The US can better weather future storms by making NOAA an independent agency 

Many Americans aren’t familiar with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), but its programs benefit each citizen every single day. The federal agency is most known for life-saving forecasts and warnings issued by the  National Hurricane Center, but residents and first responders throughout the country receive reliable information on tornadoes, floods, ice-storms, tsunamis and many other weather and climate-related threats to life and property. NOAA is also responsible for managing marine fisheries and protected species, producing nautical charts, as well as advancing coastal and oceanographic research.

In view of the importance of this work, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) recently released a draft bill to enshrine NOAA in law as an independent agency focusing on Earth systems science. Lucas’ proposed legislation would also grant NOAA formal statutory authority for the first time in over 50 years.

Codifying NOAA’s authority in legislation is necessary because the agency presently owes its existence to an executive order signed by President Nixon in 1970. While NOAA has enjoyed bipartisan support since then, executive orders are not guaranteed to endure over successive administrations.

Due to Nixon’s animus toward his Secretary of the Interior Wally Hickel, he ignored NOAA’s synergies with the natural resource programs in the Department of the Interior and arbitrarily placed NOAA in the Department of Commerce, where NOAA comprises over half the department’s budget and staff. This past year, millions of dollars of the agency’s portfolio was once-again transferred to the Commerce Department’s $300 million Working Capital Fund for Shared Services, and the fiscal 2024 White House budget requests an increase of nearly 20 percent. The department’s Office of Inspector General found the program to have significant weaknesses, yet Commerce is racing forward with a massive $353 million consolidation of its agencies’ budget and grant management functions despite numerous delays and cost overruns.

Commerce’s egregious lack of focus on NOAA funding is most evident every 10 years when the department comes up short on funding the Decennial Census. Costs for the 2020 Census were more than $3 billion over initial estimates, while the assessed cost of the 2010 Census was unreliable and ultimately resulted in a last-minute congressional request to reprogram funds to fill the gap. In these situations, the Commerce Department also lowered its internal budget guidance to NOAA and reallocated funding to the Census Bureau. Given the large, disproportionate cost of the Decennial Census, the only way NOAA could cope with such huge budget cuts was to delay critical upgrades to environmental satellites and other major projects.

Paying the Department of Commerce to ineptly duplicate NOAA’s own management system makes no business sense, but the central problem is an absence of shared priorities between the two layers of government. The lack of collaboration from the political level down to career staff has produced chronic conflict, with NOAA on the receiving end of poorly crafted and sometimes damaging decisions. We have worked with NOAA staff for a combined total of nearly 30 years, personally witnessing this dysfunctional dynamic the entire time. 

Making NOAA independent, though still under presidential control, will deliver three important improvements in NOAA’s weather and climate services for the nation:

1)       Stabilize the management and budget of America’s weather satellite programs.

NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) are multi-year, multi-billion dollar programs that provide critical input data for weather forecasts and warnings. An independent NOAA will be able to continue its recent record of outstanding satellite program management by ensuring that funding for these vital, public safety systems will not be siphoned from the agency to support other budget priorities of the Department of Commerce. 

2)       Ensure continuity of essential support to emergency managers.  

In addition to feeding the numerical weather models used to generate storm warnings, NOAA satellite data is used for disaster response. A dramatic example occurred in 2017 when Hurricane Harvey hammered Southeast Texas. High resolution GOES image loops of the eye of the storm were used by NOAA forecasters to guide rescue efforts during the relative calm between the passage of the leading and trailing eyewalls.  Making NOAA independent will minimize the risk that other priorities within the Commerce Department disrupt these capabilities.

3)       Accelerate the influx of innovation from public-private partnerships. 

While we were with NOAA, the agency advanced a redesign of satellite architecture, as well as other novel data and innovative technology partnerships with the private sector to modernize NOAA’s weather and climate services. Erratic and inconsistent budget profiles do not inspire confidence in industry for initiatives like these, but a NOAA set free from the Department of Commerce can provide the necessary stability.

While these improvements focus on NOAA’s weather preparedness and climate adaptation functions, another positive outcome from Lucas’ bill could be more efficient permitting of infrastructure and faster recovery of imperiled species. Currently, there are two federal programs to manage endangered species and marine mammals, with over 90 percent of the species managed by the Department of the Interior. Although Lucas’s bill only directs a feasibility study, modifying it to create a single, expanded program within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would significantly benefit both our economy and the nation’s endangered species and marine mammals.

In our view, NOAA has never been a good fit in the Commerce Department, and the disparate goals of the department and its subordinate agency have had a demonstrably adverse impact on the agency’s budget and management. An independent NOAA will ensure that America will better weather the storms in our future.

Rear Admiral (ret.) Tim Gallaudet, Ph.D., is the CEO of Ocean STL Consulting, LLC and former acting and deputy NOAA administrator, acting undersecretary and assistant secretary of Commerce, and oceanographer of the Navy. He testified before the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee on “Establishing an Independent NOAA.”

Stuart Levenbach, Ph.D., has served in four different offices within the Executive Office of the President across three administrations and is also a former NOAA chief of staff.