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.
Chemical products like household cleaners, pesticides, paints and perfumes that contain compounds refined from petroleum now rival motor vehicle emissions as the top source of urban air pollution, according to a surprising NOAA-led study
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.
Despite significant gains in controlling ground-level ozone pollution, some residents of California, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic spent more than 15 days each year between 2010 and 2014 breathing unhealthy levels of pollution, according to information from a new global database developed with NOAA support.
New NOAA research is showing we can predict snow levels in the mountains of the West in March some eight months in advance. This prediction can be down to the scale of a mountain range, which will improve regional water forecasts.
Fifty years ago, the first carbon dioxide measurement from high in the Rocky Mountains laid the groundwork for one of the climate science community's most valuable datasets.
A new grant will let a University of Washington-based project add a new fleet to its quest to learn more about past climate from the records of long-gone mariners. The UW is among the winners of the 2017 “Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives” awards, announced earlier this month by the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Library and Information Resources. Kevin Wood, a research scientist with the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, a research center operated by NOAA and UW, will lead the project.
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.