President Donald Trump has nominated Neil Jacobs to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

With a La Nina climate pattern in place, southern parts of the U.S. may experience expanded and intensifying drought during the winter months ahead. More modest probabilities for warmer temperatures are forecast in the southern parts of the west coast, and from the Mid-Atlantic into the Northeast. Above-average temperatures are also favored for Hawaii and western and northern Alaska. More modest chances for drier conditions are forecast in southern Alaska, and from California across the Rockies, Central Plains, and into the Southeast. Drought conditions are expected to improve in the northern Rockies, Northwest, New England, Alaska, and Hawaii over the coming months.

Former Obama NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco, a scientist at Oregon State University, said in an email that high level officials put politics and their own jobs above public safety. By the time the two tweets were posted, Alabama was no longer in the hurricane centers warning cone, although it had been in previous days. Jacobs said things went crazy in the middle of the night.Then-NOAA communications chief Julie Kay Roberts told the inspector generals office that Walsh told her there are jobs on the line. The report said there was no credible evidence found to say that jobs were threatened. The Inspector General instead selectively quotes from interviews, takes facts out of context.The White House declined comment.

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration leaders violated the agencys scientific integrity when they chastised a local weather office that had contradicted President Trumps inaccurate comments about Hurricane Dorian, an outside panel found. Twenty minutes after Trump's tweet, meteorologists in the National Weather Services Birmingham office tweeted Alabama will NOT see any impacts" from the storm. After a phone call to Jacobs from his boss, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and other conversations with Commerce Department political appointees, NOAA put out the statement chastising the Birmingham weather office tweet. The outside report said the violations of scientific policy were, first, issuing the statement without talking to the Birmingham meteorologists and, second, issuing it after political pressure. Roberts left NOAA for another high-ranking job in the Department of Commerce.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is forecasting an active hurricane season this year, with up to 19 named storms. The consensus between all of the forecasts this year is for a more active season than it was for the past few years. Colorado State University forecast says the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season will have activity above the 1981-2010 average. In addition to 16 named storms (average is 12.) UK Met Office released its seasonal hurricane forecast calling for near-average Atlantic hurricane season with most likely numbers of 13 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major (Category 3+) hurricanes between June and November.

CHARLES COUNTY, Md. - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has designated the first new national marine sanctuary since 2000. Forty miles south of Washington, the 18-square-mile stretch of the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland, has been named the Mallows Bay-Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary. "The designation of Mallows Bay as a national marine sanctuary is an exciting milestone for NOAA and an opportunity for the public to celebrate and help protect this piece of our nation's rich maritime history," Acting Administrator Neil Jacobs said in a statement Monday. The ships never participated in battle, and they were eventually brought to the Potomac River in order to be salvaged for scrap metal.