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.
NOAA Research today announced $6 million in funding to get scientific and technological advances from the government and academia to NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) more rapidly, improving severe weather and water hazards forecasting.
NOAA’s Climate Program Office (CPO) has awarded $44.34 million for 73 new projects designed to help advance the understanding, modeling, and prediction of Earth’s climate system and to foster effective decision making.
All regions and economic sectors in the United States depend on adequate and reliable water supplies. Too much or too little water can endanger the health and welfare of citizens and businesses. Driven by feedback from water resource managers, federal agencies and others, NOAA and partners have developed the Water Resources Dashboard: a one-stop website for relevant water data on drought, flooding, precipitation, climate and other measures.
NOAA’s Climate Program Office (CPO) today announced it has awarded $48 million for 53 new projects. Research will be conducted by NOAA laboratories and operational centers, universities, and other agency and research partners to advance the understanding, modeling, and prediction of Earth’s climate system and to improve decision making.
California’s ongoing extreme drought must be a lesson for managing water in a warmer, more densely populated world, says a team of NOAA and University of California climatologists and hydrologists in an essay this week in Nature.