Meteorologist Charbijit is officially the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Here’s what that could mean for the agency in the Trump era

US Senate this week certain Neil Jacobs to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nation’s forecasting and weather office. Despite being President Donald Trump’s pick to run the agency, Jacobs is perhaps best known as the meteorologist who found he had it Violated NOAA Code of Ethics During 2019 “Sharpiegate” scandal..

If memory doesn’t serve you well, that was when Trump, in his first term, insisted that Hurricane Dorian posed a threat to Alabama (it wasn’t), and eventually produced a map that appeared to have been edited with a Sharpie to prove his point. Jacobs was the acting administrator at NOAA at the time.

Jacobs is a professional atmospheric scientist with prior leadership experience at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). However, critics say his confirmation indicates the administration is seeking to appoint agency heads who bow to political pressure.

At his confirmation hearing, Jacobs said of “Sharpiegate” that “there are probably some things I would do differently,” The Verge reported. The hill. Jacobs also said he would not sign inaccurate statements under political pressure. However, his confirmation comes at a perilous moment for NOAA. The Trump administration is actively destroying the agency’s staff, funding, and research capabilities. As the agency that tracks potentially catastrophic weather events, such as hurricanes, it can afford little risk.

What exactly is Jacobs’ involvement in “Sharpiegate”?

As Hurricane Dorian approached the southeastern United States on September 1, 2019, then-President Trump chirp That Alabama “will likely be hit (much) harder than expected.” Minutes later, the Birmingham, Alabama, office of the National Weather Service (NWS) arrived. chirp Correction: “Alabama will not see any impacts from Dorian.”

On September 4, 2019, the White House Released A video of Trump shows a map of Dorian’s projected path that appears to have been edited in thick black pen to include Alabama. Two days later, Noah Issued The Birmingham NWS office’s tweet “spoke in absolute terms inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time,” a statement said.

Jacobs was acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) when all this happened. In March 2020, an internal investigation was conducted Found That Jacobs and Julie Roberts, NOAA’s then-director of communications, violated the agency’s ethics rules by intentionally failing to involve the NWS office in Birmingham in the development of their statement. Neither Jacobs nor Roberts faced disciplinary action.

The report laid out a detailed timeline indicating that Jacobs and Roberts acted under pressure from the White House to support Trump’s false assertion. In February 2020, NOAA released a batch of emails exchanged between Jacobs and other agency employees during the fiasco. In one it is books: “You have no idea how hard I fight to keep politics out of science.”

Critics decried the incident as negligence: “If Jacobs is fighting tooth and nail and this shameful statement still comes out on his watch, I have little faith that he can make the necessary difficult decisions that the job requires every day to protect the science and scientists at NOAA,” Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said. books at that time.

Trump weakens scientific agencies from top to bottom

Five years later, with Jacobs now confirmed, NOAA’s work is more at risk than ever. The Trump administration has already cut nearly 2,000 employees from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and aims to cut 40% of the agency’s funding, especially research funding. Some worry that the administration might go further: The conservative manifesto, Project 2025, from which the administration has taken many references so far, calls for dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and privatizing nuclear-weapon states.

In July, Jacobs pledged to bring staff back to the country’s meteorological offices, about half of which have already done so. receipt Critical vacancy rates since Trump took office in January.

“It’s really important for people to be there because they have relationships with people in the local community,” Jacobs said. Government executive. “They are a trusted source.”

Regardless of the irony of this statement, it remains to be seen whether Jacobs will follow through on his promise and be able to stand up to the current Trump White House.