Our planet has been baking under the sun this summer as temperatures reached the hottest ever recorded and heat waves spread across the globe. While the climate continues to warm, scientists expect the frequency and intensity of heat waves to increase. However, a commonly overlooked aspect is the spatial size of heat waves, despite its important implications.
An expedition to the central Arctic will give scientists the first opportunity to study the dramatic changes sweeping across the top of the world for an entire year.
During winter 2018 the sea ice in the Bering Sea reached record-low levels thanks to persistent warm southerly winds. These conditions caused the ice to retreat to the northern reaches of the 800,000 square mile body of water.
A sooty cloud generated by a 2017 firestorm provided an ideal opportunity for researchers to test a climate model that simulated the lifetime of that soot in the stratosphere.
A new NOAA and University of Michigan study using an instrumented airplane has found unexpectedly large emissions over five major cities along the East Coast - twice the total amount of methane and almost 10 times the amount estimated from natural gas.
A recent NOAA-led study found the speed of movement of tropical cyclones, including hurricanes, has been slowing in recent decades, with more storms lumbering slowly over land and potentially causing more flooding. However, new research published in Nature by another NOAA scientist casts some doubt that tropical cyclones are slowing and that there’s a link to climate change.
It's not every day you get a message from space.
With the Mid-Atlantic region expecting a stretch of days with above-normal summer temperatures, NOAA and its partners will lead a group of citizen scientist volunteers on a mission this week to collect data that will be used to map the hottest places in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.
New NOAA research demonstrates that drones and weather balloons can gather data needed to improve weather forecasts in severe working environments.