Okay, a lot to unpack here. I work on atmospheric model development. Primarily upper atmosphere models, but have experience with forecasting models as well. Inherently, there is nothing wrong with moving to the cloud for hpc resources. However I do take an issue with the following statement:

“Cloud-based high-performance computing will accelerate the transition of research into operations by eliminating traditional bottlenecks of on-premise systems,” said NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs in a statement.

The bottleneck in forecasting is NOT hardware but unknown and unresolved physical processes. Even at high resolution, forecasting models cannot capture physics and dynamics at spatial scales smaller than the grid of the model. We can make assumptions and use things like machine learning to improve subgrid processes but we cannot fully resolve them without an infinitely small grid, which is impossible. So moving to the cloud will not improve forecasting or the transition of RTO.

The second issue with this guy is he is a Trump nut hugger. See the following:

Sharpiegate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Jacobs

How in the world does a remote computer provide faster results than the one sitting in your building?

"Under the contract, NOAA can also avail itself of Google’s DeepMind set of AI tools to help build out its first AI-driven weather forecasting system, the AI Global Forecast System, which promises to offer accurate weather forecasts using 99.7% fewer computer cycles and take minutes, rather than hours, to produce a forecast."

If there's one thing I know about large tech companies and promises, they always keep them. Thankfully the U.S. doesn't have a bunch of sociopaths running the government who don't want to acknowledge climate change because oil and coal industries are giving them bribes. This will only end well.

Now americans can be served climate crisis denial with matching weather forecasts.

At least I won't know about the typhoon when it comes for me, saving me so much stress! Thank you President Trump!