The combination of costly satellite programs and pressures to cut federal spending have left the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in a bind, agency chief Jane Lubchenco said yesterday.

The White House is seeking $5.1 billion for the agency in fiscal 2013, about $150 million more than the agency received last year.

But that slight increase masks a bevy of "tough choices" the agency made to keep weather and climate satellite programs on track, proposing cuts to its oceans, fisheries and research accounts, along with the National Weather Service.

NOAA has budgeted just over $2 billion for its National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service in 2013, an 8.7 percent increase over 2012 spending.

"Due to the significant resources required for our weather satellites and the economic conditions in the country, other parts of NOAA's budget have been reduced, in some cases quite significantly," Lubchenco said at a briefing on the White House funding request. "Many of these are choices that in other circumstances we would not have chosen to make."

Past and future gaps in weather and climate data

Among the casualties Lubchenco singled out yesterday is NOAA's $2 million Climate Data Modernization Program. For more than a decade, the agency's National Climatic Data Center has worked with contractors to digitize old weather and climate records stored on paper or microfilm, making them available for modern analysis.

NOAA has struggled in recent years to cover the rising costs of its the Joint Polar Satellite System as the program builds and prepares to launch its first satellite.

Congress slashed JPSS' funding in fiscal 2011, allotting NOAA just $382 million of the $910 million it sought. That shortfall has delayed the launch date for the program's initial satellite, JPSS-1, making a future gap in crucial weather and climate data a near certainty, according to both NOAA and the Government Accountability Office.

Intense lobbying by Lubchenco and other NOAA officials helped convince Congress to be more generous in 2012, when it set aside $924 million of the $1.07 billion the agency sought for JPSS.

NOAA officials believe that's enough to keep the projected data gap from lengthening. In the meantime, Lubchenco said yesterday that her agency had adjusted its funding plan for JPSS, mapping out "a relatively stable funding path for the next five years."

Betting that funding pressures will only grow in coming years, the agency is also "accommodating uncertainty in future appropriations" by re-examining its entire satellite portfolio, she said.