April 26, 2021 — President Biden is nominating Rick Spinrad to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the government’s premier agency on climate science which oversees the National Weather Service.
Prior to his current role as a professor of oceanography at Oregon State University, Spinrad served as NOAA’s top scientist under President Obama and the U.S. representative to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.
The nomination comes at a difficult moment in NOAA’s history. The agency has been without an official, Senate-confirmed leader since former President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, after his two nominees to lead the agency failed to garner enough support to win a full vote before the Senate.
If Spinrad manages to win over the Senate, he will have to contend with a challenge beyond the agency’s already-rigorous scientific mandate: restoring public confidence in a traditionally apolitical agency marred by political scandal.