News & Features

This report presents a comprehensive appraisal of Earth’s climate in 2009, and establishes the last decade as the warmest on record. Reduced extent of Arctic sea ice, glacier volume, and snow cover reflect the effects of rising global temperature.  

CalNex—an intense data collection campaign to characterize the complicated interactions of air quality and climate over California—used an array of instruments and platforms this spring for a close look at greenhouse gases and pollutants.

The impacts of climate change and sea level rise have the potential to contaminate facilities and natural resources in the Pacific Northwest. Now, coastal managers have a new tool to help them visualize future changes and decide how they might avoid these problems.

In 2007, Arctic sea ice retreated so dramatically that it broke all previous records for sea ice minimum for July through October. Is this year’s summer ice melt season on track to surpass 2007?

In 1938, an unexpected Category 3 hurricane plowed across Long Island and into Connecticut. Could history repeat itself?

At the highest point atop the Greenland Ice Sheet, Matthew Shupe and his colleagues are installing a suite of climate and weather instruments. Their goal is to better understand the role of clouds in the rapid warming observed across the Arctic region.  

Will ocean currents carry oil and byproducts from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead beyond the Gulf of Mexico and out into the open Atlantic Ocean? Climate data and computer models help scientists predict how and where.

Chris Landsea talks about how global warming may change hurricanes: on average, not more storms, but stronger ones.

 Researchers at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center collaborate with tropical cyclone centers and scientific agencies around the world to assemble and maintain the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS), an inventory of tropical cyclones.

Across the globe, over land as well as sea, Earth’s average surface temperature for April 2010 made it the warmest April on record.