
Head Of State Donald Trump has nominated Neil Jacobs, a climatic researcher, to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Management (NOAA).
If validated, this will certainly be Jacobs’ 2nd job leading the firm. Starting in 2019, he functioned as its acting manager till Trump left workplace at the end of his term in January 2021.
Jacobs is kept in mind for the supposed “Sharpiegate” occurrence, a September 2019 conflict throughout which Trump, in an Oval Workplace press instruction, revealed a map of Storm Dorian’s projection track that showed up to have actually been modified with a black pen to reveal the tornado’s track reached consist of southerly Alabama. Though the main tornado track from the National Climate Solution (NWS) did not have it striking the state, Trump had actually improperly proclaimed a couple of days previously that it would certainly.
Soon after Trump made the insurance claim, NOAA provided a declaration house siding with Trump and advising the NWS for openly claiming that Alabama was not at risk from the tornado.
Dorian inevitably did not make landfall in the united state and remained eastern of Florida.
The NOAA Scientific research Council ultimately investigated Jacobs, claiming that he went against the company’s clinical stability plan by providing a declaration sustaining Trump’s wrong insurance claim regarding Dorian’s tornado track as a main NOAA launch.

Signs outside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Management (NOAA) Facility for Climate and Environment Forecast head office in University Park, Md., Dec. 5, 2024.
Michael A. McCoy/Bloomberg using Getty Photos
Jacobs is presently the chief science advisor for the neighborhood Unified Projection System (UFS), component of the College Company for Atmospheric Research study’s (UCAR) Cooperative Programs for the Development of Planet System Scientific Research at North Carolina State College.
The UFS is an initiative by the wide clinical neighborhood to establish a typical, open-source modeling facilities that motivates cooperation and relieves the shift from research study to procedures to boost NOAA’s projection designs.
Jacobs has actually long sustained an open technology strategy and well-coordinated research study initiatives that are equally valuable to the general public, exclusive, and scholastic markets. In 2021, he released an article in the Publication of the American Meteorological Culture, reviewing his vision for the neighborhood UFS.

Head Of State Donald Trump and Performing Assistant of Homeland Protection Kevin McAleenan upgrade the media on Storm Dorian readiness from the Oval Workplace, Sept. 4, 2019.
Jim Watson/AFP using Getty Photos
Prior to acting as NOAA’s acting supervisor, Jacobs was the primary climatic researcher at Panasonic Avionics Corporation, where he guided the r & d of its air travel climate observing systems and modeling programs.
In a November 2024 podcast interview, Jacobs shared his sights on the future of federal government companies, like NOAA, and likewise evaluated in on Job 2025, a playbook of debatable conventional plan propositions co-authored by lots of Trump allies and participants of his initial management, arranged by conventional brain trust The Heritage Structure and that includes referrals to reverse and get rid of preventative environment modification efforts.
” Whenever there’s a management or a political election year, whether it’s an incumbent or a brand-new management, you’re constantly mosting likely to have these brain trust and teams pressing shift files to the shift group claiming, this is what you must do, you must review this,” Jacobs claimed. “The executive branch can not simply can be found in and totally transform something that’s accredited in regulation.”

Neil Jacobs, acting manager for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Management, talks at NOAA’s 2019 Storm Period Expectation interview, Might 23, 2019, in Arlington, Va.
Win Mcnamee/Getty Photos
Jacobs likewise claimed that “NOAA has every one of these legislative requireds that are ordered. Congress would certainly need to revise a hill of regulations to reverse all that.”
Last month, Jacobs was recognized as a 2025 Other of the American Meteorological Culture (AMS) throughout the company’s yearly conference. An AMS Other is a difference booked for those that have actually made “impressive payments to the climatic or relevant nautical or hydrologic scientific researches or their applications throughout a significant duration of years.”
Jacobs holds a bachelor’s level in maths and physics from the College of South Carolina, and master’s and postgraduate degrees in climatic scientific research from North Carolina State College.