Executive Summary
For decades, the United States has led the world in supplying weather information that provides for the protection of life and property and supports a growing economy. This success springs from the carefully constructed balance among the government, private, nongovernmental organization (NGO), and academic sectors working in weather — known collectively as the weather enterprise. Each sector depends critically on the work of the others so that together they efficiently and effectively serve the nation’s people and support the nation’s economy.
Roles and responsibilities of multiple players have developed and adapted over decades; however, every facet of the success of the weather enterprise in the U.S. depends on the high-quality research, data, and services provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other federal agencies. The interconnected nature of the enterprise makes it highly susceptible to disruption if any sector is unable to contribute to its full potential. Recent reductions in staffing and funding across federal agencies threaten the carefully established balance of the enterprise. With reductions in staff and other resources, the entire chain of observations, quality control, model forecasts, and decision support for the protection of life and property is at risk. A failure of these systems is potentially catastrophic, with gaps in data leading to impacts such as reductions in tornado warning time or increased hurricane landfall uncertainty. Some impacts are already being felt, from fewer upper-air observations, which are critical to severe storm forecasting, to canceled training for meteorologists who support forecast fire operations.
Because federal employees are highly competent and also highly dedicated to the mission of government service, they will do all they can to minimize the most severe impacts of reductions of staffing and resources. The result is that in the short term, those reductions may seem to have had minimal impact or even to have been fully justified based on minor losses of service compared to financial savings. There will be impacts, however, in maintenance, upgrades, and preparations for the future that are deferred or canceled, in innovations not pursued or achieved, and perhaps most importantly in staff morale and the ability to both keep the best workforce and attract new talent into the workforce. Those losses, which are often hard to quantify, will be increasingly evident over time and will require much larger investments in the future to reverse.
As hazardous weather events will always be a part of life in the United States, the continued efforts of the weather enterprise are crucial to enable American families, businesses, and communities to prepare for and protect themselves from weather risks. This report offers the following recommendations for actions that need to be taken immediately to restore capabilities to protect life and property from weather risks and to allow the carefully balanced public–private partnership within the weather enterprise to continue to support economic growth:
Recommendation 1: Maintain a strong NOAA with adequate resources to maintain scientifically curated, high-quality, foundational observations, to secure critical national data and computing infrastructure, and to restore sufficient staffing in the National Weather Service (NWS) and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), which will ensure protection of life and property and a more robust economy.
Recommendation 2: Restore critically important funding for Earth science research in NOAA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Space and Aeronautics Administration (NASA) to support the development of new observing technologies and model development (including AI modeling) within the agencies and through cooperative institutes and cooperative research and development agreements with private sector companies.
Recommendation 3: Ensure continued funding to university and other collaborative research efforts in atmospheric science, which supports training the next generation of leaders, while also developing new technologies (including those aimed at leveraging AI to improve models, products, and services) and including social science research into severe weather events and community responses in support of commercial enterprise (which includes the insurance and reinsurance industry).