National Mesonet Authorization Act

National Mesonet Authorization Act

This bill provides statutory authority for the National Mesonet Program of the National Weather Service (NWS).

The program shall obtain observations from observing platforms in all geographic environments to improve understanding of and forecast capabilities for atmospheric events, with a prioritization on leveraging available commercial, academic, and other nonfederal weather data to enhance coordination across the private, public, and academic sectors of the U.S. weather enterprise.

The program must carry out specified activities, including improving environmental observations used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the NWS to support baseline forecasts and warnings that protect the nation's citizens, businesses, military, and government agencies and enable such individuals and entities to operate in safe, efficient, and orderly manners.

NOAA shall ensure the program has an active advisory committee of subject matter experts to identify, implement, procure, and track data needed to supplement the program, and recommend improvements, expansions, and acquisitions of available data.

The advisory committee shall establish partnerships with one or more institutions of higher education 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.