News & Features

Drought is typically defined based on precipitation and runoff deficits, but is that the best way to identify drought conditions? A new study suggests that drought must be understood as a more complex process that involves both natural and human‐induced changes.

In May 2021, the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program (SCIPP), a NOAA Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) team, in collaboration with Texas Sea Grant, released a new dashboard that shows historical trends in temperatures for locations across the state of Texas. The new dashboard offers location-specific information about changes in temperature in the last 50 years.

Extra heat trapped in the atmosphere by human-caused greenhouse gas pollution continued to exacerbate global warming in 2020, driven by historically high emission levels that were largely unaffected by the economic slowdown stemming from the pandemic, NOAA scientists reported.

Greenhouse gases and aerosol pollution emitted by human activities are responsible for increases in the frequency, intensity, and duration of droughts around the world, according to a recently published study.

A newly published study draws on a reanalysis project supported by NOAA’s Climate Program Office. Recently published in Nature Scientific Data, the study creates a new database of reconstructions for past global storm surges—one of the deadliest coastal hazards.

The dynamics that lift smoke from large wildfires into the upper atmosphere could potentially be employed one day to help temporarily cool the planet, based on the findings of a modeling study led by NOAA scientists.

A new modeling study led by NOAA researchers highlights the challenges and potential consequences of solar geoengineering actions large enough to ward off extreme warming by the end of the 21st century. The study simulates the injection of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to counter carbon dioxide emissions. The study finds that sulfur dioxide injections of up to 50 million metric tons per year would be needed to keep temperatures from rising.

In recent decades, the Northern Hemisphere has featured a “Warm Arctic, Cold Continents” (WACC) pattern: warming and rapid sea ice loss of the Arctic, and frequent cold, harsh winters over Eurasia and central North America. A new study, funded in part by CPO’s Climate Variability and Predictability (CVP) program, investigates the drivers of year-to-year variability in the WACC.

A new study supported by NOAA Climate Program Office’s Climate Variability and Predictability (CVP) program, led by CIRES and the University of Colorado Boulder, uses maps built with machine learning to identify large-scale atmospheric patterns that are linked with the start of seasonal sea ice melt in the Arctic.

A newly released report, “The State of Climate Knowledge 2021,” outlines New York City’s climate research priorities, and identifies knowledge gaps for future study. NOAA’s Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast (CCRUN) coauthored the report.