Updated July 27 with Lofgren statement.
WASHINGTON — The head of the satellite division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been placed on administrative leave for undisclosed reasons.
NOAA confirmed July 25 that Stephen Volz, associate administrator for satellite and information services, was placed on administrative leave. Kim Doster, communications director for NOAA, did not disclose the reason he was placed on leave.
The move was first reported by CNN, which also noted that NOAA’s deputy general counsel, Jeff Dillen, was also placed on administrative leave the same day, July 24. NOAA told CNN that the moves were for unrelated matters.
Volz has been in his current role since 2014, leading NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), which acquires and operates weather satellites. He came to NOAA from NASA, where he was an engineer and, later, associate director of flight programs in NASA’s Earth science division. He also worked for several years at Ball Aerospace as a principal engineer and project manager.
CNN reported that Volz was notified that his leave is linked to an investigation into unspecified “recent conduct.” Sources inside and outside NOAA said privately they were unaware of any issues that would prompt such an investigation. Volz is highly regarded within the space community for management of NOAA’s weather satellite programs.
Those satellite programs are facing fiscal pressures by the new administration. NOAA’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal proposed to scale back the Geostationary Extended Operations, or GeoXO, program to develop a next generation of weather satellites in GEO. The proposal would eliminate plans to field GeoXO satellites at a new location over the central United States as well as strip several instruments from the program. The budget proposal also calls for converting existing contracts from cost-plus to fixed-price and transferring them from NASA, which has traditionally served as a satellite acquisition agent for NOAA, directly to NOAA.
The move comes less than a week before the Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled to take up the nomination of Neil Jacobs to be NOAA administrator. The committee will vote in a July 30 executive session whether to favorably report that nomination to the full Senate, along with several other nominations.
Jacobs served as acting NOAA administrator for much of the first Trump administration, and was nominated to lead the agency but never confirmed by the Senate before the end of Trump’s first term. His tenure was marked by a controversy commonly called “Sharpiegate” in 2019, when President Trump erroneously claimed Alabama was in the path of a hurricane, showing a National Hurricane Center map that appeared to have been hand-modified with a marker to make it appear the storm could hit Alabama. The hurricane never reached the state.
The incident resulted in complaints that NOAA’s actions, which included a statement that appeared to undercut past statements by forecasters that the hurricane was not a threat to Alabama, violated the agency’s scientific integrity policies. NOAA asked the National Academy of Public Administration to convene a panel to review the complaints, and that panel found that Jacobs violated NOAA’s code of ethics regarding development of that statement.
The findings of that panel were accepted by NOAA in a June 2020 memo signed by the designated scientific integrity determining official at the agency, Stephen Volz.
“This raises suspicions,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Science Committee, said in a July 27 statement. “Whether this is years-in-the-making retaliation, as reported, or smoothing the way for a politicized NOAA to make decisions without experts disagreeing, it reeks of impropriety.”
Doster, the NOAA spokesperson, said that while Volz is on administrative leave Irene Parker, deputy assistant administrator for systems at NESDIS, will serve as acting associate administrator for satellite and information services.