This bill requires the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere to maintain a National Mesonet Program. The Program will collect and add more local environmental observations each year to improve forecasts for weather, drought, fire, and water events. It prioritizes using commercial, academic, and other non-Federal data. The Program will encourage local and regional monitoring networks (including soil moisture and ground-based profilers), make agreements with outside networks, and coordinate with satellite data. It also sets standards for data quality, supports road weather sensors, and advises research priorities.
The bill aims to help produce better short-term and local forecasts, warnings, and nowcasts that could give people, farmers, emergency managers, and transportation officials more timely information. It supports building and maintaining local sensor networks (for example, soil moisture sensors and road weather stations) and asks data providers to share verified data with the Program. The Program must report to Congress each year about progress and needs through 2035.
The bill authorizes these amounts to carry out the Program: $50,000,000 for fiscal year 2025; $55,000,000 for 2026; $61,000,000 for 2027; $68,000,000 for 2028; and $70,000,000 for 2029. Each year, the Under Secretary must use not less than 15 percent of the amount appropriated for financial assistance to State, Tribal, private, and academic entities to build, expand, or upgrade mesonet equipment and capacity. No publicly available information on total long-term budgetary effects or offsets beyond these authorizations.
The bill text says the Program will improve forecast capabilities and warnings to protect people, businesses, agricultural production, food security, the military, and government agencies. It calls for leveraging non-Federal data, increasing observation density, supporting soil moisture monitoring, improving road weather data, and helping remote or underrepresented areas maintain monitoring stations.
No publicly available information.