Assistance program
Weather and Air Quality Research
$212.7 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Commerce, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 11.459
- What it does
- Advance weather research, development, and transition to improve weather observations, modeling, computing, forecasts, warnings, social science, and communication for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy. The goals are to: 1) Advance a collaborative weather research and development network with academic, governmental, nonprofit, and industry partners to continuously improve weather information, products, and services; 2) Improve high-impact weather forecasts, products, and services and their delivery, communication, use, and value to the public; 3) Contribute to the best-possible Unified Forecast System, including coupling to Earth system components and utilizing community-based research to transform weather forecasting skill; and 4) Strengthen the mission enabling, foundational infrastructure such as observations required for weather research and transitions to achieve next generation science and forecasting advances.
- Who benefits
- Organizations and individuals with interests in meteorology, oceanography, climate, and air-quality research and prediction and organizations and individuals in the social sciences with interests in the linkages between human systems and the aforementioned interest areas.
- Who applies
- -U.S. institutions of higher education; -Cooperative Institutes; -U.S.-based commercial organizations; -State, local and Indian tribal governments in the U.S.; and -U.S. non-profit organizations.
- Authorized by
- Weather Service Organic Act
- Public Law 115-25
- Public Law 115-423
- Program site
- https://wpo.noaa.gov/ ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments