Posted for Barb Kiser

Amid something of a squall over the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency’s (NOAA) recent report on the Deepwater Horizon spill, the White House yesterday announced a new nominee for NOAA chief scientist. Scott Doney — a marine geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution — will step into a hot-seat that may have cooled slightly after years lying empty, as soon as the Senate moseys back from its late-summer break in mid-September.

Doney will bring considerable expertise in ocean acidification , climate change and the carbon cycle to the role.

There are no clear answers on why the post languished under the former NOAA administration. The last person to hold the post was former NASA astronaut Kathryn Sullivan, who stepped down in 1996. When marine biologist Jane Lubchenko joined the NOAA as Administrator last year, she wasted little time in outlining big shifts in the agency’s administrative structure, as Ed O’Keefe’s Washington Post ‘Federal Eye’ column from October 2009 shows. O’Keefe reproduced a memo from Lubchenco that calls for:

“Reinstituting and elevating the role of NOAA Chief Scientist, to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. As senior scientist for NOAA, the Chief Scientist will drive policy and program direction for science and technology priorities”.

In the meantime, Lubchenko’s own concern over ocean acidification — which she has dubbed global warming’s “equally evil twin” — could well have had some bearing on the nomination of Doney.