The NOAA Annual Science Report provides an overview of the agency’s research portfolio, and highlights a selection of NOAA’s Research and Development accomplishments. NOAA research aided emergency response efforts across the country in 2017, from wildfires in the western United States to hurricanes in east, advanced weather forecasting, improved fisheries management, and helped improve aquaculture production.
NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown steamed out of Charleston, South Carolina, on February 15, 2018, for a multi-stage trip around the world to improve ocean data that informs US and global weather prediction.
In one of our nation’s most relentless hurricane seasons, NOAA research scientists were on the front lines of gathering key data used to help produce forecasts that saved lives and protected property. They also worked behind the scenes pushing the frontiers of weather forecasting skill in storm track, wind speeds and rainfall amounts by running and refining experimental forecast models for the future. And they tested new drones in air and water to assess their ability to gather data that can improve hurricane prediction.
NOAA will begin using its newest weather prediction tool -- the dynamic core, Finite-Volume on a Cubed-Sphere (FV3), to provide high quality guidance to NOAA’s National Hurricane Center through the 2017 hurricane season.
The NASA Global Hawk unmanned aircraft touched down Friday morning at NASA Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia coast where NOAA and NASA scientists are preparing it for flights over Atlantic hurricanes.
The journal Nature Geoscience published a paper by Tom Delworth and his colleagues examining how a natural atmospheric force--the North Atlantic Oscillation--may be changing ocean currents in the North Atlantic. Among other impacts, the stronger ocean currents increase the amount of heat flowing toward polar areas, which could speed up Arctic ice melt and affect how hurricanes form. We asked Delworth a few questions about his study:
With the August 22 arrival of the NASA Global Hawk unmanned aircraft on Virginia’s eastern shore, scientists and pilots are now ready to start the NOAA-led mission to improve hurricane forecasts of track and intensity using data collected by the Global Hawk during the season’s hurricanes.
This hurricane season, NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research will work with NOAA’s National Weather Service to upgrade weather forecast models and conduct research with unmanned air and water craft to improve forecasts of hurricane track and intensity.