Trump’s NOAA pick stands by budget cuts, calls staffing ‘a top priority’

President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told a panel of U.S. senators on Wednesday that he would make it “a top priority” to fill staffing shortages created by recent firings and buyouts across the National Weather Service, while also standing by the administration’s proposal to make drastic cuts to weather and climate research budgets.

In a confirmation hearing imbued with concern over how to prevent disasters like the deadly Texas floods, Neil Jacobs shared ideas such as using satellites to improve severe weather warnings and “modernizing” NOAA’s weather radios, which use radio signals to broadcast emergency information. Jacobs was not asked to weigh in on what may or may not have contributed to the disaster in Texas. But he stressed a desire to see the more than 120 Weather Service forecast offices across the country be fully staffed.

As Jacobs answered senators’ questions, he signaled a future in which the agency’s sprawling weather and climate research enterprise could be diminished and more closely tied to the process of weather forecasting. And he repeatedly hinted at opportunities for government scientists to collaborate with the private sector, something that Republican strategists emphasized in the policy plan known as Project 2025.

But when Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico) asked whether Jacobs believed Americans should have to pay for access to the best forecasting data, he answered no.

“I think that that’s an essential service that all Americans deserve,” Jacobs said.

And, contradicting statements Trump has made calling human-caused climate change a “hoax,” Jacobs told Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey) that he agreed that humans are influencing Earth’s climate. Scientists say fossil fuel emissions are by far the primary driver of a nearly 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degree Fahrenheit) rise in average global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.

“There’s a lot of natural signals that are mixed in there, too,” Jacobs said. But when accounting for those, he said, “there’s human influence certainly there. Yes, there’s influence.”

The hearing, coming five months after Trump chose Jacobs to serve as NOAA administrator, gave the agency’s roughly 9,000 employees and the countless users of its earth science and fisheries data some of their first insights into how its presumed next leader could shape programs that have already faced significant shake-ups since Trump retook the White House.

NOAA, housed within the Commerce Department, is responsible not just for the Weather Service but also for research offices studying earth science and climate change, and divisions that monitor and manage key aquatic life and valuable commercial fisheries. Its buoys, weather stations and satellites provide a detailed picture of the planet that is seen as essential to keeping various industries running.

The agency has a more than $6 billion budget, but Trump has proposed cutting it by more than one-fourth in a budget document recently sent to Congress.

“I support the president’s budget,” Jacobs said in response to a question from Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts).

Jacobs previously served as acting NOAA administrator from February 2019 until the end of Trump’s first term, in January 2021. Trump had in 2017 nominated Barry Myers, former CEO of private weather forecasting company AccuWeather, to lead NOAA, but Myers withdrew his nomination, citing health concerns.

A Senate committee approved Jacobs’s previous nomination as NOAA administrator in 2020, but the full chamber did not confirm him before Trump’s term ended.

Since January, roughly 2,000 NOAA scientists and meteorologists have left the agency through firings, buyouts and retirements. The departures hit some National Weather Service offices so hard, they could no longer maintain 24/7 operations.

And as the deadly floods hit Texas Hill Country, the staff losses meant the nearest weather forecasting office was without a veteran meteorologist responsible for training local authorities, emergency managers and news media on how to respond to its severe weather warnings.

The Weather Service has faced bipartisan scrutiny since the floods hit, with Texas officials asking why its forecasts didn’t predict the historic deluge and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) calling for an inspector general investigation into the role staffing shortages may have played.

In addition to supporting fully staffing forecast offices, Jacobs said they can be even more embedded in their communities than they already are.

“If confirmed, I will ensure that staffing the Weather Service offices is a top priority,” he said. “It’s really important for the people to be there, because they have relationships with the people in the local community.”

Former National Weather Service director Elbert W. “Joe” Friday, who led the agency from 1988 to 1997, said he watched the hearing and was “disappointed” at Jacobs’s statements about research funding. Jacobs said the administration plans to move much of the research efforts proposed to be cut from NOAA into the Weather Service and National Ocean Service, though it has not proposed increasing budgets for those divisions to account for the shift.

Jacobs said, if anything, he supported increasing funding for research. But Friday said it’s more likely the research spending could be whittled away before any cuts are made to weather forecasting.

“When push comes to shove, … you’re going to take resources away from things that aren’t quite as timely,” Friday said.

Jacobs faced a single pointed question, from Luján, over his involvement in an episode from Trump’s first term that became known as “Sharpiegate,” when, in a 2019 Oval Office briefing, Trump displayed a NOAA forecast map that appeared to have been altered with a marker to depict Hurricane Dorian threatening Alabama. An investigation found that Jacobs violated the agency’s scientific integrity policy when he oversaw the release of a statement that backed Trump’s claim about the hurricane’s path and contradicted meteorologists at a Weather Service forecast office in Birmingham, Alabama.

Luján cited statements by Jacobs made during that investigation standing by his decisions, saying that he and other NOAA officials felt as if their jobs were on the line. Luján asked Jacobs whether, today, he would make the same decisions.

“There’s probably some things I would do differently,” Jacobs said, adding that he took steps after the fact to prevent such a scenario from repeating. Before he could explain them, Luján asked, “Would you sign off on an inaccurate statement due to political pressure in the same event, yes or no?”

“No,” Jacobs said.

Jacobs has emphasized a need for the United States to improve the accuracy of its weather forecasting models, which routinely perform worse than models operated in Europe and, at times, Canada. He has most recently served as chief science adviser for the Unified Forecast System, an initiative he has spearheaded to improve U.S. weather and climate forecasting accuracy using government, academic and private-sector data.

The most contentious questioning at the hearing, perhaps, was directed toward Taylor Jordan, Trump’s nominee for NOAA deputy administrator. Markey asked Jordan why he had used a social media handle that referenced a book by former senator James M. Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) called “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”

“It was a young man’s attempt at wit,” Jordan said. “There is really no deeper meaning.”

“If you want to be a comedian, you should maybe go to open mic night,” Markey replied.

Trump has in recent days defended his administration’s changes to NOAA and the Weather Service.

When asked by reporters whether the floods in Texas suggest a need to hire back some Weather Service meteorologists who have recently left, he said: “I wouldn’t know that. I really wouldn’t. I would think not.”

And Trump said he doesn’t blame meteorologists for the large death toll in Texas - nor does he blame local officials, summer camp organizers or even former president Joe Biden, whose administration he said was responsible for the “setup” of the Weather Service office.

“I would just say this is a 100-year catastrophe,” he told reporters. “And it’s just so horrible to watch.”

In a virtual NOAA town hall held Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick praised the Weather Service - at one point reassuring workers that Trump appreciates them and thinks they “save lives” - but downplayed any effects of staffing shortages at the agency’s regional offices across the country. Lutnick suggested that Weather Service meteorologists should be able to work from anywhere to produce forecasts because of their access to what he described as “the world’s best data,” according to two employees who attended the town hall and described it to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly and feared retaliation.

But in a letter Monday to the Commerce Department’s acting inspector general, Schumer suggested that the Weather Service positions left vacant are “critical” and “help save lives.”

“To honor the lives of those lost, we have a responsibility to the American people to determine whether preventable failures contributed to this tragedy - and to ensure that it never happens again,” Schumer wrote.