Ocean and coastal observing systems - National Weather Service

Bipartisan Infrastructure Law summary: “Shall be for coastal, ocean, and Great Lakes observing systems."

Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) funds to NOAA will support the fortification of critical ocean observing assets to ensure the long-term sustainability of the U.S. ocean observing enterprise and to support the New Blue Economy. NOAA is the authoritative provider of weather, ocean, and climate information, services, and predictions to the nation. With this funding, NOAA will modernize two ocean observations systems, the Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) array in the equatorial Pacific, and the Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami (DART) network, to address obsolescence of the aging equipment impacting NOAA’s ability to sustain the systems and the observations data. Investing in these observing systems now will address this need to minimize risk and gaps in service.  

NOAA will fortify and enhance the TAO array and the DART network. These investments in critical observing infrastructure include efforts to recapitalize, modernize and enhance the TAO systems to improve system performance and availability, and enable improved analyses and forecasts of climate events such as ENSO, and improved weather warnings and forecasts for the NWS Pacific Region. 

The investment also provides funding to recapitalize and replace the systems in the DART network to modernize and enhance the systems to improve availability and reliability of data, and increase tsunami detection capability for improved tsunami warnings, forecast of intensity and arrival times, and prediction for community inundation.

 $50M in FY 2022

• Funding will likely be distributed internally, therefore no external funding opportunity is expected at this time.