As lawmakers from both parties raised concerns about staffing at the National Weather Service (NWS), President Trump’s pick to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) promised Wednesday to make the matter a “top priority.”
Neil Jacobs, who led the agency in an acting capacity during the last Trump administration, said, “If confirmed, I will ensure that staffing the Weather Service offices is a top priority. It’s really important for the people to be there because they have relationships with the people in the local community.”
The matter was particularly top-of-mind in the wake of last week’s floods in Texas that killed more than 100 people.
Questions were particularly raised in light of across-the-board layoffs and buyouts conducted by the Trump administration in order to reduce the size of the government.
After those layoffs, the administration has sought to shuffle staffers or hire more people as some Weather Service offices were deemed “critically understaffed.”
One employee who took a Trump administration buyout was the warning coordination meteorologist in the Austin/San Antonio office of the NWS, a job that includes making sure the public is aware of the forecasts.
Jacobs heard concerns about Weather Service staffing from several lawmakers during his confirmation hearing.
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said that an office in his state was “short” meteorologists because there had been a hiring freeze. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) lamented that at the Weather Service “a decision was made to close overnight service in Cheyenne and route evening coverage” through a town hundreds of miles away called Riverton.
Several Democrats raised similar worries about staffing levels.
“NOAA has lost at least 1,875 employees, totaling a combined 27,000 years of experience and institutional knowledge, and now has over 3,000 vacant staff positions,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).
During the hearing, Jacobs also promised to try to improve community warning systems.
“I think there’s an opportunity to modernize NOAA Weather Radio, and then potentially also look at some satellite capabilities,” he said. “An all-the-above approach and modernizing the way to distribute these watches and warnings is something that is going to be a top priority of mine.”
Meanwhile, several Democrats also raised issues with proposed research cuts at the agency — arguing that those cuts could make the agency less able to understand the weather.
“I support the president’s budget,” Jacobs said when asked by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) about proposed cuts to weather and climate research in the administration’s proposed budget.
Markey said he believed the administration’s proposed cuts would hamper the agency, saying “a 27 percent cut is going to have an impact, because there’s a definite ripple effect that occurs when that kind of funding is slashed.”
Asked about climate change, Jacobs cited both human activity and “natural signals.”
“Obviously there’s a lot of natural signals that are mixed in there too and so in the absence of any natural signals that might dominate that, yes there’s human influence,” he said.
When Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) followed up and asked if human influence was “part of the concern” about climate change, Jacobs responded, “Yes, there’s influence.”
Human activities that emit greenhouse gases are the main driver of climate change.
Jacobs had been a central figure in the 2019 Sharpiegate controversy, in which Trump edited a map with a Sharpie to bolster his claims that Hurricane Dorian could hit Alabama.
At the time, NOAA released a statement backing the president and rebuking a NWS tweet that contradicted him.
Asked about the incident on Wednesday, Jacobs said, “There’s probably some things I would do differently.”
Asked by Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) whether he would “sign off on an inaccurate statement due to political pressure in the same event,” Jacobs said no.
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