Trump picks scientist involved in ‘Sharpiegate’ scandal to lead NOAA
President Donald Trump has named Neil Jacobs, a veteran of his first administration, to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
President Donald Trump has named Neil Jacobs, an atmospheric scientist who was found to have violated scientific integrity policies during the “Sharpiegate” scandal of the first Trump administration, to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Jacobs led NOAA on an acting basis from February 2019 through the end of Trump’s first term, including when the president used a Sharpie marker to alter an official National Hurricane Center map to suggest that Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama and parts of Florida outside its predicted path. In response to concern over the incident, Jacobs in 2019 told a conference of scientists that “weather should not be a partisan issue.”
If confirmed, he would retake the helm of an agency that plays a central role in conducting federal climate research, monitoring and forecasting Earth’s climate and weather, and managing and conserving fisheries. Virtually all trained scientists say there is unequivocal evidence that human consumption of fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect are raising average global temperatures faster than at any time in history, with disastrous consequences for extreme weather, but Trump has labeled climate change a “hoax” and is striving to boost fossil fuel production and use.
Jacobs’s nomination Monday — and the expected confirmation of Howard Lutnick as secretary of the Commerce Department, which oversees NOAA — comes amid fears among scientists about the agency’s future and whether the new administration may root out climate science in much the same way as it has stripped any work related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration, called for breaking up NOAA and privatizing the work of the National Weather Service. A separate Republican proposal has called for making NOAA a stand-alone agency outside the Commerce Department.
Jacobs’s appointment requires Senate confirmation. A Senate committee approved his previous nomination in 2020, but the full chamber did not confirm him before Trump’s term ended.
Jacobs did not respond to a phone message Monday from The Washington Post.
Jacobs currently serves as chief science adviser for the Unified Forecast System, an initiative he has spearheaded to improve U.S. weather and climate forecasting accuracy. It involves removing barriers and improving collaboration between NOAA and both public and private researchers to improve weather modeling.
He is also serving as a 2025 fellow of the American Meteorological Society, an honor given each year to a small number of members of the country’s premier organization of climate scientists and weather forecasters. He previously worked as chief atmospheric scientist for Panasonic Avionics Corp., and holds a doctorate in numerical weather prediction and a master’s degree in air-sea interaction, both from North Carolina State University.
During the first Trump administration, he emphasized the importance of improving U.S. weather-forecasting models, which lag behind European and other models in their accuracy. He was seen as a strong defender of scientists and a noncontroversial choice to lead NOAA when Trump’s initial pick to head the agency, AccuWeather CEO Barry Myers, withdrew from consideration for Senate confirmation.
But he found himself at the center of the Sharpiegate controversy after Trump tweeted that Alabama was in the path of the storm and then, speaking from the Oval Office, pointed to a graphic showing Dorian’s path that had been altered with a marker to extend the forecast cone used to note Dorian’s path to also include Alabama and the Florida panhandle. The cone depicts areas with the highest statistical probability for the path of a storm’s center, based on meteorologists’ analysis of forecasting models and weather observations.
In response to Trump’s tweet, Weather Service forecasters in Birmingham, Alabama, clarified on social media that the state was probably not in Dorian’s path. The confusion prompted an unusual and unsigned NOAA statement in support of Trump’s warnings to Alabama.
An investigation found undue political influence in the process of crafting that statement, in violation of NOAA’s standards for scientific integrity, but Jacobs defended the statement and admonished the Birmingham meteorologists.
Dorian ultimately never made landfall on U.S. shores but battered Florida’s Atlantic coast and the Southeast. The storm was linked to six deaths in Florida and three in North Carolina.
As a result,
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