News & Research Highlights

As the base of the marine food chain, plankton connect climate and fisheries. Climate researchers predict that warming oceans will shift plankton communities, but these tiny organisms are challenging to study. A new project is developing a robust global plankton database.

Climate change presents growing threats to human health, but many health professionals need training on how best to engage with patients on climate-related issues. A new program aims to provide training.

Zooplankton contribute to the transfer of carbon from the atmosphere to the deep ocean. Better representation of their relationship with chlorophyll will improve projections of climate change impacts.

NOAA releases plans to build climate resilience and support coastal communities with Inflation Reduction Act funds.

Although reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the most important strategy for addressing climate change, the IPCC also recommends climate interventions like carbon dioxide removal to meet climate targets and begin to stabilize Earth’s climate system.

In spring and summer 2020, small- and medium-sized businesses in California’s Sierra Nevada Region faced the largest wildfire season in recorded state history and the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. A new study examines how they coped with multiple disruptions.

Annual increase in Keeling Curve peak is one of the largest on record.

For the last seven years, NOAA has helped citizens in more than 70 U.S. communities map their hottest neighborhoods. Earlier this year, NOAA branched into the wider world to support two heat island mapping campaigns overseas, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Freetown, Sierra Leone.

NOAA is improving hurricane forecasts in five ways: developing of NOAA’s next-generation tropical cyclone model, collocating ocean observing instruments, improving small uncrewed aircraft systems, developing new instruments, and flying aircraft further east to study how storms begin.

Bubbles bursting at the ocean surface are an important source of sea spray aerosols. They contribute to atmospheric aerosols and play a crucial role in radiative and cloud processes. Uncertainties related to the large range of scales involved, and the complexity of the processes, leads to open questions about the dependencies on wind speed, ocean wave properties and water temperature.