Dr. Louis W. Uccellini was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Assistant Administrator for Weather Services, and Director of the National Weather Service (2013-2022). In this role, he was responsible for the day-to-day civilian weather operations for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters, and ocean areas. Dr. Uccellini also serves as the United States Permanent Representative with the World Meteorological Organization.
Prior to this position, he served as the Director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) for 14 years. With his leadership, a Seamless Suite of Models was implemented that covers the seasonal-to-subseasonal to mesoscale modeling systems and is based on the principle of multi-model ensembles. An enhanced collaborative forecasting effort was also implemented among all of the seven NCEP service centers, covering a domain from the sun to the sea, including the Space Weather Prediction Center, the Climate Prediction Center, the Weather Prediction Center, the National Hurricane Center, the Storm Prediction Center, the Aviation Weather Center and the Ocean Prediction Center.
Dr. Uccellini was the Director of the National Weather Service’s Office of Meteorology from 1994 to 1999 and Chief of the National Weather Service’s Meteorological Operations Division from 1989 to 1994. Before his career in the NWS, he was fully engaged in the research community as the section head for the Mesoscale Analysis and Modeling Section at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Laboratory for Atmospheres from 1978 to 1989.
Dr. Uccellini received his Ph.D. (1977), Master (1972) and Bachelor of Science (1971) degrees in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles, review chapters, and books on subjects including analysis of severe weather outbreaks, snowstorms, gravity waves, jet streaks, cyclones, and the use of satellite data in analysis and modeling applications. More recently, he established the basis for the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation, contributed to the WMO based Grand Challenge for Seamless Prediction, and is leading the restructuring of the entire NWS to Build a Weather Ready Nation. He is the co-author of a widely acclaimed two-volume American Meteorological Society (AMS) monograph Northeast Snowstorms (published in 2004) and authored chapters in the 1990 AMS publication Extratropical Cyclones, the 1999 AMS publication The Life Cycles of Extratropical Cyclones, and the 2008 AMS publication Synoptic Dynamic Meteorology and Weather Analysis and Forecasting.
Dr. Uccellini has served on many national and international research and field experiment programs involving the U.S. Weather Research Program and the WMO Commission for Atmospheric Science. He has received many awards in recognition of his research and operational achievements including the U.S. Presidential Meritorious Executive Rank Award (2001), the U.S. Presidential Distinguished Rank Award (2006; 2016), NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement (1985), the AMS Cleveland Abbe Award (2017), the AMS’s prestigious Clarence Leroy Meisinger Award (1985), and the National Weather Association’s Research Achievement Awards for Significant Contributions to Operational Meteorology (1996). He was elected as a Fellow to the AMS in 1987 and served as AMS President from 2012 to 2013.
The United States Provides Active Support to the WMO community through:
U.S. Permanent Representative Engagement with the WMO
Permanent Representative of the United States since January, 2017
Member of Executive Council since June, 2017
Member of the Management Group of Regional Association IV since April , 2017
Member of the EC Working Group on Strategic and Operational Planning
Member of EC Working Group on Disaster Risk Reduction since 2017
Delegate to the Commission on Atmospheric Sciences, 1998 - 2008
Operating WMO designated centers for:
World Meteorological Center
Global Producing Center for Long-range Forecasts
Global Information System Center
RSMC Nuclear Energy Response
RSMC Tropical Cyclone - Miami and Honolulu
World Area Forecast Center
Volcanic Ash Advisory Center - Anchorage and Washington
RSMC Regional Marine Instrument Center
U.S. Regional Climate Center - RAIV
The United States provides direct capacity development to members through the:
RAIV Hurricane Attachment Program
RAIV Hurricane Workshop
Contributes to the RAV and Pan Arctic RCCs
International Training Desks for RAI, RAIII, RAIV and RAV (for which Dr. Uccellini has provided development and sustainment support over the past 25 years)
Pacific communications networks in partnership with USAID
The United States provides active support to the WMO and IOC communities through the:
Pacific Tsunami Warning Center
International Tsunami Information Center
Tropical Pacific Ocean Platform contributor
