NOAA Research News

Discovering a 207-year-old whaling ship, advancing air-quality forecasts, improving storm surge and wind forecasts, and deploying the first-ever drone-based tagging of endangered whales. These are a few of the more than 60 stories about NOAA’s many notable scientific accomplishments from the past year that are featured in the 2022 NOAA Science Report, which emphasizes a wide range of impacts that NOAA science advancements have on the lives of Americans. 

This winter has brought multiple rounds of devastating severe weather to the southeastern U.S., with more than 200 reported tornadoes and 14 fatalities. To better understand the deadly storms in this region, scientists will conduct research as they travel through seven states in the second year of one of the largest and most comprehensive severe storm field projects to date.

Researchers with NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL), NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, and partners set sail from Bridgetown, Barbados aboard NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown on November 1st, 2022. Over the next 40 days, the crew and scientists recovered and redeployed key moorings in the Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Tropical Atlantic (PIRATA), deployed an additional mooring, and serviced two equatorial PIRATA buoys in support of the PIRATA Northeast Extension project and broader PIRATA objectives. They also conducted a number of research projects on the ocean and atmosphere that advance our understanding of carbon absorption in the ocean and atmospheric pollution.

NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory, the benchmark sampling site for monitoring global climate change, is slated to undergo a major renovation and facility upgrade once road access is restored over lava flows produced by the recent eruption of Mauna Loa volcano, NOAA announced today. 

You may have heard of atmospheric rivers in the news lately due to the intense rainfall and flooding along the U.S. West Coast. These naturally occurring air currents can bring both severe disruption and great benefit through the heavy rain and mountain snows that contribute to regional water supply. NOAA studies atmospheric rivers to improve forecasting capabilities as well as to improve our understanding of atmospheric river impacts on communities and the physical environment. 

Introducing a new social media series from NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML): 12 Days of Instruments! This series highlights 12 of the many instruments used by our researchers at AOML! Each of these instruments are vital to conducting our groundbreaking research.