The National Weather Service has announced that Dr. Michael R. Farrar has been selected as the new Director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, also known as “NCEP.” As the new Director, Dr. Farrar will have oversight of the 9 centers of NCEP: the Aviation Weather Center, the Climate Prediction Center, the Environmental Modeling Center, the National Hurricane Center, the Ocean Prediction Center, the Space Weather Prediction Center, the Storm Prediction Center, the Weather Prediction Center, and NCEP Central Operations which sustains and executes the operational suite of numerical analyses and forecast models and prepares NCEP products for dissemination.
“Mike’s experience across the weather enterprise as the Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force weather squadron, the 2021 President-elect of the American Meteorological Society, and former NOAA Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) Director, position him to lead the critical NCEP mission into the future,” said John Murphy, Chief Operating Officer of the National Weather Service (NWS).
Dr. Louis Uccellini, the Director of the National Weather Service, said, “Mike brings a wealth of experience from the private, public, and military sectors to lead NCEP as NWS continues to build a weather-ready nation.
In his previous role, Dr. Farrar served as the Chief Scientist for weather operations for the U.S. Air Force (USAF). Dr. Farrar began his career as a uniformed USAF meteorologist where he served for 24 years. Most recently, Dr. Farrar was the primary science advisor to the USAF Director of Weather and coordinated science and technology endeavors related to weather operations there.
Dr. Farrar holds many degrees. He earned a B.S. in physics from Purdue University, a B.S. in meteorology from the Pennsylvania State University, a M.A. in national resource strategy from the Eisenhower School of the National Defense University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in meteorology from Florida State University.
NCEP is located in College Park, Maryland at the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction. Dr. Farrar joins 825 meteorologists, scientists, data managers, and other NOAA employees at the facility.
