News & Features

New research on the massive Australian bushfires in 2019 and 2020 shows that almost 1 million metric tons of smoke rose into the stratosphere, causing it to warm by about 1 degree Celsius for six months, and likely contributed to the large and persistent ozone hole that formed over Antarctica during the Southern Hemisphere’s spring.

Tracking greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, understanding ocean warming, exploring the link between climate change and hurricanes, tracking warming in the Great Lakes, and working towards climate resilience are just five examples of the many ways NOAA scientists are answering questions about climate change and its potential impacts on human societies.

A climate expert proposes an alternative for defining what's average when it comes to predicting El Niño and La Niña.

The May 2021 outlook favors warmth for the southern half of the country and a wet East-dry West split.

Every ten years, NOAA releases an analysis of U.S. weather of the past three decades, calculating average values for temperature, rainfall, and other climate conditions that have come to represent the new “normals” of our changing climate.

Although this was the smallest warm departure for any March since 2014, it was still the eighth-warmest March for the planet in the 142-year record.

As NOAA adopts 1991–2020 as the new 30-year period of record, “average” hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean will increase. Average activity for the new period of record means 14 named storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 major hurricanes.

With wildfires in the western United States burning nearly 3.56 million hectares (8.8 million acres) in 2020, or about 75% more area than expected in an average year, it’s important to know how droughts, wildfires, and heat waves interact. How do they shape each other’s likelihoods, magnitudes, and impacts?

A wetter-than-average March moderated drought in parts of the Central Plains, but severe to exceptional drought remained widespread in the West.

Levels of the two most important anthropogenic greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, continued their unrelenting rise in 2020 despite the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic . ...