Senate confirms ‘Sharpiegate’ meteorologist to lead NOAA

Neil Jacobs, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the national Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, leaves after testifying at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 9, 2025. The Senate on Tuesday evening, Oct. 7, 2025, confirmed a new leader of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, installing Jacobs, the acting director during the hurricane forecasting controversy of the first Trump administration known as “Sharpiegate.” (Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times)

By SCOTT DANCE

The Senate on Tuesday evening confirmed a new leader of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, installing Neil Jacobs, the acting director during the hurricane forecasting controversy of the first Trump administration known as “Sharpiegate.”

Senators voted, 51-46, to confirm a bloc of nominees that also included U.S. attorneys and foreign ambassadors.

Jacobs, an atmospheric scientist and meteorologist who has stressed a strong desire to improve the accuracy of U.S. weather forecasting models, is generally respected across NOAA, which oversees much of the federal climate research that the administration has targeted for deep cuts.

At the same time, he has faced criticism and rebuke for his tenure during President Donald Trump’s first term.

Jacobs was found to have violated NOAA’s code of ethics in 2020 after an investigation into an incident that centered on an altered hurricane forecast map Trump presented in the Oval Office in 2019. The investigation found he had bowed to political pressure in releasing a statement critical of National Weather Service forecasters in Alabama, who had stressed on social media that Hurricane Dorian was not expected to affect that state, despite warnings to the contrary from Trump.

During a confirmation hearing in July, he told senators he would not handle such a situation the same way again.

At the same hearing, he said he stood by the Trump administration’s proposals to dismantle much of NOAA’s climate science enterprise, while also diverging from Trump’s statements that climate change is a “hoax,” a position the president recently stressed in an address to the United Nations General Assembly.

Jacobs told senators in July that he believed human activity bore some responsibility for the rapid warming of the planet over recent decades, something the vast majority of earth scientists agree upon.