A new analysis of heat wave patterns appearing today in Nature Climate Change concludes that climate change driven by the buildup of human-caused greenhouse gases will overtake natural variability as the main cause of heat waves in the western United States by the late 2020s and by the mid-2030s in the Great Lakes region.
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.
For more than two decades, Elizabeth Hunke has worked at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory to design, create and improve a model used to predict sea ice extent, thickness and movement in both the Arctic and Antarctica. From the beginning, Hunke understood that collaboration was the key to improving this model. At a time when sea ice prediction is needed more than ever, NOAA, the Navy and other agencies are working together to extend sea ice prediction from days to decades.
Editor's note: The following story is adapted from a news article released by the American Geophysical Union on February 13, 2018.
PORTLAND — Scientists have for the first time captured the sounds of snapping shrimp off the Oregon coast and think the loud crackling from the snapping of their claws may serve as a dinner bell for eastern Pacific gray whales, according to new research by NOAA and Oregon State University presented here today.
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.
A new study suggests that targeted investments in expanding climate observing systems could return trillions of dollars in benefits in the decades to come.
Extensive, mature forest cover can mitigate the impact of severe heat waves, droughts and other weather extremes over large regions, according to new NOAA research published in the journal Nature Communications.
The strong El Niño event of 2015-2016 provided NASA and NOAA an unprecedented opportunity to test the effectiveness of the newest observation tool to measure global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations -- NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite or OCO-2.
People living in the American Southwest have experienced a dramatic increase in windblown dust storms in the last two decades, likely driven by large-scale changes in sea surface temperature in the Pacific Ocean drying the region’s soil, according to new NOAA-led research.