The August 21 eclipse will give NOAA scientists an unprecedented opportunity to compare conditions of the atmosphere with and without the eclipse, and see how it interrupts processes in the lowest part of the atmosphere in direct contact with Earth’s surface across the entire continent.
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.
NOAA Hurricane Hunters are flying back-to-back missions to study the newly developed Tropical Storm Hermine in the Gulf of Mexico, capturing its evolution from a cluster of thunderstorms into a tropical storm. Getting data during such transitions can help improve hurricane models which currently don’t predict transitions well. Our understanding of the physical processes of early storm development remains limited, largely because there are few observations.
While advances in meteorology fuel continual improvements to weather forecasts, there is growing awareness that a precise, timely forecast isn’t enough to prevent loss of lives and property. We must also deliver weather information to the public in ways that motivate people to take action to prevent loss of life and property.
Meet Shian-Jiann Lin, Ph.D., the leader of the team at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory that created the new dynamic core that NOAA announced this week will be used to develop a state-of-the-art global weather forecasting model over the next three years.
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:
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.