Every Thursday night, Bill Korbel, a veteran meteorologist, offers his standard weather forecast to viewers on a Long Island cable channel. Then he follows up with his outlook for toxic algae.

On a map, Mr. Korbel points out areas with high concentrations of algae — natural gatherings of microscopic plankton that, while often innocuous, can degrade water quality and even be dangerous.

“Brown or red tide is much catchier than harmful algal bloom,” Mr. Korbel joked about the right wording to use in his broadcast. It’s a relatively new topic for him, something that was never part of his decades-long career. Nor was it part, he said, of his meteorology training at New York University. “That was down the hall, in oceanography,” he said.

Mr. Korbel may not be an outlier for long. If a growing number of scientists have their way — and can get federal funding they say is desperately need to protect the public — algae forecasts could become as common as weather reports, and as essential.