Grant Cooper, Ph.D., is the Director of the National Weather Service (NWS) Western Region. His team of weather service professionals at 24 Weather Forecast Offices, 3 River Forecast Centers and 4 Center Weather Service Units provide weather, water and climate services for more than 65 million people in eight western states. Dr. Cooper led the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program from 2015-2023, which is the nation’s community-focused program to improve tsunami mitigation and preparedness of at-risk areas within the U.S. and territories.  Dr. Cooper served as the acting Director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction from 2019-2020, where he provided executive oversight of nine national centers.

Dr. Cooper joined the NWS following a career as a United States Naval Officer. As a meteorologist and oceanographer, he served in a variety of operational weather tours and senior leadership positions including command of the Joint Typhoon Warning Center / Naval Maritime Forecast Center in Pearl Harbor, HI and Naval Central Meteorology and Oceanography Center, Bahrain. As Weather Services Director for Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, Dr. Cooper had programmatic and operational oversight of the Navy’s aviation, maritime and expeditionary weather lines of operation. He also served as the senior meteorologist for U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and later for Headquarters, U.S. Pacific Fleet. Prior to his career transition to the NWS, Dr. Cooper was as a member of the defense acquisition community where he served as senior advisor on the staff of the Navy’s Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence.

Dr. Cooper received his Ph.D. in Meteorology and M.S. degree in Meteorology and Physical Oceanography from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. He graduated with a B.S. degree in Geological Sciences (Geophysics) from San Diego State University.

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