Human activities emit 60 or more times the amount of carbon dioxide released by volcanoes each year.
Earth's temperature history as a roller coaster
April 25, 2016
Scientists estimated global average carbon dioxide concentration at 397.2 parts per million (ppm) in 2014, as the global growth rate of carbon dioxide continues to accelerate.
From soybeans and sunflowers in North Dakota to cotton and winter wheat in Texas, large stretches of croplands in the U.S. Great Plains rely exclusively on rain. Those croplands are likely to face longer dry spells by mid-century.
Some of the chemicals that replaced ozone-harming CFCs are long-lived greenhouse gases. At NOAA's lab in Boulder, Colorado, chemist Steve Montzka leads the effort to monitor the concentration of CFC-substitutes and their potential impact on global warming.
For 800,000 years before the twentieth century, carbon dioxide levels in Earth’s atmosphere never exceeded 300 parts per million. In March 2015, the monthly average went above 400 ppm for the first time.
Warmer winters or hotter summers: which will have greater influence on U.S. energy demands this century?
In the Northeast, the amount of rain that came down in very heavy events increased by more than 70 percent between 1958 and 2010. A new law in New York requires state agencies to start thinking ahead about increases in extreme rain and other climate change risks.
Since 2004, researchers in NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division have released the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index: a single value that compares the total warming effect of each year's concentrations of heat-trapping gases to 1990 levels.