Americans live in the most severe weather-prone country on Earth. StormReady Communities support a Weather-Ready Nation by preparing for the occurrence of high impact environmental events. On an annual basis NWS targets 100 new StormReady Communities pending funding availability.

StormReady supports NWS’ disaster risk reduction strategy and is offered to provide guidance and incentive to officials who want to improve their hazardous weather and flood operations. A long-term goal for the program is to make every county or county-equivalent in the United States StormReady. The 2010 U.S. Census identifies 3,234 county or county-equivalents in the United States. We are 34 percent of the way there with 1,092 county or county-equivalents currently recognized as StormReady. A StormReady Community is defined as a local government* entity or facility** that has the authority and ability to adopt the StormReady recognition guidelines for the residents and visitors within its jurisdiction.

*The term “local government” means –
(A) A county, parish, borough, municipality, city, town, township, local public authority, school district, special district, intrastate district, council of governments (regardless of whether the council of governments is incorporated as a nonprofit corporation under State law), regional or interstate government entity, or agency or instrumentality of a local government;
(B) An Indian tribe or authorized tribal organization, or Alaska Native village or organization; and
a rural community, unincorporated town or village, or other public entity, which has the ability to achieve StormReady recognition.
**The term “facility” for a StormReady community exclusively means - universities, military installations, state/national parks, power plants/utilities, transportation centers (e.g., airports), theme parks/entertainment complex, and large event venues (e.g. stadiums).

The measure is a proxy for the useful forecast lead time of the Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS) beyond the current forecasts skill (9.5 days) and is computed over the range of forecast days. Extending lead time in prediction of future weather events allows people to make informed choices and enables protection of life, property, and enhancement of the National economy. The 500 hPA Anomaly Correlation will be used.

This metric measures the level of customer service provided by the Office of Space Commerce to the U.S. commercial space industry and other external stakeholders in response to specific requests for support. This metric applies only to major requests requiring application of labor hours or other resources towards the investigation, coordination, and resolution of policy/regulatory issues or achievement of activities that promote the interests of U.S. space companies.

The indicator shows the overall growth, in petaflops (PF), of the operational and research and development High Performance Computing capability. Our current enterprise supplies 16PF to support modeling requirements across NOAA. Growth in capacity will lessen the gap in current modeling requirement and provide additional capability to the modeling community within NOAA.

This measure highlights change in jobs that communities or businesses generate or save due to Sea Grant assistance (i.e., providing information to help communities, industries or businesses expand, make better decisions or avoid mistakes). Sea Grant provides the information and training that informs business decisions, and in some Hurricane forecast track error cases firms create or sustain jobs as a result. A job created is a new position created and filled as a result of Sea Grant activities. An existing position that is filled with a Sea Grant-trained applicant should not be reported in this measure. A job sustained is an existing, filled position that is sustained as a direct result of Sea Grant activities. A job cannot be reported as both created and sustained in the same year.

This measure highlights change in jobs that communities or businesses generate or save due to Sea Grant assistance (i.e., providing information to help communities, industries or businesses expand, make better decisions or avoid mistakes). Sea Grant provides the information and training that informs business decisions, and in some cases firms create or sustain jobs as a result. A job created is a new position created and filled as a result of Sea Grant activities. An existing position that is filled with a Sea Grant-trained applicant should not be reported in this measure. A job sustained is an existing, filled position that is sustained as a direct result of Sea Grant activities. A job cannot be reported as both created and sustained in the same year.

NOAA and NMFS support research to advance commercial-scale marine aquaculture production. This is done through commercial scale demonstration facilities in collaboration with—and co-funded by— industry and coastal seafood communities to facilitate the commercial viability of marine aquaculture production. Additionally, NOAA will use aquaculture research to remove production bottlenecks for shellfish and finfish related to siting, disease, genetics and genomics, hatchery seed stock, and feed availability. Performance is measured by calculating the number of either unique or completed stages in ongoing projects which directly advance marine aquaculture production.

This measure accounts for annual contributions to the overall percentage of the US Waters that have been mapped to a depth greater than 200 meters. It is based upon the data holdings of the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and reflects reporting from all data sources.

The Argo program is responsible for providing real-time data for the upper 2000m of ocean heat content globally and for important regions like the Tropical Pacific for detection of El Nino.

This measures establishes customized assessment targets for every managed fish stock and gauges success in meeting those targets. Using this approach, NMFS can more accurately measure incremental progress of its national stock assessment enterprise and the degree to which we are meeting NOAA’s fish assessment needs. This measure will eventually be replacing Adequate Assessments for Fish Stocks.