Two months into his role leading NOAA, Tim Petty — Assistant Administrator of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Deputy Administrator — brought a rare mix of freshwater credibility and ocean-scale responsibility to the World Water Day stage. His message: the federal government is in the middle of a quantum leap in how it collects, processes, and delivers water and weather data — and the communities on the front lines of floods and droughts need to feel it.

➡️ Tim Petty — From Freshwater to NOAA's 97%
Petty came to NOAA after decades shaping federal water policy, including as a signatory on both the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan and the Columbia River operational framework. His background gives him an unusually integrated view of where federal water data meets real-world decision-making — and where the gaps still are.

"Water will always find a place to leak. It just does. There's no way to hold it back."

➡️ Modernizing NOAA from the Ground Up
A top priority for Petty is moving the National Weather Service — decades of data included — entirely into the cloud. The goal is to layer satellite data, ocean research, atmospheric modeling, and stream gauge readings into systems that can generate faster, more actionable intelligence for communities, not reports that land two years after the flood.

"Something has to feed this beast — and that's the scientist."

➡️ The Case for Open Data: A Landsat Lesson
Petty pointed to a pivotal 2008 decision as a model for what federal data policy can accomplish. When USGS made Landsat satellite imagery free to the public — previously priced at $600 to $800 per image — it unlocked billions of dollars in economic activity and transformed entire industries. He sees the same potential in opening up NOAA's data holdings today.

"No one individual company can put a billion-dollar satellite in space every five years. But what it was able to do was be transformational."

➡️ Longer Forecasts, Better Decisions
Petty described a push to extend forecast accuracy well beyond the current 7-to-10-day window — toward seasonal and multi-year outlooks that could reshape how communities plan for drought, flooding, and extreme weather. Machine learning and expanded variable modeling are making that ambition increasingly realistic.

➡️ Partnerships as the New Infrastructure
Rather than treating federal science as a closed system, Petty made the case for deep cost-sharing with universities, utilities, and the private sector. He argued the next generation of progress will come from spending less on paper and more on infrastructure — physical and digital — built in genuine partnership with local communities.

➡️ The Water-Ocean Connection
With only about 42% of the world's ocean floor digitally mapped, Petty acknowledged how much remains unknown about the ocean systems that drive atmospheric rivers, coastal flooding, and long-range weather patterns. Closing that gap, he said, is central to NOAA's mission and its value to the water sector.

The presentation offered a window into how a lifelong freshwater expert is applying that lens to one of the federal government's most expansive scientific agencies — and why, in Petty's view, the barriers between freshwater and saltwater policy are increasingly artificial. The data challenges facing a river basin manager and a coastal flood forecaster are more connected than the institutional silos suggest.

Learn more about the World Water Day event at https://www.reservoircenter.org/event/wwd2026/

00:00 – From Freshwater to NOAA: Tim Petty's First Two Months
04:25 – Moving the National Weather Service to the Cloud
07:10 – The Science That Feeds the Machine: Why Data Quality Matters
10:00 – Landsat and the Power of Open Federal Data
12:20 – Partnerships with Universities, Utilities & the Private Sector
15:30 – Extending Forecasts: From 10 Days to Seasonal Outlooks
18:10 – Fisheries, Water Health & the Ecosystem Connection
19:40 – Building Authoritative Data Across Federal Agencies
22:00 – Ocean Heat Absorption & What NOAA Still Doesn't Know
24:00 – Mapping the Ocean Floor & the Future of Marine Research

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