News & Features

Drought.gov offers a new map customization feature for Tribal Nations. This feature allows users to display reservation boundaries on any map on Drought.gov.

On September 28, 2022, NOAA deployed 27-pound drone into the eye of Hurricane Ian, The drone then completed a two-hour mission, acquiring critical measurements to understand the complex storm system.

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.

It's October. So in addition to talk of ghouls and goblins, we must chat about the October 2022 climate outlook. The outlook favors a hotter-than-average month for the western and central United States, and a colder- and wetter-than-average month for the Mid-Atlantic.

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.”

Blue-carbon ecosystems have a small global footprint, but they can bury many times more carbon per acre than even a tropical rainforest.