Increased flooding, warming ocean temperatures, fluctuating lake levels, and more frequent heat waves—these are just some of the impacts communities across the country are facing as people from every U.S. region and economic sector turn to NOAA for actionable climate information.
Running barefoot from scorching asphalt to cool grass in the summertime as a kid, you likely learned how cityscapes tend to get much warmer than green spaces. Extreme heat can be fatal, and buildings and pavement increase its threat, making some parts of cities up to 20°F hotter than other parts.
Climate models project that combinations of heat and humidity could reach deadly thresholds for anyone spending several hours outdoors by the end of the 21st century. However, new NOAA-supported research says these extremes are already happening — decades before anticipated — due to global warming to date.
Using a new powerful NOAA global climate model, NOAA and partner researchers show that big storm-induced spikes in sea levels will increase in the future from the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic coast as warming progresses, but will be driven by differing forces.
Picture a calm, sunny day at a tropical beach. You look out at the ocean and in the distance a flotilla of small white clouds sails close to the waves. It’s ideal weather and typical of many days in the tropical Atlantic. However, scientists don’t fully understand how these ubiquitous clouds (a type of “shallow convective cloud”) form and impact the ocean, and it represents one of the largest uncertainties in predicting climate change.
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.
On Friday, August 25, U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy will sail from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, with a team of NOAA scientists and collaborators on a 22-day cruise to study environmental change in the western Arctic Ocean.
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.
A global report released this week on changing carbon dioxide levels in Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and land environment draws heavily from data and observations by NOAA research scientists and their partners. For the first time, the annual assessment by the Global Carbon Project uses data obtained from autonomous instruments installed by NOAA scientists on its ships and other ships of opportunity and moorings to determine the variability of carbon dioxide in the surface ocean.