The Office of Weather and Air Quality was directed to fund and transition world-class research. We did.
NOAA’s Office of Weather and Air Quality (OWAQ) is entrusted with finding, funding, and fostering collaborative weather and air quality research. Together, the OWAQ team and partners find answers to our Nation’s most pressing questions about tropical cyclones, hazardous weather, flooding, air quality, and human responses to these risks, among many other research areas.
OWAQ has undergone transformative growth this year to align with NOAA priorities, execute a larger budget, manage award processes efficiently, and work collaboratively across the weather enterprise to advance weather and air quality research and transitions. As always, extraordinary teamwork and dedication made our accomplishments possible. In particular, I acknowledge our team and partners for:
• Increasing the number of funding awards from 62 to 84, a 27% increase over FY2017.
• Increasing Federal employees from 5 to 8, a 60% increase over FY2017.
• Increasing the contract staff from 5 to 11, a 120% increase over FY2017.
• Shepherding a budget increase from $24.1 million to $37.1 million, a 54% increase over FY2017.
• Serving as NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research lead for executing congressional directives.
As you will read in the pages that follow, our team and partners also addressed the difficult research questions whose answers help us understand and predict our weather. I acknowledge them for scientific accomplishments that ranged from using drones to improve National Weather Service (NWS) models for storm intensification to using satellite data to improve tropical cyclone prediction.
The Office of Weather and Air Quality was directed to fund and transition world-class research: We did that, and, with our team and partners, will do still more.
Sincerely,
John Cortinas, Ph.D., Director
Office of Weather and Air Quality