NOAA monthly U.S., global climate report call: November 21

TRANSCRIPT 

NOAA Monthly U.S./Global Climate Media Telecon 
November 21, 2024, at 11:00 am EDT via AT&T Teleconference
Hosted by NOAA NESDIS Public Affairs 

Media advisory about briefing: 

https://www.noaa.gov/media-advisory/noaa-monthly-us-global-climate-report-call-november-21

Lisa (Operator):

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the NOAA monthly climate call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we'll conduct a question and answer session. If you have a question, press one, and then zero. If you should require assistance on today's call, please press star and then zero. And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, John Bateman. Please go ahead.

John Bateman:

Thanks so much, Lisa, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the monthly climate update call, part of the suite of climate services that NOAA provides to government, business, academia, the media, and the public to support informed decision-making. I'm John Bateman with NOAA Communications, and I'll be facilitating the call today. If you have additional questions after the conclusion of today's call, my colleague, John Leslie and I can both be reached by email at, and I will spell it, Nesdis.pa@noaa.gov. That is nesdis.pa, as in public affairs, @noaa.gov. Today's update will feature three short presentations, followed by an operator-assisted question and answer session, and a copy of the presentation our speakers will be following can be downloaded from the link in the online media advisory. With that, I'll introduce our speakers.

Our first presenter is Karin Gleason, monitoring section chief at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, who will provide a summary of the October 2024 US and Global Climate Report, as well as the latest drought monitor update. Our second presenter is Mark Svoboda, Director of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, who will review the extensive dryness and drought that covered much of the continuous US in October. And our last presenter will be Matt Rosencrans with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, who will provide the latest El Nino, La Nina update, as well as the US seasonal outlooks for temperature, precipitation and drought for December, January, and February. With that, we will kick off this media briefing with Karin from NOAA NCEI.

Karin Gleason:

Thank you, John, and thanks to everyone for joining the call today. I want to begin by thanking everyone for their patience over the last eight weeks while NCEI worked to recover from the impacts following Hurricane Helene to NCEI's headquarters in Asheville, North Carolina and the surrounding communities. NCEI was able to release its September reports in late October, and recently released the October reports on schedule in early November. Our online products and tools are now being updated on a regular basis and are operational once again.

And with that, let's begin our presentation on slide number two, looking at the global temperature data for October 2024. On slide two, we see that the global surface temperature anomaly was... [inaudible 00:03:27] above the 20th century average, making this the second-warmest October on record and five hundredths of a degree Celsius cooler than what we saw back in October of 2023. Global land only temperatures for October ranked warmest on record at 2.18 degrees Celsius above average. Ocean only temperatures ranked second-warmest on record for October at 0.94 degrees Celsius above average.

Looking at the temperature departure map on the left and the corresponding percentile in the map on the right, we see above average temperatures that are denoted by shades of red, and below average temperature shades of blue. Record warm October temperatures covered much of the arctic, as well as portions of the southwestern US and Northern Mexico. Record warmth also impacted parts of India and Pakistan, as well as pockets across Africa and South America. Areas with cooler than average temperatures included the southern half of Greenland, parts of Western Canada, and Eastern Alaska, Central and Southern Africa, Central and Northern Asia, parts of Southwest Asia, and areas of Eastern Antarctica.

Over the global oceans, record warm temperatures were most notable in the Caribbean, parts of the Eastern Indian Ocean, the Northwestern Pacific, and parts of the Southern Ocean. Widespread areas of near average to below average sea surface temperatures occurred in the Eastern equatorial Pacific, the southeastern Pacific, the Gulf of Alaska, the Bering Sea, and small portions of the Southern Indian Ocean. During October, approximately 15.5% of the world's ocean surface had a record high temperature, exceeding the previous October record set in 2015 by nearly six and a half percent. Looking at continental temperature rankings for October, North America ranked warmest with South America and Oceania ranking second warmest. Europe was fourth warmest, Asia fifth warmest, and Africa 10th warmest.

Shifting our attention now to slide number three, we see the January through October 2024 global temperature percentile map, the year to date temperature anomaly plots for the 10 warmest years on record, as well as the annual temperature rankings outlook for the year. The January to October global surface temperature ranked warmest in the 175-year record at 1.28 degrees Celsius or 2.30 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term average, exceeding last year's year-to-date value by 14 hundredths of a degree Celsius. Record warm temperatures were observed across large portions of Central America and northern South America, the Northeast US and Southeastern Canada, large portions of Africa, as well as Southern and Eastern Europe, much of China, South Korea and Japan and Southeast Asia.

Small regions of land areas with near average to below average year-to-date temperatures occurred in portions of southeastern Greenland and Iceland, parts of southwestern Alaska, the southern tip of South America and the Russian far east. In a pattern similar to recent year-to-date periods, the first 10 months of the year had record warm sea surface temperatures covering most of the tropical and subtropical Atlantic, most of the northern half of the Indian Ocean, the Western equatorial Pacific and parts of the Northwestern Pacific and small areas on the southern Atlantic, Southern Pacific, and Southern Indian Ocean. By contrast, areas where oceans were near to below average for this period include the southeastern Pacific, the southwestern Atlantic extending to western parts of the Southern Ocean, southwestern Indian Ocean, and an area in the North Atlantic. Looking at the time series plot on the right-hand side of the slide for the year-to-date temperature anomalies for the 10 warmest years on record, we see that January through October 2024, the anomaly value is depicted by the black bar on the graph has been consistently above the year-to-date anomaly values for the 10 warmest years on record and is indeed the warmest January through October period on record with 2023 coming in second place for January through October and 2016 rounding out the top three at this point in the calendar year.

And according to NCEI's annual temperature ranking outlook statistical analysis, as depicted by the bar plot on the bottom of the slide, there is a greater than 99% chance that 2024 will end as the warmest year on record, exceeding the record warmth observed just last year. Moving on to slide number four, we are looking a little closer to home at the contiguous US. We see that October temperatures averaged 59 degrees Fahrenheit, which was nearly five degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term knee. This translates to a ranking of second warmest in the last 130 years. Looking at the temperature rank map on the left, we see that in general temperatures were above average to record warm across all of the lower 48 states, with record warm October temperatures across the states of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Precipitation for the month averaged 0.95 inches, which was 1.21 inches below the long-term mean, which was second-driest on record for this month. Looking at the precipitation map on the right, we can see that precipitation was below average across much of the US, with near average conditions concentrated in portions of the west and above average precipitation across Florida. New Jersey and Delaware ranked driest on record, while 19 additional states from Texas to the northeast had one of their 10 driest Octobers on record.

Looking now at slide number five, we see the temperature and precipitation ranks for the January to October year-to-date period across the contiguous US, temperatures averaged 58.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which was 3.3 degrees Fahrenheit above average. This was also second warmest for this ten-month period. Looking at the temperature rank maps on the left, we see that nearly the entire lower 48 had either much above average or record warm temperatures for this ten-month period. New Mexico, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine each ranked warmest on record, with an additional 35 states ranking among their 10 warmest such year-to-date periods on record. Precipitation for this year-to-date period averaged 26.17 inches, which was 0.83 inches above average, which translates to an above average ranking or in the top third of the historical distribution. Dryer than average conditions were present across portions of the northwest, northern Rockies and Plains, Southwest, central Plains and Ohio Valley.

Conversely, precipitation was above average across parts of the upper Midwest, Great Lakes, the Northeast, and from the mid-Atlantic to Florida and across parts of the central Gulf Coast. Looking now at the latest confirmed billion-dollar weather and climate disasters on slide number six, no new billion-dollar disasters were confirmed in November. Although three new events including hurricanes Debbie, Helene, and Milton were added in late October when the September report was issued. For the year-to-date, there have been 24 confirmed events identified through October, which is second only to the 27 events identified through October of last year. These 24 disasters identified during 2024 consists of 17 severe storm events, four tropical cyclone events, one wildfire event, and two winter storms. Looking now at slide number seven and the latest US drought monitor map released just this morning, we see that approximately 45.5% of the contiguous US is currently in drought.

This is up about 14% when compared with early October. Drought conditions contracted or became less severe across parts of the Pacific Northwest and the Central Plains. Drought conditions expanded or intensified across large portions of the Northeast and specifically along the eastern seaboard. Parts of the Great Lakes, the Northern Rockies and Plains, the southeast, the deep south and the south one. Outside of the contiguous US, drought coverage expanded and intensified across the Hawaiian Islands. And with that, I'll turn the presentation over to Mark to talk more about this expansion of drought across the country.

Mark Svoboda:

Thank you, Karin. Yeah. Let's do a little deeper dive into drought. I thought I would start with where are we now with the rest of the presentation focused on October, but you can see for the three weeks since the last part of October, the dry pattern has continued along the eastern seaboard into parts of the southeast and the Gulf Coast, which is going to play off as you'll see in the coming maps how dry October was. We have seen some really good rains in the Heartland Central part of the United States, though that was very much needed and that pattern has continued as well. Good to see that. That's slide eight. Let's go to slide nine. This really by a lot of definition fits what we call a flash drought where the map on the left was the beginning of October.

I think even without seeing statistics, you can see the map on the right really shows how drought has expanded very rapidly over that four-week period ending October 29, and in fact we saw a 22 and a half percent increase in drought D1, almost 20% in D2, which is severe drought, and then just shy of 4% in extreme drought D3 and even a slight increase in the worst drought category D4 or exceptional drought. These two maps show very quickly how things have expanded. That's playing off continued dryness and you're going to see some impact information I provide later on in the winter wheat belt. You can see that dryness extending all the way from the border with Montana and Canada all the way down to the Rio Grande part of Texas, and then remnant dryness that we've seen a pretty strong drought this year in the Ohio, West Virginia headwaters region for that, which is again, another cause for why we've seen low water levels in the Mississippi River, for example.

Let's go to slide 10, some more specific numbers. This actually shows the change in drought monitor classified categories from D0 to D4. You can see across most of the country between October 1st and October 29th one to two category changes in some cases in parts of Texas, Missouri, three class degradation in the drought monitor just over that four week period. That's a really textbook definition of a rapidly intensifying drought, but what's unique is how widespread this is. I mean, this is virtually no part of the country saw much in the way of improvement according to the drought monitor for that month, and dryness really dominates the landscape. We had 87% of the US in abnormally drier drought conditions by the end of October. We saw for example the greatest one week increase in history of the USDM, so the ninth greatest one week increase of all drought categories, and that's across over 1,300 weeks now.

We've been doing this map back to 1999. That's a pretty significant number. For D2 to D3, which again is severe drought to exceptional drought, we've seen the second greatest one week increase at the end of October of over 7.5%. Those aren't trivial numbers. That's moving the needle quite a bit when you're looking at national numbers like this. When you zoom into some of the regions, it becomes even more impressive and we'll touch on some of the dryness that has been dominating the news across the Eastern US in particular. It just goes to show that drought is not just a western phenomenon. This is having a lot of impacts on fires and water supply along the east coast as well.

Moving to slide 11, here we see for some broader context to look at how I'm going to set up the impact information at the end of this presentation. Slide 11 shows four to five class degradation across the northern high plains in that area that I talked about earlier with West Virginia, Ohio and parts of southwestern Pennsylvania, and then the Atlantic Seaboard there from North Carolina up into New England. These are pretty pronounced changes. Again, that's for the period of January 2nd through last week's map, and that trend wouldn't have changed a whole lot if you looked at this week's trend map. A lot of people go to the website at droughtmonitor.unl.edu, which is at the bottom of this map. That's the official repository for all the Drought monitor services and maps. You'll find a lot behind the curtain. Besides this week's current map, I would encourage you to go look at the map archives.

There's a lot of cool tools in there to compare certain weeks to look at these change maps that I'm showing you here that gives a little bit more detail than just what's on the current map each week. Take a look at that and you have any questions, please feel free to follow up. Okay, slide 12. Repeating, I won't dwell on this too much because Karin covered this nicely, but just to reinforce, we saw this combination, a double whammy of both warmth and dryness, right? And not just a little bit of warmth and a little bit of dryness. In many cases, this is very warm or very dry and in some cases both depending on the location, like in parts of Texas. Luckily if the temperatures have been worse in October across the eastern seaboard, we'd be in even worse shape.

And in fact, I'll show on the next slide the hurricanes had a roll and in the up-and-down nature of too much too little. But for example, record dryness in Newark, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Allentown, Atlantic City, Bridgeport, all along that eastern seaboard, that dark brown splotch there centered on Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, parts of New York, really, really dry. In fact record dry with either no precipitation, a trace or maybe 100th of an inch at most. Very, very dry. And the temperatures in the west and in the southern plains, we've had a lot of fire issues there driven by the increased temperatures in those regions. Okay, if we move to slide 13, I was talking a little bit earlier about the effects of hurricanes Francine, Helene and Milton, that really kept things from being much, much worse. And in fact, they're still pretty bad when you look at October, things flipped back over to the dry side, only Milton hitting Florida probably kept that number on the wet side or they'd be a little drier than they are.

But certainly looking at those ranks from the Southeast Mississippi all the way up into New England along the coast there reinforces how that drought was re-entrenching itself. And this is normally a dry time of year, so if you're not going to get tropical storms or hurricanes, this would be the time where oftentimes you do see it. But a lot of these places were already coming off of dry, late summer, early fall as well. That's why the Northeast lights up a little drier and you see those record numbers we were talking about earlier. If we go back to August through October, which is the map on the right, there you see the impact of some of that moisture coming off the Atlantic or Gulf Coast that's kept those numbers a little bit more at base seasonally, even though October went dry, it's a double-edged sword.

You don't wish for the destruction and certainly not the flooding that we saw with some of these events, but they are make or break drought makers and drought breakers whether you have these storms or not in this region, especially at this time of year as we wind down the tropical storm season. All right, let me wrap up with just slide 14, which is to give you a few sound bites of ideas of where we are seeing impacts. And I focused a lot on the east and not to forget, we've had still some dryness re-emerging in the west, although now we've got atmospheric rivers to think about going forward and we're seeing a big one happening real soon here. But Santa Ana winds and the dryness, the intense heat in the West I talked about has really led to fires which have been in the headlines for a couple years now in the west, particularly in California.

But it's also been a real big issue in the Northeast. Yes, it's a drier time of year, you do see fires, but widespread intense fires, this has becoming a bigger and bigger story in the Northeast due to that drought and those temperatures. I mentioned earlier winter wheat's really taking a beating, especially as this is the key point in time where it's been planted and it's emerging that they want that moisture to give it strength going through the winter to protect the roots from winter kill. And that moisture has been lacking across a good chunk of the wheat belt. Most of that rain's been centered just to the east of it, and then that's been more recent just in the central plains. That's worth keeping an eye on as we go forward. The dryness on the other hand was really great for harvest for corn and soybeans and things like that.

It's again a double-edged sword. This dryness has also led to a lack of forage in this region for livestock, cattle in particular. That's led to a lot of early cooling or reduction of herd, which is leading to increased prices of beef in the grocery stores. You're probably noticing that already. That's an issue going forward into next year as well as you just don't flip a switch and bring those numbers right back up immediately. There's always a little bit of a lag to that and drought plays a role on that due to reducing forage in a region and then they have to try to bring it in from somewhere else and that costs more money. Droughts have a role there. The other big story has been if you look at the drainage basins of the Great Lakes in general, and that was shown in some of the earlier maps by Karin and myself, that's led to a drawdown of the lake levels, particularly Lake Superior, which has really dropped in fact the lowest it's been since a decade now in 2014.

And so that combination of dryness and heat leads to greater evaporation off that lake surface, and that's why those numbers are dropping across most of the Great Lakes. And I touched on the Mississippi River earlier and that's another direct impact of the headwaters for both the upper Mississippi as well as the Ohio that feed into the Mississippi Basin have definitely led to year three, very low levels which affects barge traffic, big industry and saltwater intrusion quite a ways up the Mississippi River begins to affect urban centers as well. These are all things you may not might be considered more indirect impacts, but certainly the effects of drought are being felt. And then finally touching a lot of those Northeastern US impacts, record lows. You've seen a lot of drought watches, warnings and even emergencies including the Washington DC and New York City areas as a result of this continued dryness. And with that, if you go to slide 15, that's my contact information and at this point I'm going to turn it back over to Matt. Thanks.

Matt Rosencrans:

Hello everybody, this is Matt Rosecrans from the Climate Prediction Center. On slide 16 we're going to start talking about what the latest state of El Nino is, La Nina. And so as it's collectively referred to the El Nino Southern Oscillation. Look at the map on the left, it generally shows that the sea surface temperatures and the equatorial Pacific are near to below normal, although those temperatures are closer to normal than they were one month ago. The current Nino 3.4 value, which is the metric that LA uses to measure El Nino status is exactly at zero when it was down at about minus 0.4 or minus 0.5 a couple weeks ago. We have seen some warming of the Nino region recently and that's likely related to things that happened in October, sub-seasonal variability moving through there, things that change the month to month.

And we are expecting a return to \a downward trend in the Nino three, four temperature, which would give us that higher chances of going into a La Nina as we get into the winter. At the time we get to the end of December, we have a 57% chance of being in a LA Nina condition by then with a 72% chance of, actually 73% chance, excuse me, of being in La Nina during November, December, January. And then about a 70% chance of being in La Nina during December, January, February the first season for which our outlooks were just released on our website a few minutes ago.

We do expect La Nina to hold on through the winter and into the early part of the Northern Hemisphere or spring. February, March, April is where we're expecting that transition to happen. Then by March, April, may, we should be towards what we call an ENSO neutral, which is no strong signal either way for the state of La Nina and El Nino. How does that impact the forecast? Slide 17 is our first glimpse into that where we get into the forecast for December. The monthly forecast for December has generally favoring above normal temperatures across the southern tier of the US, California, Nevada, and then eastward to the Carolinas and southward to the Gulf Coast.

There is currently to the north of that, there is equal chances which really says your best forecast is to use climatology. Therefore, and that's really related to the fact that we're going to likely to start off November, or excuse me, December quite cold across the northern plains. But then there are some sub-seasonal factors that are likely to make it quite a bit warmer across the northern plains in the middle of December with a potential return to cold at the end. You have a lot of variability there and when you average that out across the month, there's very weak signals across the northern tier of the Conus during December. We have a little bit more certainty in some of that cold hanging around in Southern Alaska due to the fact that that's related to potential La Nina impacts and with Alaska being further to the west and closer to the source of variability for La Nina in the Pacific, your signals there are a little more certain.

How that plays out in the precipitation outlook for December is that we are expecting also dry conditions along the southern tier of the US. Potentially continuing some of the conditions that Mark mentioned where it's both warm and dry across some of the southern tier of the US, some of that is likely to continue into December. There could be some reprieve across the Northwestern US where we do favor above normal precipitation, and that can be related to the La Nina and also the sub-seasonal variability that could push warmth across the northern plains can also bring some storm track activity into the Pacific Northwest. La Nina would also favor a background where you'd have more wet conditions into Western Alaska as a storm track can sometimes be focused on the western parts of Alaska, so including the Aleutians and the West coast of Alaska.

You can end up with a lot of storminess moving into there during La Nina conditions and we are expecting to see those conditions really start to emerge in that December period. And slide 18, how does those conditions go for December, January, February, we're expecting to see continued above normal temperatures across the southern tier of the US, although we are favoring above normal temperatures to also expand northward into the Northeast US, potentially with a storm track in the Ohio Valley. And that would bring more air on the east of the storm track and cool air in the west of the storm track. Therefore we're also favoring below normal temperatures across much of the northern plains. Those below normal temperatures are likely to extend all the way to the Pacific Northwest and that is related to the development of La Nina.

Also, there are trends with long-term trends, 15, 20-year trends that do also show in the wintertime higher odds for near to below normal temperatures across the northern plains and some parts of the northern Rockies. Those two factors really go into that outlook. For December, January, February precipitation we are favoring above normal precipitation from the Pacific Northwest across Montana and Wyoming to the western parts of the northern high plains, and then also another area of above normal precipitation around the Great Lakes extending down into the Ohio Valley. Aligned with the monthly map for December, the December, January, February outlook does favor below normal precipitation across the southern tier of the US, especially the Rio Grande Valley, Four Corners region and then also across Florida.

I will note that our probabilities this month for December, January, February are slightly increased for above normal precipitation in the Northern Rockies, but they're moderated compared to some of our prior outlooks related to La Nina across the southern tier Rio Grande Valley in the southeast because there is only a 57% chance of being in line Nina during October, November, December, and then the 70% chance of being in it during December, January, February. It's not certain that we'll be in La Nina. We have some of these odds are a bit moderated compared to where we might be this point of the year if we were in a much stronger La Nina case as we had forecast earlier in the year. Slide 19 shows that drought outlook valid through the end of February 2025, and we are integrating the impacts of those outlooks.

We are expecting some drought improvement and removal in the Pacific Northwest across the Northern Rockies, consistent with the above normal precipitation favored there. And then there's also some removal and improvement likely in the Ohio Valley down to the Tennessee River Valley and also up to the corn belt and Western Great Lakes. Some of those areas that Mark talked about before that have been hampered and impacted by drought may get some relief. On the other side of that though, we are likely to see some drought expansion and or intensification on parts of much of the Southeast where the La Nina storm track would not favor more precipitation neither in the southeast or in the southern plains or in the Four Corners region. You may continue to see water deficit problems from Arizona to Texas, across Alabama and then potentially up the East Coast where drought is at least forecast to persist from Virginia all the way up until Maine due to the overall storm track likely being shifted inland as associated with La Ninas. That's all I have and I will turn it back to John.

John Bateman:

All right, thanks so much, Matt. We will now take specific questions from the call participants. Please be sure to identify who you'd like to answer the question if possible. And Lisa, could you please remind the call participants how they can ask a question and then please queue up the first question.

Lisa (Operator):

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press one and then zero on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by repeating the one zero command. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you do have a question, press one and then zero at this time. We do have a question from Brian Sullivan with Bloomberg News. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6:

Hi, thanks. Hi, Tim. Quick question. I know drought can have an effect on temperature in the summertime, but I was wondering is there any corresponding effect on temperatures in the wintertime from widespread areas of drought?

Matt Rosencrans:

This is Matt Rosecrans from the Climate Prediction Center. Yes, when you look at correlations between soil moisture or lack of there in drought, it can lead to higher temperatures in the summertime. Those correlations do tend to fade off in the autumn. Early autumn, you can get dry signals leading to much higher temperature swings. Your colder nights but also warmer days at the same time. And then that averages out to not too much different in autumn. By the time you get to winter, you don't notice much of a direct impact on soil moisture affecting temperature. Northern plains, you can end up with more snow cover having a much bigger impact on that, but there's very little signature for soil moisture or lack thereof reflected in drought having relation to temperature in the winter season.

Speaker 6:

Thank you.

Mark Svoboda:

This is Mark. I'll just quickly add to that. I think the bigger issue for me when I'm looking at drought and overwintering, so to speak, and especially if you don't have soil moisture recharges the susceptibility of what's your situation going into planting next spring. The other thing that good soil moisture would do versus not having it in the case of drought over the winter is the insulating effect that it has on everything from your local garden trees, shrubs to agricultural fields. And as I mentioned, winter wheat, the potential for winter kill is going to be greater. That dry soil is not going to protect those roots. Nothing to do with the temperature element that Matt was talking about, but from an impact standpoint, you can still see some impacts even though that's typically for the eastern half of the United States a drier period of time. Thanks.

Lisa (Operator):

Thank you. As a reminder, press one and then zero for questions. Once again one and then zero for questions. And we have no further questions at this time. Please continue.

John Bateman:

All right. Thanks, Lisa. If there are no further questions, I will wrap up the call. First I'd like to thank all of our speakers for their time and everyone else for participating in the conference call today. I will end by reminding you to mark your calendar for a few upcoming events. The release of the November 2024 US Climate Report is scheduled for December 9th. The release of the November 2024 Global climate report is scheduled for December 12th, and our next monthly media climate call will be held at 11:00 A.M. Eastern time on December 19th. A media advisory will be issued and posted online ahead of that event. And lastly, an audio file of this call will be posted on the NOAA.gov Media Advisory site later this afternoon. And if you have any further informational needs, please feel free to email me, John Bateman. My contact information is available at the top of the Media Advisory. Thank you.

Lisa (Operator):

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Executive Teleconference. You may now disconnect.