Amidst a push for austerity in federal spending, the White House is asking Congress to increase the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's budget and commit to a massive reorganization of the agency's climate change portfolio.

President Obama's fiscal 2012 budget request seeks $5.498 billion for NOAA, slightly less than his $5.554 billion request last year and well above the $4.740 billion the agency received in fiscal 2010.

The agency, like the rest of the federal government, has been operating under a series of continuing budget resolutions since the 2011 fiscal year began Oct. 1. House Republicans have made their budget intentions for NOAA clear, releasing a new continuing budget resolution Friday that would chop the agency's purse to $4.3 billion.

But the president's budget request may signal the White House is preparing for a fight to preserve NOAA's role as one of the government's main voices on the causes and effects of climate change. It proposes increasing the agency's bottom line even as it seeks a 36 percent cut to discretionary spending within the Commerce Department, NOAA's parent.

Headlining the president's budget wish list for NOAA: the creation of a new climate service, the culmination of a years-long push that began at the end of the George W. Bush administration.

The entity is designed to provide "user-friendly" information to help the federal, state and local governments, as well as business, to adapt to climate change.

The White House request would consolidate most of NOAA's existing climate research, modeling, services and data management activities that now exist within other line offices, including the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and the National Weather Service, into a new Climate Service line office.

Funding for the Climate Service would be set at $345 million, a sum that includes increased spending on regional climate services.

"For decades, NOAA and its partners have been providing climate information that is essential to many aspects of policy, planning and decision-making," reads a White House budget document released this morning. "The consolidation of NOAA's climate activities within [the climate service] will enable NOAA to more effectively provide climate services on regional to national to global scales."

Obama's budget request also seeks to shore up NOAA's weather and climate satellites, including the Joint Polar Satellite System.

The White House proposal would award $1.9 billion to the agency's polar-orbiting and geostationary weather satellite systems, satellite-borne measurements of sea level and other climate variables, and other space-based observations.

As part of the push to create the new Climate Service, the NOAA line office that handles the agency's satellites would be renamed and some of its duties shifted to the new climate office. The National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service would become the "National Environmental Satellite Service."

The Climate Service would pick up data transfer and information management and archiving duties now assigned to the satellite office, while the renamed NESS would focus on operating NOAA satellites, and managing the development and distribution of the data the orbiters collect.

The budget request seeks a total of $2.016 billion for the satellite office, compared to the $1.399 billion enacted in fiscal 2010.

Funding for the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) would drop from $449 million in 2010 to $212 million in the president's request, largely because the White House wants to transfer most of OAR's climate research activities to the new Climate Service.

Obama's budget does contain new money within OAR for ocean exploration and efforts to improve surface wind projections to help plan new wind energy projects.

Other funding proposals within the White House request for NOAA include:

• $981 million for the National Weather Service, down from $1.003 billion in 2010. The Climate Prediction Center, now a part of the weather service, would be transferred to the new Climate Service. The White House budget includes increases within NWS to upgrade and maintain its weather observing system.

• $911 million for the National Marine Fisheries Service, roughly equal with the $916 million the office received in 2010.

• Unspecified increases to funding for NOAA's Integrated Ocean Observing System, mussel monitoring and research to improve assessments of impacts of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.