National Weather Service
The National Weather Service (NWS) is an agency of the United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weather-related products to organizations and the public for the purposes of protection, safety, and general information. It is a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) branch of the Department of Commerce, and is headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, within the Washington metropolitan area.[6][7] The agency was known as the United States Weather Bureau from 1890 until it adopted its current name in 1970.[8]
"Weather Bureau" redirects here. For other uses, see Meteorological Administration.Agency overview
The NWS performs its primary task through a collection of national and regional centers, and 122 local Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs). As the NWS is an agency of the U.S. federal government, most of its products are in the public domain and available free of charge.
As of 2016, the National Weather Service was organized as follows[58]
Critics such as University of Washington professor Cliff Mass[63] have claimed that NWS forecasts are not as accurate as they could be, and that this has resulted in inaccurate daily weather forecasts and dangerously bad predictions concerning the location and intensity of extreme weather events like blizzards and hurricanes. In 2016, the British Met Office, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), and the Northwest Regional Modeling Consortium in Seattle have been cited as producing more accurate predictions in certain circumstances. According to critics, causes include:[64]
The Next Generation Global Prediction System project at NWS [65] aims to address some of these criticisms by running a unified high-quality model that takes advantage of more recent research results.
In 2016, the NOAA announced to develop The Next Generation Global Prediction System.[66]
