News & Features

How much sunlight Earth reflects naturally varies a lot. The bigger the range of natural variability, the greater the odds that any evidence of a manmade effort to brighten up the planet would be lost in the “background noise.”

On March 20, 2014, NOAA's National Weather Service issued its Spring Outlook, covering flooding, drought, temperature, and precipitation through June. A cold and snowy winter in the northern plains and Midwest has raised the potential for moderate flooding, but fortunately no areas are in major flood risk this year.

Climate change is a global phenomenon, affecting weather events around the world. Therefore, people around the globe need climate information to anticipate potentially damaging floods, droughts, crop and pest conditions, and disease outbreaks. For 20 years, the scientists at the International Desks of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center have provided climate outlooks for weeks and months into the future and trained visiting meteorologists to translate climate data into information that can help decision makers in different parts of the world.

If mid-century projections of sea level rise prove true for New York City, four times as many people may be living in the 100-year floodplain than were previously estimated based only on observed changes.

Average temperatures across the contiguous United States in February ranged from frigid to balmy.

The North Atlantic has spawned an unusually high number of hurricane-force storms this winter, already surpassing last winter's total—and the season isn't over yet.

In October 2003, a little-known think tank in the Department of Defense quietly released a report warning that climate change could happen so suddenly it could pose a major threat to our country's national security. Why was the Pentagon worried about abrupt climate change? Because new evidence from Greenland showed it had happened before. 

The Amazon Rainforest is a living warehouse for carbon dioxide. As climate changes, the lush tropical ecosystems of the Amazon Basin may release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than they absorb. NOAA scientist John Miller talks about how climate conditions in 2010 and 2011 created a natural experiment on how drought affects the Amazon's carbon balance.

Working with private companies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency uses precipitation data from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center as part of an insurance program for ranchers and those who grow hay or other livestock forage. This video describes how it works.

According to the 2009 National Climate Assessment, heavy downpours have increased in frequency and intensity during the last 50 years. Models predict that downpours will become still more more frequent and intense as greenhouse gas emissions and the planet’s temperature continue to rise.