Sponsors (10)
Introduced February 25, 2026 by Rafael Edward Cruz · Last progress February 25, 2026
The bill would modernize and expand U.S. weather, water, and environmental forecasting—bringing broad public-safety and economic benefits through better models, observations, and data access—while substantially increasing federal costs, administrative complexity, and reliance on commercial/cloud systems that raise access, privacy, procurement, and long-term sovereignty risks.
Communities nationwide (urban, rural, coastal, tribal) will receive more accurate and timely forecasts, watches, and warnings across hazards (storms, tornadoes, tsunami, floods, droughts, wildfire, HABs), improving protection of life and property.
Households, businesses, utilities, and farmers will face lower economic losses from weather and water impacts because better forecasts, early warnings, and targeted decision-support enable earlier preparation and operational adjustments.
NOAA scientists, researchers, students, and the private sector will gain modern AI/ML, high-performance computing, public data access (NOAA Data Lake/EPIC), and workforce-development support that accelerate research-to-operations and innovation.
Taxpayers and federal budgets face large new and recurring costs (authorized programs, HPC/cloud contracts, radar and observing upgrades, grants) while many improvements depend on future appropriations, creating fiscal pressure and uncertainty about delivery.
Researchers, public users, and national-security stakeholders risk restricted access, licensing limits, privacy exposures, and potential foreign access to sensitive datasets because of greater reliance on commercial data, cloud services, AI/ML, and public release of models.
Program focus on commercial solutions, multiyear contracts, and prioritized research lines could crowd out other agency priorities or lead NOAA to scale back government-owned observing capabilities, risking long‑term sovereign gaps in essential data and services.
Based on analysis of 30 sections of legislative text.
Expands and authorizes NOAA programs to modernize forecasting, radars, computing/AI, commercial data acquisition, hazard communication, fire and HAB/hypoxia efforts, and related staffing and cybersecurity plans.
Directs NOAA to modernize weather and environmental forecasting by investing in advanced computing, artificial intelligence, radar replacement, commercial data purchases, and improved hazard communication and decision support. It creates new programs and pilot projects for next-generation numerical weather prediction, subseasonal-to-seasonal forecasts for agriculture and water, harmful algal bloom and hypoxia planning, fire-weather services, workforce support and staffing plans, and cybersecurity planning for the academic research fleet, and it authorizes multi-year contracting and specific funding levels for research programs in FY2026–FY2027. Requires NOAA to publish multi-year strategic plans (including a 10-year computing plan), procure and standardize commercial weather data, run NWS pilot projects for decision support and cloud migration, assess staffing and protective-service classifications, and coordinate interagency efforts on wildland fire prediction and seafood origin testing; it also tasks agencies with reports, timelines, and performance metrics to implement these improvements.