Sponsors (18)
Introduced June 6, 2025 by Frank D. Lucas · Last progress June 6, 2025
The bill promises substantially better forecasts, warnings, data access, and workforce development that will make communities safer and expand research and operational capabilities—but does so through sizable new federal spending and increased reliance on commercial partners and AI/cloud technologies, which raise budget, access, security, equity, and administrative risks.
People in hazard-prone communities (coastal, hurricane/tornado/flood-prone, Arctic, tribal, rural and urban areas) will receive earlier, clearer, and more accurate forecasts and warnings—reducing loss of life and property.
Federal investments in advanced observing systems, higher-performance computing, radar and aircraft/uncrewed platforms, and program authorizations expand forecasting capabilities and resilience—improving economic outcomes by reducing weather-related losses.
Public access to curated datasets, a NOAA Data Lake, community modeling systems, open APIs, and required data/metadata standards will boost research, innovation, and industry use of weather and climate information.
Taxpayers face substantial new and recurring federal spending (multi‑year authorizations, program funds, commercial data purchases) that could require budget tradeoffs or offsets.
Greater reliance on commercial data, cloud providers, and private partners—plus public release of models/training data—creates IP, access, redistribution, and national security concerns and may limit full public access to some model inputs or outputs.
New reporting, coordination, pilot management, and multi‑agency implementation requirements create significant administrative and operational burdens for NOAA and for state, local, Tribal partners that could divert staff time and delay deployment of benefits.
Based on analysis of 24 sections of legislative text.
Authorizes NOAA programs and funding to strengthen observations, radar, commercial data acquisition, AI/HPC, S2S forecasting, hazard communications, Arctic observations, algal-bloom planning, and heat-health coordination.
Authorizes and updates a wide set of NOAA-led programs to improve U.S. weather, water, and climate preparedness by strengthening observations, forecasting, communications, and research. The bill funds targeted Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research activities for FY2026–FY2030, directs procurement of commercial environmental data, advances high-performance computing and AI use for forecasting, establishes radar mitigation and next-generation radar efforts, improves hazard risk communication and heat-health coordination, expands subseasonal-to-seasonal forecasting and Arctic observations, and revises harmful algal bloom and flood/landslide definitions and planning requirements.