disclosure, and export control policies. 

 In partnership with the Congress, Navy participated in then- 

 Senator Gore's working group that reviewed the usefulness to 

 global modeling research of the Arctic under ice data collected 

 by Navy submarines, and the feasibility of declassifying it. As 

 a result Navy was able to make much of the data available to 

 researchers . 



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