the creation of ESSA, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson described ESSA's mission in this way: The new Administration will then provide a single national focus for our efforts to describe, understand, and predict the state of the oceans, the state of the lower and upper atmosphere, and the size and shape of the earth. The Director of the Weather Bureau, Dr. Robert M. White, explained that the creation of ESSA: responded to an increasing national need for adequate warnings of severe natural hazards (e.g., tornadoes, hurricanes, floods); responded to technological advances in capabilities to observe the physical environment and communicate and process environmental data; and would enable scientists to investigate the physical environment as a "scientific whole" rather than a "collection of separate and distinct fields of scientific interest." ESSA was established on 13 July 1965 under the Department of Commerce's Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1965. Its creation brought the Weather Bureau and the Coast and Geodetic Survey, as well as the Central Radio Propagation Laboratory that had been part of the National Bureau of Standards, together under a single parent scientific agency for the first time. Although the Weather Bureau and Coast and Geodetic Survey retained their independent identities under ESSA, the offices of Director of the Weather Bureau and Director and Deputy Director of the Coast and Geodetic Survey were abolished. These offices were replaced by a new Administrator and Deputy Administrator of ESSA. Components and activities Headquarters ESSA was headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, with the ESSA Administrator as its senior executive. It consisted of five principal service and research elements, each of which reported directly to the ESSA Administrator: the Institutes for Environmental Research, reorganized in 1967 as the ESSA Research Laboratories; the Environmental Data Service; the United States Weather Bureau; the National Environmental Satellite Center; and the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. Various other headquarters staff elements also reported directly to the Administrator, including the U.S. ESSA Commissioned Officer Corps (or "ESSA Corps"). Institutes for Environmental Research/ESSA Research Laboratories Institutes for Environmental Research (1965–1967) To tackle scientific and technological problems related to understanding the global environment, ESSA created the Institutes for Environmental Research, based in Boulder, Colorado. The four institutes were: The Institute for Telecommunications Sciences and Aeronomy, made up mostly of personnel from the National Bureau of Standards′ old Central Radio Propagation Laboratory and the Geoacoustics Group of the National Bureau of Standards. The