NOAA Research News

NOAA's HRRR-Smoke model may still be designated as experimental, but when wildfires are burning, many count on it for smoke forecasts.

The study evaluated all of the aviation industry’s contributing factors to climate change, including emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, and the effect of contrails and contrail cirrus – short-lived clouds created in jet engine exhaust plumes at aircraft cruise altitudes that reflect sunlight during the day and trap heat trying to escape at night. 

Improving Arctic sea ice forecasts is a high priority for NOAA, as indigenous communities, fisheries, ecotourism, oil and gas industries, shipping concerns, wildlife managers and scientists need better information in a region that is rapidly shifting from a reliable frozen ice cap to an open-water ocean. Check out an animation of this summer's Arctic snow and ice melt.

Barely had the ink dried on the partnership agreement signed by NOAA and ocean explorer Victor Vescovo, owner of Caladan Oceanic LLC, when his team headed out to the Pacific Ocean to dive and map the Mariana Trench, and answer the questions -- how deep and where exactly is the bottom of the ocean.

World View Enterprises has offered to carry a miniaturized NOAA instrument on its high-altitude balloon to capture measurements of atmospheric particles on a series of flights in 2021 that will last weeks and cover thousands of miles at altitudes above 55,000 feet.