News & Features

On September 21, 2022, the United States Senate successfully approved the Kigali Amendment of the Montreal Protocol. The Kigali Amendment is an international agreement to phase out and replace hydrofluorocarbons, a class of chemicals that act as potent greenhouse gasses.

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is centered around the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. But a new study finds that interactions between the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean basins affect the predictability of sea surface temperature in the tropics.

Climate change is altering wildfire behavior and vegetation in forested regions. Historically, California wildfires occurred more frequently at a lower severity, reducing surface fuels and encouraging forest growth. Modern forests have higher tree density and fuel loads, increasing fire severity.

A new study finds that citizen-science reporting of local conditions across a wet-to-dry scale reflects meteorological conditions. The data provide on-the-ground details that can be incorporated into existing drought monitoring processes.

Climate change shifts the baseline for what should be considered “normal” hydrological conditions, which shifts the definition of drought. Thirty years usually provide adequate data for climatology, but shorter periods using more recent data may work better for rapidly changing areas such as the Southwest.

What’s behind the recent droughts in Hawaii? A new study using NOAA’s primary weather-prediction model shows what can—and cannot—be inferred from available data. Not every event has an apparent and simple “first cause.”

A new study finds that drought onset over summer 2020 to spring 2021 was caused by four consecutive seasons of below-normal precipitation. The driest summer on record occurred in 2020, starting the drought.

Typhoon Merbok reached Alaska’s western coast on September 17, 2022. The unusual storm struck early in the season and formed far east of Japan, where sea surface temperatures have historically been too cool to support typhoon formation.

Home to critical productive farmland, Missouri experienced a heatwave in July 2012. Operational models have failed to predict such events, but a new study raises hopes of improving future predictions.

In recent winters, extreme, prolonged precipitation has caused structural damage and economic losses in South China. A new study has identified circulation patterns that cause and enhance precipitation over South China during winter.