Proposes increases to NWS and NOAA weather budgets across the board

May 12, 2026

The House Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations subcommittee released the full report document on their proposed FY2027 budget, giving details on the committee’s priorities for the agencies it has jurisdiction over, including NOAA, NASA and National Science Foundation.

Starting with NOAA, I must say that I am pleasantly surprised at just how positive this budget is for NOAA’s weather enterprise — not just for the National Weather Service, but overall.

With regard to the NWS, the proposed Operations, Research and Facilities (ORF) budget — the main budget the agency uses for its day-to-day work — is $1.457B, which is an increase of about 8% over the enacted FY2026 budget. Some specific projects the committee outlined for funding:

• $40,000,000 “for the continuation and expansion of the National Mesonet Program to leverage large investments from other sponsors, increase the number of observations, and introduce innovative capabilities to address capacity and geographic coverage gaps, including in high-risk areas.”
• $15,000,000 to address what the committee perceives as gaps in the nation’s weather radar coverage: “The lack of comprehensive weather radar coverage leaves over 130 million Americans across the entire country and their communities vulnerable to severe weather risks. By leveraging commercial radar data partners to obtain higher resolution gap-filling data, NOAA, agency officials, and forecast meteorologists will be able to make more accurate, timely decisions during severe weather outbreaks and will be able to potentially mitigate life threatening impacts.”
• $5,000,000 to “improve dissemination of weather alerts and forecasts using commercial AI technology.”
• In the separate Procurement and Acquisition budget, the House bill includes wording focused on the aging NEXRAD network and need for a new replacement radar system. This includes allocating up to $25M “to continue implementation of data fusion and gap-filling radar integration…understanding that the current NEXRAD systems are at end-of-life and significant gaps in radar coverage already exist.” It also includes $25M for the NWS Radar Next program to develop the next generation weather radar network, and directs NWS to “leverage the capabilities of an academic institution with demonstrated expertise in advanced weather radar systems, atmospheric science, and radar engineering to support the Radar Next program across its planning, acquisition, and deployment phases.”

For the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, NOAA’s research office, the House budget not only continues to provide funding to OAR, it also this year includes specific wording that the administration should not take any action to close any NOAA Research labs or associated university cooperative institutes:

The Committee recognizes the critical mission of NOAA and the important contributions of its laboratories and cooperative institutes. The Committee directs NOAA to maintain these capabilities and to avoid closures, consolidations, or eliminations, given their essential role in advancing weather forecasting, atmospheric science, and oceanographic research.

This is important given that the FY27 President’s budget proposal does not even acknowledge the existence of OAR after the administration zeroed out the OAR budget and proposed elimination of the agency in its FY26 budget. The House report for OAR also:

• Outlines a 16% increase to OAR’s Weather Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes budget over FY2026 enacted.
• Funds NOAA Sea Grant at the same level as FY2026 (administration wants to eliminate Sea Grant)
• Funds VORTEX-USA and VORTEX-Southeast at the same level as FY2026

The FY2026 budget bill that was signed into law included a requirement for NOAA to provide to the appropriations subcommittees a “written assessment of the potential role, mission, and benefits of an extreme weather federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), including how it could complement existing NOAA programs and partnerships.” While I am not aware if such a document has been prepared yet by NOAA, the subcommittee has apparently decided that such an FFRDC is needed and should be within the National Weather Service, with this report providing a $20M plus-up to the NWS Science and Technology Integration (STI) budget for the establishment of an “Extreme Weather FFRDC:”

The Committee expects the FFRDC to operate as a mission-aligned operational partner focused on the rapid transition of validated technologies and modeling improvements into National Weather Service operations on defined and accountable timelines. The FFRDC shall prioritize operational radar and observing system modernization; integration of high-resolution modeling with multi-platform data streams; responsible deployment of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to enhance forecaster decision support; improved integration of precipitation forecasting and hydrologic modeling; and measurable improvements in forecast lead time, false alarm rates, and overall forecast accuracy. The Committee emphasizes that this initiative is intended to complement, not duplicate, existing NOAA Laboratory and Cooperative Institute research programs and shall be structured to focus on operational delivery and milestone-based advancement. NOAA shall provide a briefing not later than 180 days after the enactment of this Act on acquisition strategy and implementation timelines.

The administration has stated in its budget documents for NOAA that key weather research programs would be maintained within NWS even as OAR is disbanded. In the FY26 budget bill that was actually signed into law, weather research programs that are generally considered more operationally focused — Phased Array Radar, US Weather Research Program, and Joint Technology Transfer Initiative — were moved from OAR to the NWS. I have stated my concerns with the idea of all weather research being housed with the operational agency of NWS, as research can quickly become a casualty in an operational science agency when budgets art tight. With this budget report, the House seems to trying to establish capacity for research-to-operations programs within NWS as well as maintaining longer-term weather research programs within OAR. From my perspective, that would obviously be an optimum approach that would position NOAA to keep moving weather forecasting and science forward.

With regard to NOAA satellite programs, the House report provides funding for and direction to NOAA to plan for both imager and sounder instruments on the first two next generation GeoXO geostationary weather satellites — again a rebuke to administration proposals to only include sounders on the new satellites “if budgets allow.” As far as climate, the allocations within OAR’s climate laboratories/ cooperative institutes and competitive research programs is cut by about 16% — although regional climate data centers are fully funded.

My focus in reviewing the House report this afternoon was on NOAA weather and climate programs. I gave the overall House budget implications for NASA and NSF in my post a couple of weeks ago. I did take a quick read through of the NSF report wording and did not see anything specific with regard to the administration’s plans to dismantle the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research or elimination of the NSF Social, Behavioral and Economic sciences directorate. I will review these budgets (and the NOAA budget again) more closely and provide more details on anything I might have missed.

Just to reemphasize, we are still very early in the 2027 federal budget process — but this gives us an initial sense of the direction that Congress plans to take with regard to funding weather and climate science programs, and in particular the position of the House Republican caucus which primarily drives this budget proposal. The Senate — which typically has a more bipartisan appropriations process — has not yet released any of their budget planning documents. Obviously, lots more to come on this process in the coming weeks.