NOAA Asks for $6.8 billion for FY2024 To Help Combat Rising Climate Crisis

With Earth hitting its warmest June and smashing all-time temperature records day after day, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) administrator Richard Spinrad told a Senate Commerce Subcommittee Thursday (July 20) that the agency is uniquely qualified to prepare the United States for climate change., thanks in part to its constellation of Earth-monitoring satellites.

“America is in need of NOAA’s data, products, tools and services now more than ever,” he said during opening remarks of a hearing focused on setting NOAA’s budget.

For Fiscal Year 2024, NOAA proposed a budget of $6.8 billion in discretionary appropriations, an increase of $450.5 million from the FY 2023 Enacted. The budget request builds on the $6.27 billion in investments through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) (P.L. 117-169) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) (P.L. 117-58) for Climate-Ready Coasts, climate data and services, and fisheries and protected resources.

Congress passed BIL and IRA legislation to help support infrastructure projects in the US, and President Biden signed the legislation into law in August 2022.

Parts of NOAA have existed within the federal government for at least 170 years. NOAA, created in 1970 by executive order of Richard Nixon, is a scientific and regulatory agency within the Department of Commerce. The agency’s charge includes watching the atmosphere and oceans, forecasting weather — including the interactions between the Sun and Earth’s atmosphere known as space weather — charting the seas, and conducting deep sea exploration. The National Weather Service is a department within NOAA, though it long predates Nixon’s executive order.

Aside from its funding, some aspects of NOAA’s future are up in the air. On June 9, 2023, House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chair Frank Lucas (R-OK) proposed legislation making NOAA a standalone agency, like NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

While most of the hearing focused on the importance of protecting fresh and saltwater coasts, as well as on fishing interests in Alaska and Washington, NOAA also requested $365.8 million for “significant investments” in NOAA’s observational infrastructure.

NOAA’s budget request covers improvements to NOAA’s data infrastructure and archiving, and a transition to cloud computing using partners such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and ESRI, for ingesting data, processing, dissemination, and archiving.

Spinrad said a move to cloud-based assets could expand the size and diversity of NOAA’s user communities and data applications, including monitoring threats against satellite ground systems, which could affect the flow of data and forecasting by the National Weather Service or Space Weather Prediction Center.

NOAA’s program investments also allow capitalization of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s satellite observations for NOAA requirements and mission focus.

“NOAA’s current satellite constellation has proven its worth and will continue to do so for another decade,” Spinrad said. “FY 2024 funding for future geostationary, low earth orbit, and space weather observations will ensure critical data continuity from legacy systems, while providing significant improvements in data and products to meet the complex societal and environmental needs of the nation.”