The MEDEA Program: A Collaboration between Academia and the National Security Community

Abstract:

In the early 1990s, the US environmental science, Intelligence, and Defense Communities came together in one of the largest declassification efforts ever undertaken. Data ranging from glacier and sea ice movement to ecosystem change and forest fires were made available for the first time The collaboration was sparked by US Vice President Al Gore and US Central Intelligence Agency Director Robert Gates who saw the contribution that this unused global information could make to our understanding of Earth’s environment. Their leadership led to the formation of a group named MEDEA, consisting of scientists representing a broad set of Earth science disciplines who were given access for the first time to highly classified data from the US Intelligence Community and the Defense Department. The new data led to deeper insights into Earth processes and more than doubled the existing ocean database. MEDEA’s later unique collaboration with intelligence agencies in Russia resulted in US-Russia Oceanographic Atlases that have been used for more than 25 years now. The MEDEA program also supported complementary research studies and analyzed the issues of climate treaty monitoring and verifying CO2 emissions. The data revealed are still being used for time series and comparison with new measurements of global change. For example, the concepts developed have facilitated the monitoring of recent California wildfires.