§8512 Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation

Summary

The Assistant Administrator for the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research must run a program to make weather forecasts and warnings better and faster, especially for high-impact storms that can threaten lives and property. The work will improve basic weather science (like the boundary layer), study how people get and act on warnings, and develop and move new tools to the National Weather Service and partners. That includes better ground and radar systems, aerial observing, computing and communications, advanced weather models (from regional to global and cloud-resolving models), tools to measure the value of observing systems (like Observing System Simulation Experiments), studies of atmospheric chemistry and cloud processes, and using new commercial weather data. The program must also create a technology-transfer effort with the National Weather Service, industry, and universities to put new science into operations and retire old, costly methods. It must work to improve modeling skill and U.S. leadership in numerical weather prediction and build a community global modeling system that is public, can run on nonsecure public computers and networks, and can use cloud hosting when appropriate. The Office must fund outside researchers through competitive grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements, and it is the sense of Congress that not less than 30 percent of Office weather research funds should go to that external work. Each year, when the President sends NOAA’s budget to Congress under section 1105 of title 31, the Under Secretary must also send Congress a description of current and planned activities under this program.