The federal agency that has been widely criticized for censoring its scientists to prevent them from commenting on the impact of climate change on hurricanes has quietly announced a new public communications policy that it says “clearly reaffirms the department’s commitment to open and transparent public dissemination of scientific research.”

Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., undersecretary of commerce and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, distributed an e-mail late last week to his staff, and others, announcing the new policy.

“I believe the new departmental order will end any uncertainties about our public treatment of our scientists,” said Lautenbacher.

The policy change quickly drew praise from critics, and a few reservations.

“The new policy substantially clears the air and reaffirms the free-speech rights of government scientists,” said Kerry Emanuel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has published research on climate change and hurricanes. He criticized NOAA in a story in The Providence Journal last year for muzzling its scientists. Emanuel said in an e-mail yesterday about the new policy: “I think NOAA has done a very good job with this.”

Several members of Congress, all Democrats, who had been investigating how federal agencies interfere with their scientists’ communications with the press, wrote Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez to say they were pleased with the new media policy, but they wanted even more explicit protection for scientists to speak freely.

The letter was submitted by Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology, Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., chair of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, and Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, chair of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, following a hearing last week focusing on political manipulation of government scientists.

While public-affairs staffers will still control comments on policy and budget, the new Commerce policy provides an “unambiguous ‘carve-out’ for scientific research communications,” according to Lautenbacher, a retired admiral.

Stories in the journal Nature, as well as The New York Times, the online magazine Slate and The Journal, asserted last year that NOAA’s public-affairs staffers were censoring scientists.

In recent weeks, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Government Accountability Project made public reports uncovering dozens of cases of suppression and manipulation of climate science information in seven federal agencies.

The GAP found more behavior at NOAA similar to what was reported in a March 2006 story in The Journal. The story described the newspaper’s efforts to contact Thomas Knutson, a NOAA scientist who had done research linking climate change to increasing hurricane intensity. Knutson couldn’t talk without a public-affairs clearance. A public-affairs staffer referred The Journal to a different scientist, who downplayed links between climate change and hurricane intensity.

The report found other efforts to silence Knutson, including a White House order nixing his appearance on a network talk show.

In a Q and A accompanying the new policy, the Department of Commerce explained that its current press policies hadn’t been revised since the early 1980s and it acknowledged that those policies were “at times unclear.”

It states flatly that the Public Affairs Office may not alter scientific content and that when it comes to what it calls “Fundamental Research Communications,” department employees don’t have to coordinate with Public Affairs.

The department also acknowledged that the new policy was written in response to news stories and congressional interest in how the department handles its scientific communications. But the new report does not address charges that much of the meddling was part of a political effort by the Bush administration to downplay the significance of climate change.

“It really didn’t look good to have a taxpayer-funded scientific agency censoring its own scientists,” said Kert Davies, research director at Greenpeace, which also campaigned against the censorship. “But it’s not over with this policy, Congress is looking to hold people responsible.”

To read the new policy, go to the following Commerce Department Web site and scroll down to March 29.

To view Lautenbacher’s announcement, go to: www.communications.noaa.gov/mediapolicy.htm

For information on a House hearing last week on manipulation of science, go to: science.house.gov/publications/hearings_markups_details.aspx?NewsID=1736

To read a recent report by the Government Accountability Project on censorship of government scientists, go to: democrats.science.house.gov/Media/File/Commdocs/hearings/2007/oversight/28mar/gap_redacting_climate_sci_report_07mar.pdf

plord@projo.com