The Big Thompson flood of 1976 was one of three major flash floods during the span of five years in the 1970s that killed more than 450 people across the country -- tragic events that helped spur the modernization of NOAA’s National Weather Service flood forecasting system.
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.
Residents, communities and businesses now have easy access to climate projections, through a few easy keystrokes, for every county in the contiguous United States.
At first glance they might be mistaken for toys, but these remote-controlled devices aren’t for play. Unmanned aircraft and watercraft are being put to work by NOAA scientists to gather astonishing new data from our wildlands and waterways.
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 announced today that it is investing $4.5 million in four projects to test technology designed to improve the Tropical Pacific Observing System, an array of buoys in the tropical Pacific used to better understand El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), how it develops, and how it affects Earth’s weather.
The record heat baking Alaska is poised to smash a host of climate records in 2016, including the earliest snowmelt date at NOAA’s Barrow Observatory, the northernmost point in the nation.
Tornados are one of nature’s most destructive forces. Currently, our capacity to predict tornados and other severe weather risks does not extend beyond seven days. In a recent paper published in Environmental Research Letters, scientists with NOAA and the University of Miami identified how patterns in the spring phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), coupled with variability in North Atlantic sea surface temperatures, could help predict U.S. regional tornado outbreaks.
All regions and economic sectors in the United States depend on adequate and reliable water supplies. Too much or too little water can endanger the health and welfare of citizens and businesses. Driven by feedback from water resource managers, federal agencies and others, NOAA and partners have developed the Water Resources Dashboard: a one-stop website for relevant water data on drought, flooding, precipitation, climate and other measures.