New research from a groundbreaking series of global airborne sampling flights reveals that desert dust is responsible for a significant fraction of icy cirrus clouds high in the atmosphere.
High background levels of ozone pollution make it hard for Las Vegas and other southwestern cities to meet US air quality standards in spring, two NOAA studies find. But local pollution sources drive summer's high ozone days.
As research into engineering techniques that might one day be employed to artificially cool the planet advances, some scientists are calling for adoption of an oversight framework to guide what to study... and when to stop.
New NOAA analysis of a ground-breaking global atmospheric airborne research mission shows that smoke from biomass burning substantially contributes to one of the most common and harmful constituents of urban air pollution: ozone.
A new study published this week in the journal Science estimates the Southern Ocean absorbs 550 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere per year, confirming its role as a significant carbon sink.
An eight-year study of Boston’s natural gas system has revealed that emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, are significantly higher than previously estimated.
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.
Marine cloud brightening, a geoengineering approach to cooling the surface of the Earth by increasing the reflectivity of marine clouds, may be more difficult to execute than anticipated, according to a new NOAA study.
NOAA scientists are testing a reliable, low-tech, uncrewed glider that can return a small payload of scientific instruments from the stratosperhere to a pre-determined landing spot, potentially opening up vast new reaches of the atmosphere to scientific investigation.