Few winter storms and El Niño conditions brought severe drought conditions to the Hawaiian Islands this past year.

The early wet season of 2010 was typical of La Niña, with rainfall in December 2010 between 200 and 400 percent above normal in much of Queensland, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Weather in the Southeast this fall and winter is keeping up with the dry part of the typical La Niña pattern. Precipitation across most of the Southeast was "below" or "much below" normal for October-December.

In early June 2010, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center reported that the ocean and atmosphere conditions across the Pacific were favorable for the development of a La Niña episode.

Mark Eakin, a coral reef specialist and Coordinator of NOAA’s Coral ReefWatch program, discusses coral bleaching in the Caribbean in 2010.

The average global surface temperature in October 2010 was 58.07°F (14.54°C), which is 0.97°F (0.54°C) above the historical average, according to the monthly assessment from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.

Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the air lead to more acidic seawater. More acidic water corrodes minerals that many marine creatures rely on to build their protective shells and skeletons.

How do warm waters in the Caribbean this year compare to conditions in 2005, when high ocean temperatures triggered the worst mass coral bleaching event ever seen in the region?

[From the archives] Facing the possibility of a massive coral bleaching event in the Caribbean Sea in late summer and early fall 2010, a USGS biologist based at U.S. Virgin Islands National Park hopes that the season won't have the same devastating outcome as a similar event in 2005.

When the winds are right, dust from the deserts of the U.S. Southwest blows onto the snow-capped Rocky Mountains. How do dirty snowfields contribute to the loss of more than 250 billion gallons of water in the Colorado River?