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.
NOAA, as part of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), is requesting suggestions on structure, topics, and content to help update a key national climate literacy guide used by educators, policymakers, and scientists across the U.S. and internationally for more than a decade.
NOAA scientist Andrew Rollins was unsatisfied with the current, research-grade instrument for measuring nitrogen oxides. So he built a better one.
A commonly found floating algae known as “Sargassum” has inundated the coastlines of the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean since 2011. These alga float at the sea surface, where they can aggregate to form large mats in the open ocean. A 2020 study led by researchers at AOML shows how Sargassum entered and flourished in the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean. A tool based on that research, known as the Sargassum Inundation Report (SIR) has been developed to help managers deal with these periodic inundations.
A team led by NOAA researchers used a combination of observations and computer models to generate the first broad assessment of bottom marine heat waves in the productive continental shelf waters surrounding North America.
On March 6, a team of scientists on the NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown departed from Suape, Brazil for a 55-day cruise to the northerly waters of Reykjavik, Iceland. With 150 planned stops along this cruise track known as A16N, measurements of heat, freshwater, carbon, oxygen, and nutrients will be taken from the ocean’s surface to the seafloor, sometimes reaching depths greater than 5,000 meters (3.1 miles)!
A new NOAA analysis shows U.S. emissions estimates of the super-potent greenhouse gas sulfur hexafluoride and shows they have declined between 2007-2018.
Flying out of Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks, Alaska, a NASA WB-57 research jet carrying a payload of sampling instruments into the stratosphere will gather measurements of trace gases and aerosols in an undersampled region of the atmosphere.
The Department of Commerce’s U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) today announced a collaboration to promote and advance further innovation in climate and “green” technology areas, a key focus of the Biden administration.
Smoke from wildfire-generated thunderstorms has greater impacts on the stratosphre, lasts longer and acts differently than scientists previously thought, a new research paper in the journal Science concludes.