§10371 Water prediction and forecasting

Summary

Create a National Water Center inside NOAA’s National Weather Service to be the main research and operations hub for water studies, forecasting, and decision support. The center must work with federal and state agencies, universities, and private groups. Its jobs include improving knowledge about water and users’ needs, finding gaps in science and services, building advanced water models, moving research into everyday operations, producing forecasts and inundation information for all water events (like flash and river floods and water outlooks), and helping emergency managers make decisions together with warning meteorologists. Within one year after December 31, 2020, the Under Secretary must publish an operations and services policy for the center that sets staff duties, product content and format, and coordination rules with other Weather Service centers and offices. The Office of Water Prediction will lead research and development for operational water prediction and provide help to federal science committees, State water agencies, and State and local emergency managers. It must build needed capabilities such as observations, models, data systems, supercomputing, social science, and communications. Authorized funding is $44,500,000 for fiscal year 2021, $45,000,000 for fiscal year 2022, $45,500,000 for fiscal year 2023, and $46,000,000 for fiscal year 2024, drawn from amounts authorized to the National Weather Service and the National Ocean Service enacted after December 31, 2020.