On Tuesday, 45 local elected officials, including the mayors of Denver, Des Moines, Iowa, Kansas City, Mo., and San Diego, signed on to a new campaign to share information and take actions that would bolster their communities against the multifaceted challenges posed by global climate change, including more frequent and severe extreme weather event… Read More
A weather pattern that may have become more common in recent years was largely responsible for causing last summer’s record melt in Greenland, according to a new study. The research, published this week in the International Journal of Climatology, found that a giant protective dome of high pressure established itself above Greenland throughout the … Read More
This was not the first time that LaGuardia suffered major flooding during a storm, nor will it be the last. Due to climate change-related sea level rise, LaGuardia and other coastal hubs throughout the U.S. face a growing risk of coastal flooding during even modest storms.… Read More
Now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has totaled the losses caused by the 11 most expensive extreme weather and climate disasters in 2012, each of which cost upwards of $1 billion. According to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., these billion-dollar events cost the U.S. a total of $110 billion, which … Read More
The season was especially notable for its exceptionally cold and wet start in the central part of the country, with many cities, from Bismark, N.D., to St. Louis and even Richmond, Va., receiving more snow during the meteorological spring months than they did during winter. Fourteen states, from Minnesota to Georgia had a spring that ranked among t… Read More
The National Weather Service (NWS) is forecasting a widespread severe weather outbreak from the Great Lakes southeastward into the Mid-Atlantic states on Wednesday. The severe threat includes the potential for storms to form an organized line packing damaging winds, heavy rainfall and large hail. Specifically, NWS meteorologists are highlighting th… Read More
Underlying the portfolio of measures, which amount to the largest climate resilience program of any city worldwide, Bloomberg said, are a recognition that climate change is increasing the risks of damaging storm surge events in New York by increasing sea levels, and that climate change is also likely to worsen heat waves, heavy precipitation events… Read More
According to a NOAA press release, engineers were finally able to pinpoint why the satellite, known as GOES-13, had a sudden disruption in its orientation toward Earth on May 22. NOAA said Monday that a micrometeoroid, possibly from debris left over from other space missions, or “space junk,” likely hit the arm for the satellite’s solar array panel… Read More
The storm is raising concerns of significant flooding in Florida due to heavy rainfall amounts approaching 8 inches or more in some areas. This rain comes on top of heavy rain that fell during the month of May, when West Palm Beach received nearly a foot more rainfall than it normally does for the month, for example.… Read More
NOAA will revive a vital weather satellite that covers the Atlantic Ocean and East Coast after it went offline on May 22.… Read More
On a weather map, Oklahoma appears to be divided into two states. Following multiple rounds of heavy rains and severe thunderstorms, central and eastern Oklahoma have erased the drought conditions that had parched the landscape since 2010. Yet extreme drought conditions continue to plague the more sparsely populated Oklahoma Panhandle.… Read More
“It doesn’t appear that there was any damage or any problem with any of the instruments on board,” said Capt. Debora Barr, acting deputy director of NOAA's Office of Satellite and Product Operations in Suitland, MD, in an interview. … Read More
The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season starts Saturday, and scientists are warning that it is likely to be a doozy, with more storms than average and more major hurricanes (Category 3 intensity or stronger). Not only are forecasters calling for an unusually active season, they also say that there are signs that the U.S., which hasn’t had a major hurric… Read More
A bill being drafted in the House could potentially undermine the climate science research activities and the oceans programs of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It also would open up the weather satellite sector, which has been a troubled area for NOAA in recent years, to more private competition.… Read More
The sick satellite, which engineers are working to fix, is responsible for observing weather systems across the eastern U.S. and the Atlantic Ocean, and is known as GOES-13, or “GOES East.” It is a geostationary satellite, which means that it stays in a fixed orbit at an altitude of about 22,300 miles above the equator, allowing it to keep a consta… Read More
Despite the utter devastation left in the wake of the massive tornado that tore through Moore, Okla., the deadly storm, in many ways, helped showcase how far scientists have come in providing communities early tornado warning signs. In an era of budget cuts that threaten things such as new weather satellites and improved hurricane prediction, … Read More
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which operates the nation’s fleet of weather satellites, the weather satellite, known as GOES-13, initially malfunctioned at 3:40 AM on Wednesday morning, and an initial recovery procedure was unsuccessful at restoring it to operation.… Read More
The devastating Moore, Okla., tornado now joins the ranks of America’s strongest and deadliest twisters on record, coming almost exactly two years after a deadly tornado struck Joplin, Mo. In trying to make sense of the Moore tornado, here are some of the things we know and don't know about tornadoes, and whether and how climate change may be inf… Read More
With global average temperatures increasing in response to manmade emissions of greenhouse gases, the world has already been seeing an uptick in the frequency and severity of deadly extreme heat events, and a decrease in cold weather extremes. A new study looks at how these trends are likely to play out in one iconic city in particular: New York. I… Read More
The NWS plans to use $25 million of the $48 million provided to it in the Sandy supplemental bill, along with funds that are called for in President Obama’s fiscal year 2014 budget proposal, to bring about "unprecedented" computing upgrades — going from an operational computing capacity of 213 peak teraflops at the end of the current fiscal year, t… Read More
The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, employs a novel index that creates a fish thermometer of sorts, teasing out evidence of population shifts from fishery catch records during the past four decades. The study is the first to detect climate change-related shifts in the range of fish species on a global scale. In doing so, it provid… Read More
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its final review of the agency’s performance during Hurricane Sandy, finding that while the agency provided accurate forecasts of the storm’s path and strength well ahead of time, there were many shortcomings, including confusing and poorly timed guidance on the expected storm surg… Read More
With ministers from the eight Arctic states meeting this week in Kiruna, Sweden, for the 2013 ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council, the Obama administration has laid out a broad new U.S. Arctic policy that sets strategic goals for how the U.S. will cope with a rapidly changing Arctic region.… Read More
The anticipated escalation in U.S. wildfire activity comes after the slowest start to wildfires in at least 10 years, according to Jeremy Sullens, a forecaster at NIFC. As of May 3, the country had seen 13,150 wildfires, which have burned about 153,000 acres. Due to a combination of drought and record heat, 2012 saw one of the most destructive wild… Read More
Climate scientists recognize this 400 ppm mark as a symbolic milestone, illustrating the rapid increase of human-caused CO2 emissions over the past century. Numerous other climate data, gleaned from ice cores, ocean sediment, and other sources show that this is the highest CO2 concentration in the air in all of modern human history, possibly as far… Read More
