News & Features

According to the latest statistics from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, September 2012 marked the sixteenth consecutive month with above average temperatures for the Lower 48. Meanwhile, warm and dry conditions persisting in the Northwest have led to yet another month with above-average wildfire activity in the region.

In summer of 2012, warm and dry climate climate conditions combined with weather to spark one of the West's largest wildfire seasons yet.

On the Rio Grande—historically the wellspring for more than five million people in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico—coping with scarcity has become a reality, and water management and use in the region may be a leading example of how to adapt to drier times

In the wake of historic flooding along the Missouri River in spring and summer 2011, NOAA scientists are exploring how climate patterns like La Niña and others can set the stage for floods or drought in the Northern Rockies and the Upper Great Plains.

According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, weak El Niño conditions may develop this fall. How might a full-fledged El Niño event this winter influence weather where you live?

The average global temperature for August 2012 was more than 1° Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average, according to the latest monthly analysis from the National Climatic Data Center, making it the fourth-warmest August since record keeping began in 1880. August 2012 also marked the 36th consecutive August and 330th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th-century average.

In a place routinely afflicted by drought, water managers in Tampa Bay use climate forecasts to ensure a water supply to people’s taps without sucking the region’s rivers, wetlands, and groundwater dry. The limits of their innovation might be tested in a future which could pose even more challenges to ensuring the oasis remains green.

A scorching July contributed to the third hottest summer on record for the contiguous United States. Most of the U.S. was also drier than average. Rains from Isaac did little to relieve drought.

Deke Arndt of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reports that heavy rains from Hurricane Isaac in late August fell too late–and mostly in the wrong places–to provide much relief from U.S. drought.

Deke Arndt, Chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch at the National Climatic Data Center, recaps summer climate conditions.