Improving Flood and Agricultural Forecasts Act of 2024

The Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere shall maintain the National Mesonet Program (referred to in this section as the Program), which shall—

(1) obtain observations to improve understanding of and forecast capabilities for atmospheric, drought, fire, and water events, with a prioritization on leveraging available commercial, academic, and other non-Federal Government environmental data to enhance coordination across the private, public, and academic sectors of the weather enterprise in the United States;

(2) establish means to integrate greater density and more types of environmental observations into the Program on an annual basis, including by encouraging local and regional networks of environmental monitoring stations, in situ sensor networks, including soil moisture and stream gage networks, and satellite constellations, to participate in the Program; and

(3) establish memoranda of understanding with networks outside of the scope of the Program in furtherance of this section.

In carrying out the Program, the Under Secretary shall—

(1) increase data density by—

(A) improving and increasing the quantity and density of environmental observations used by the Administration and the National Weather Service to support baseline forecasts, including nowcasts, warnings, and hyper local forecasts that protect individuals, businesses, agricultural production, food security, military, and government agencies in the United States, and enabling such individuals and entities to operate in a safe, efficient, and orderly manner;

(B) yielding increased quantities of boundary-layer data to improve numerical weather prediction performance, including in subseasonal to seasonal timescales;

(C) identifying available terrestrial or marine environmental data, or quantifiable gaps in such data, to improve the understanding of air-sea interactions; and

(D) supporting the National Weather Service in reaching its target of a 30-minute warning time for severe weather through better predictive model algorithms driven by increasingly effective observations;

(2) monitor local meteorological conditions by—

(A) acquiring soil and moisture data to monitor soil moisture, vegetation water content, and moisture loss from evaporation, in support of operational forecasting, the National Integrated Drought Information System, and local commercial, agricultural, and emergency management needs;

(B) supporting the National Coordinated Soil Moisture Monitoring Network in acquiring soil moisture and related data to support the development of decision-support products and other information services; and

(C) expanding and enhancing environmental observational networks in the roadway environment to provide real-time road weather and surface conditions for surface transportation and related economic sectors; and

(3) administer the Program by—

(A) obtaining data in furtherance of this section only when demonstrably cost effective and meeting or exceeding data quality standards available to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (referred to in this section as the Administration);

(B) subject to the requirement in subparagraph (A), leveraging existing networks of environmental monitoring stations, including supplemental radar systems, to increase the quantity and density of environmental observations and data available to the Administration;

(C) providing the critical technical and administrative infrastructure needed to facilitate rapid integration and sustained use of new and emerging networks of environmental monitoring stations anticipated in coming years from non-Federal Government sources;

(D) coordinating with existing data developed by the Administration and used for forecasts, including data from the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, the Integrated Ocean Observing System, the Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program, the National Data Buoy Center, and the National Ocean Service; and

(E) identifying and communicating to the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and other partners priorities of research and development needed to advance observations in the Program.

In furtherance of the Program, in a fiscal year, the Under Secretary may award not less than 15 percent of the amount appropriated for the Program for that fiscal year for financial assistance to State, Tribal, private, and academic entities seeking to build, expand, or upgrade equipment and capacity of mesonet systems.

Financial assistance under this subsection may be made in coordination with and in addition to awards from other Federal agencies.

Before receiving financial assistance under paragraph (1), the State, Tribal, private, or academic entity seeking financial assistance under this subsection shall enter into an agreement with the Under Secretary to provide data to the Program, subject to verification by the Program of the relative operational value and evaluation of the cost of such data, for use in weather prediction, severe weather warnings, and emergency response.

The Under Secretary may provide—

(A) technical assistance, project implementation support, and guidance to State, Tribal, private, and academic entities seeking financial assistance under this subsection; and

(B) technical and financial assistance for maintenance of monitoring stations in underrepresented or remote areas of the country where it is financially unfeasible for 1 entity to operate such stations without such assistance.

In providing financial assistance under this subsection, the Under Secretary shall establish terms to ensure that each State, Tribal, private, or academic entity that receives financial assistance under this subsection receives a level of support commensurate with the quality and other characteristics of the data to be provided.

A State, Tribal, private, or academic entity may only receive financial assistance under this subsection if the Under Secretary determines such entity will provide sufficient financial support from non-Federal Government sources and fully maintain the quality of the mesonet system and associated data standards required by the Program for a period of not less than 5 years.

The Under Secretary shall prioritize providing assistance under paragraph (1) to not fewer than 1 entity in an underrepresented or remote area.

The Under Secretary shall ensure the Program has an active advisory committee of subject matter experts to make recommendations to the Administration on the identification, implementation, procurement, and tracking of data needed to supplement the Program, and recommend improvements, expansions, and acquisitions of available data.

The Under Secretary may designate an existing advisory committee, subcommittee, or working group of the Federal Government, including the Science Advisory Board of the Administration, to carry out the requirement under paragraph (1).

The advisory committee under paragraph (1), in consultation with the Program, shall include expertise from 1 or more institutions of higher education (as defined in section 101 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 1001)) to assist the advisory committee to identify, evaluate, and recommend potential partnerships, regional or subregional consortia, and collaborative methods that would expand the number of participants and volume of data in the Program.

The Under Secretary shall provide regular briefings, not less frequently than twice annually, to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the House of Representatives on all activities under the Program.

Each briefing required under paragraph (1) shall include information relating to the following:

(A) Efforts to implement the activities described in subsection (b).

(B) Any financial or technical assistance provided pursuant to subsection (c).

(C) Efforts to address recommendations received from the advisory committee under subsection (d), if any.

(D) The potential need and associated benefits of a coastal and ocean mesonet, or other emerging areas of weather data needs.

(E) Progress toward eliminating gaps in weather observation data in States and regions of the United States.

(F) Any other topic the Under Secretary determines relevant.

In this section, the terms seasonal, State, subseasonal, Under Secretary, and weather enterprise have the meanings given those terms in section 2 of the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017 (15 U.S.C. 8501).

There are authorized to be appropriated to the Under Secretary to carry out this section—

(1) $50,000,000 for fiscal year 2025;

(2) $55,000,000 for fiscal year 2026;

(3) $61,000,000 for fiscal year 2027;

(4) $68,000,000 for fiscal year 2028; and

(5) $70,000,000 for fiscal year 2029.