The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's highest budget priority is weather satellites, and that likely means sacrifice in other areas, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco warned today.

Lubchenco said the agency's fiscal 2013 budget proposal reflects the "overarching importance of weather satellites" to public safety, national security and the economy. Overall, the Obama administration is requesting $5.1 billion for NOAA.

The National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service would be funded at $2.04 billion, an 8.7 percent spending increase.

"Clearly, in this budget, the highest priority has really been a laserlike focus on stabilizing our weather satellite program," Lubchenco told stakeholders in Washington, D.C. "That, coupled with the significant fiscal constraint this year, we were simply unable to accommodate many of the programs that you see slated for reduction or termination."

The budget request would support the development of the Jason-3 satellite and the planned 2016 launch of a new satellite that would carry improved environmental instruments to provide timelier and more accurate weather forecasts, Lubchenco said.

On the whole, NOAA's budget would be $154 million larger than the estimated total for fiscal 2012.

President Obama's proposal to fold NOAA into the Department of Interior was not included in the budget request. NOAA is now part of the Department of Commerce.

Obama today sent the "Consolidating and Reforming Government Act of 2012" to Congress to carry out the six-agency consolidation plan, which would set the NOAA-Interior move into motion.

"We cannot allow redundant bureaucracy and unnecessary red tape to stand in the way of creating good jobs here at home, providing critical services for America's families, and exporting America's goods and services around the world," Obama said in a statement.

Lubchenco did not address the president's proposal in her briefing. She instead outlined what she called "tough choices" in each of the NOAA's program areas that offset the boost in the satellites programs.

Fisheries programs would, for example, see a decrease of 1.6 percent from fiscal 2012 estimates.

Fisheries offices in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest would be consolidated into a single West Coast office, and the James J. Howard Marine Sciences Laboratory in New Jersey would be closed.

Fisheries funding would be more targeted at high-priority fish stocks and at stocks that have previously experienced overfishing, Lubchenco said.

Other areas that would be reduced include estuarine research, NOAA's mapping and charting program, the national undersea research program, conservation work at Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, tsunami programs and IT programs. The climate database modernization program, which seeks to convert historical paperwork into modern records, would be eliminated.

The budget proposal provides an increase, though, for upgrading NOAA's 16-ship fleet. The agency is expecting NOAA ships to spend 2,586 days at sea this year, an almost 20 percent increase from fiscal 2012.

Lubchenco said that NOAA leadership worked to cut administrative costs wherever possible but that the satellite increase "imposes serious constraints on the rest of NOAA's budget."

"Many of these are choices that in other circumstances we would not have chosen to make," she said.