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.
Major hurricanes, intense wildfires, increasing concentrations of greenhouse gasses, deep sea discoveries, and more made 2022 an eventful year for NOAA Research. As we enter the final days of the year, we’re taking a look back at some of our biggest accomplishments from the last 12 months.
A new NOAA-led study of precipitation high in the Colorado Rockies aims to give water managers better forecasts for runoff in the critically important Colorado River Basin.
A new study shows that, regardless of future levels of greenhouse gas emissions, the warming climate has locked in an elevated risk of intense megadroughts for the region - but mitigation efforts are still important.
NIDIS, NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System, has launched a redesigned U.S. Drought Portal to better serve stakeholders, decisionmakers, the media, and the public.
A new NOAA study in the Journal of Climate warns that in the already warm and frequently dry southern Great Plains and Southwest, climate change will make compound heat-wave and drought events significantly hotter than they used to be.
The 2017 Northern Plains drought hit hard and without warning, desiccating pastures, rangelands and wheat, sparking massive wildfires, and causing widespread livestock sell-offs across the Dakotas, northeastern Montana and the Canadian Prairies. While it wasn't the region's worst drought, it caused $2.6 billion in losses. A new study shows droughts like this are 20% more likely due to climate change.
Last spring, Governor Jerry Brown declared an end to California’s historic drought that caused over $5 billion in damage to agriculture as well as substantial impacts to fisheries, infrastructure, human health, and vegetation. The drought was not only severe, but it also spanned the winters of 2015-16 and 2016-17, which had unusual and unexpected precipitation that affected the drought’s evolution.
Summer is finally here, and that means families all over the country are starting to fire up the barbecue grill and open up their beach chairs. But summertime also means hot weather — sometimes dangerously hot.
Extensive, mature forest cover can mitigate the impact of severe heat waves, droughts and other weather extremes over large regions, according to new NOAA research published in the journal Nature Communications.