An important purpose of national marine sanctuaries is to ensure that the significant resources they protect provide benefits to the public. This performance measure is intended to track the extent to which marine sanctuaries benefit the public through the provision of “resource services”. Resource services include commonly defined “ecosystem services” as well as the services provided by archaeological resources. The measure uses status ratings from sanctuary condition reports to quantify the proportion of services rated as either “Good” or “Good/Fair,” both of which are considered acceptable levels of service potential.

This measure tracks the progress of ongoing or completed recovery actions included in NMFS approved recovery plans for species listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Recovery plans include a list of actions necessary to de-list the species. These include actions that may be completed in a year or that may take many years to complete or are ongoing. Recovery of a species may take decades. Completed recovery actions shows incremental progress.

Each site within the National Marine Sanctuary System conducts education through formal education, informal education, and outreach for education. Programming includes hands-on activities as well as distance learning. K-12 student participation is tracked in both formal and informal education programs by counting the number of students participating in these programs. Data is collected yearly from each site and headquarters and is summarized system wide. Using these methods we can track the number of K-12 students engaged in formal or informal education and stewardship programs.

This measure tracks the number of protected species stocks for which adequate assessments are available. Assessments are vital to determine the scientific basis for supporting and evaluating the impact of management actions. To be deemed adequate, assessments must be based on recent quantitative or qualitative analysis sufficient to determine current stock status based on a variety of data category levels (e.g., life history, threats, stock structure, assessment quality, assessment frequency, and abundance), and conservation status. Stock status projections are highly dependent on survey frequencies, assessment time frames, and fiscal constraints. This measure covers the protected species stocks covered by the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) or listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The number of such stocks continues to increase as new species are listed and as new stocks of listed species and marine mammals are identified— the latter typically indicates increased knowledge about population stock structure.

This measures the accuracy of wave height forecasts, which are important for marine commerce. Accuracy is defined in terms of error. For the Day 1 wave height forecast, errors less than 2 feet are defined as accurate. Since FY 2014, a higher threshold of forecast errors has been used to define correct forecasts whenever higher waves have occurred. Hence, all wave height forecasts with errors less than (4 feet, 6 feet) are accurate forecasts when the observed wave height equals or exceeds (10 feet, 20 feet) respectively. This measure uses complex skill scores to analyze individual wave height components.

Ensures that NOAA safely archives critical data and information according to National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) standards.

Visibility and cloud ceiling forecasts are critical for aircraft safety and efficient operations. When visibility or cloud ceilings are low, pilots rely on instruments to navigate instead of visual reconnaissance. The Federal Aviation Administration establishes Instrument Flight Rule (IFR) thresholds—visibility less than three statute miles and/or cloud ceilings at, or below, 1000 feet—for safety. NWS assesses the quality of IFR threshold forecasts in response to these requirements. Fundamental statistical metrics, specifically Probability of Detection (POD) and False Alarm Ratio (FAR), are used to track IFR forecast performance. Probability of Detection (POD), also known as Accuracy, is a ratio that describes the number of times IFR is correctly forecasted compared to the total number of IFR occurrences. FAR is a ratio that describes the number of IFR forecasts when IFR was not observed compared to the total number of forecast attempts. These two metrics must always be used in conjunction, as one can be improved at the expense of the other. Greater accuracy and a minimized FAR result in safer flights and fewer flight delays; conversely, poorer accuracy and an increased FAR result in a greater incidence of unnecessary flight delays.

Key activities for the development and launch of weather satellites and products are identified and tracked using a project management system.

Metric calculated as the percent of Climate Prediction Center long range temperature and precipitation outlooks (monthly and seasonal outlooks) exceeding Heidke Skill Score (HSS) of 10 (10% better than a climatological forecast). Due to the scarcity of long-range outlooks (six per month), scores are smoothed over a three-year period. To better track results, three individual metrics are tracked – 1) All forecasts combined, 2) Temperature only, and 3) Precipitation only.

The indicator shows the overall growth, in petaflops (PF), of the operational and research and development High Performance Computing capability. Our current enterprise supplies 16PF to support modeling requirements across NOAA. Growth in capacity will lessen the gap in current modeling requirement and provide additional capability to the modeling community within NOAA.