Sponsors (19)
Official title: To improve the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's weather research, support improvements in weather forecasting and prediction, expand commercial opportunities for the provision of weather data, and for other purposes.
Introduced June 6, 2025 by Frank D. Lucas · Last progress June 6, 2025
The bill modernizes and funds U.S. weather, water, and hazard forecasting — improving warnings, data access, and workforce capacity for many communities — at the cost of sizable new federal spending, greater reliance on commercial partners, and added administrative, privacy, and security risks that require careful governance.
Residents, local and state governments, and emergency managers will get earlier, more accurate, and more actionable warnings and forecasts for storms, floods, tsunamis, landslides, heat, and other hazards, improving public safety and reducing loss of life and property.
Scientists, universities, industry, and the public will gain broader access to high-performance computing, public modeling systems, curated Earth-system datasets, APIs, and a NOAA Data Lake, enabling better research, model development, and transparency of forecasts and tools.
NOAA and partners will receive sustained funding and authorities to expand observing systems, commercial data purchases, and program operations (including specified annual appropriations and pilot program funds), enabling denser observations and new data sources for improved forecasts.
Taxpayers and federal budgets will face substantial increased spending pressures from multi‑year authorizations, new program appropriations, and recurring purchases (e.g., commercial data acquisitions and program operations).
The law increases reliance on commercial data, cloud services, and public–private partnerships, which could restrict public access to some data or model inputs (licensing/redistribution limits), favor large providers, and concentrate leverage with private firms.
Greater use of commercial clouds, AI/ML systems, and centralized datasets raises cybersecurity, data‑privacy, and national security risks that could compromise sensitive observations or enable misuse if governance is inadequate.
Based on analysis of 24 sections of legislative text.
Modernizes NOAA observation, computing, AI, radar, commercial data acquisition, forecasting (including S2S), hazard communications, Arctic observing, HAB coordination, and heat‑health integration; authorizes FY2026–FY2030 research funding.
Updates and expands federal weather, water, and environmental observation, forecasting, and communication authorities and programs to modernize NOAA capabilities. It creates new definitions (including “weather data” and extreme precipitation/atmospheric river terms), authorizes multiyear research and pilot programs for AI, high-performance computing, radar resilience, commercial data acquisition, subseasonal-to-seasonal forecasting, Arctic observations, harmful algal bloom coordination, and a national heat-health coordination committee. The bill directs NOAA to adopt AI/ML and HPC solutions, establish pilot programs and new councils, set standards for commercial data and observational systems, improve hazard risk communications, fund research labs and programs through FY2026–FY2030 authorizations, and require multiple reports, strategic plans, and interagency consultations to support operationalization and technology transfer.