The Senate today confirmed Neil Jacobs to be the new head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
His confirmation came as part of a block package of Trump nominees, including more than a dozen ambassadors.
Jacobs got bipartisan support in a committee vote last month, with five Democrats voting with Republican colleagues to advance his nomination.
The confirmation puts a career atmospheric scientist with a deep understanding of NOAA at the helm of the agency, which is responsible for making weather predictions and keeping climate records, a point of contention during the Trump administration. However, critics have highlighted Jacobs’ role in the so-called Sharpiegate controversy of 2019 as an example of his bending to perceived political pressure.
Sharpiegate refers to the time when Trump incorrectly said Hurricane Dorian could strike Alabama. The National Weather Service’s Birmingham office denied the state was at risk, but Trump doubled down and later showed reporters a map of the hurricane’s potential path that had been altered with a black Sharpie. Later, top NOAA officials rebuked the local forecasters amid perceived political pressure. Jacobs was NOAA’s assistant secretary for environmental observation at the time.
The National Academy of Public Administration reviewed the events and found that Jacobs had violated NOAA’s ethics policies.
At his Senate hearing in July, Jacobs said he would not handle the situation the same way if it happened now.
NOAA has already undergone an incredible amount of change during Trump’s second term. It cut several hundred employees then later announced it would rehire for hundreds of positions.
The Trump administration has also proposed deep cuts to the agency’s budget. And it has shuttered reports on climate change that used to be an important part of the NOAA’s portfolio.
During his confirmation hearing in July, Jacobs said staffing should be a priority. He acknowledged that humans are playing a role in climate change, along with natural variability. The hearing took place just after the Texas flood disaster, so Jacobs said he would prioritize making sure people got proper warnings during such weather disasters.
“Modernizing the way to distribute these watches and warnings is something that’s going to be a top priority of mine,” he said.
Jacobs has also endorsed creating a natural disaster review board, modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board.
“We also need more data and doing post-storm assessments,” he said. “We need the data to understand what went right, what went wrong, whether people got the warnings.”
