For scientists at NOAA, Earth Day — and every other day of the year — is about getting to the bottom of some of the most pressing questions about the planet we call home: how it works, how it’s changing, and how humans are affecting it.
New research by NOAA and partners based on extensive sampling of the global ocean finds that the ocean absorbed 34 billion metric tons of carbon from the burning of fossil fuels from 1994 to 2007 — a four-fold increase to 2.6 billion metric tons per year when compared to the period starting from the Industrial Revolution in 1800 to 1994.
Forecasting hurricane track and intensity, providing decision support for wildfires, issuing warnings for harmful algal blooms: these are just a snapshot of how NOAA’s research over the past year has provided vital services to Americans every day. A newly released NOAA Science Report celebrates NOAA’s research and development, highlighting how NOAA’s research products impact the lives of all Americans.
New research from NOAA and partners analyzing data from deep-diving ocean robots and research cruises shows that the coldest, near-bottom South Pacific waters originating from Antarctica are warming three times faster than they were in the 1990s.
NOAA senior research scientist Isaac Held was awarded the 2018 Roger Revelle Medal on Wednesday evening by the American Geophysical Union for his pioneering work to answer some of the biggest questions about the structure of our atmosphere and how its large-scale circulation systems drive our weather and climate.
An Argo float recently surfaced in the Atlantic Ocean to transmit temperature and salinity measurements from over a mile deep. This float was made in France and launched by German scientists in 2016, and it is one of thousands in the international Argo Program, which just recorded its two millionth profile, marking a major milestone for the 20-year old observation program.
Weather conditions were ripe for a big ozone hole this year. But declining levels of ozone-depleting chemicals kept it to near-average size.
Nearly 200 scientists and managers from government, academia, and private industry gathered Sept. 10-12 at the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, Maryland from September 10-12, 2018. This inaugural event brought the NOAA modeling community together to share ideas on how to advance modeling and network with other professionals.
NOAA constantly strives to improve its models of our changing environment in order to provide citizens, planners, emergency managers, and other decision makers with reliable information they can act on. But improving models takes time, money, and labor—tight budget constraints make this a challenging feat.
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.