‘Even if the forecast is perfect, getting the warnings to the people, particularly at late hours of the night, is a challenge,’ Neil Jacobs said.
Just days after catastrophic flash floods devastated Central Texas, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told the Senate on July 9 that he would seek improvements to the agency’s weather forecasting and warning capabilities despite recent budget cuts.
Neil Jacobs, a meteorologist who headed NOAA on an acting basis during the first Trump administration, testified before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee less than a week after floods claimed the lives of at least 119 people in Texas’s Hill Country. At least 173 are still missing.
Jacobs also vowed to maintain the highest level of performance at the National Weather Service (NWS) if confirmed.
“One of my top priorities is to return the United States to the world’s leader in global weather forecast modeling capability as a matter of public safety, national security, and national pride,” he said. “We will restore American technological superiority with this vital service for the country and our military serving around the world.”
Jacobs said this would require embracing new technologies and novel approaches at the NWS.
He said the agency, which is under NOAA’s umbrella, did a “great job” in Texas last week, but suggested ways to improve its forecasting technology and warning systems.
Jacobs cited the agency’s weather radio as one way to advance and modernize the NOAA, including using satellites to send out warning messages as well as moving away from copper wire telecommunication infrastructure.
“We also need more data in doing post-storm assessments,” he said. “We need the data to understand what went right, what went wrong, whether people got the warnings, if they did or didn’t, and if they did, did they not understand them?”
To make U.S. weather forecasting the best in the world will require “closing the gap” between U.S. meteorology and Europe’s, which Jacobs said excels at weather modeling because of Europeans’ employment of new advancements in data collection and analysis.
He suggested that NOAA use the same data assimilation practices to improve U.S. weather modeling and forecasting capabilities.
By Jacob Burg
