Climate

We’re In The Longest U.S. Hurricane Drought Ever Recorded. Here’s Why.

We’re currently in the middle of the largest U.S. hurricane lull since 1850 — but we’re also still having strong global hurricane seasons. What explains this seeming paradox? Simple. It’s statistics. NASA scientist Timothy Hall and researcher Kelly Hereid ran a series of statistical models, and using those, calculated that a lull of this size…

Feast Your Eyes on This Old-School Weather Model

Weather forecasting has come a long way, as the video below of a midcentury climate model illustrates. And if you’re into vintage computer graphics, it provides some pretty nice eye candy too. The footage, recently published by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, shows the first global general circulation model constructed by physicist Chuck Leith on…

Australian Meteorologists Are Warning Of A Substantial El Niño Event

Earlier this year, U.S. scientists announced El Niño’s arrival, but described it as “weak.” Now, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has moved its own tracker status from alert to full-on El Niño, warning of widespread drought and warmer temperatures. This article originally appeared at The Conversation and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.…

Just what is a “normal” temperature? The answer depends on where and when you’re asking the question. This interactive map from NOAA lets you see the answer not just for all the months of the current year, but for every year since 1895 in your immediate locale. Image: Maximum temperatures for January 1895 / NOAA.

Even Below Ground, Winter Temperatures Are Rising

The temperatures have been steadily rising here on the surface, but what about below ground? Temperatures are going up there as well, as you can see in this map of changes over the last several decades in ground conditions. And it has something troubling to tell us about our water. NOAA took a look at…

This Stunning Image Shows Us The Future of Climate Models

This technicolor swirl may look like an artist’s acid trip, but what you’re actually looking at is the next generation of high-resolution climate models. Warmer colors represent hotter temperatures and ripples indicate eddy currents in this stunning visualization, which was released last week by Los Alamos National Laboratory. It was produced by a simulation called…

Look At What Happened To California’s Snowpack In Just Five Years

If you were hoping for good news about California’s drought, you certainly won’t find it in these pictures, which also hint at a much bigger problem coming down the pipeline. NASA’s Earth Observatory released these two shots of the Sierra Nevadas, one taken last week and the other taken at the same time five years…

The World Lost 18 Million Hectares of Forest in 2013

New high-resolution maps of international woodland reveal that the world lost 18 million hectares of forest—the same area as that covered by Oklahoma—to wildfires, deforestation, and development in 2013 The maps, such as the one shown above, were created by Global Forest Watch in a collaboration between University of Maryland an Google, bringing together more…

A Map Of Where You’ll See The Strongest Lightning Displays In The World

Predicting where lightning will strike may be pretty tricky, but what about where lightning will flash? This map from NASA’s Earth Observatory takes data from 1995 – 2013 to show us the global hotspots for lightning. As you can see, lightning rates over land are much higher than over water, with the heaviest areas seeing…

These Are All The Areas Likely To Be Hit By The Coral Bleaching Outbreak

Coral bleaching is among nature’s spookiest reactions. One day, a section of coral is teeming with life and color. Then, suddenly, all that’s left is the bleached out outline of that empty coral, a ghost coral in empty waters. And we could be headed for a truly landscape altering coral bleaching this year. Top image:…

How bad was your winter? How you answer that question depends, of course, on where you’re answering it from. Climate Central has put together a calculator that shows you just where in the spectrum of your city’s wintry history this year falls in terms of temperatures over the last 120 years of winters.

El Niño Is Finally Here, But Not Quite How We Expected It

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] has announced the long-predicted El Niño for this year has finally arrived. But it doesn’t look quite like we thought it would. Despite last year’s predictions that we could see a weather event that might rival the incredibly powerful El Niño of 17 years ago, the actual conditions…

How to Understand These Gorgeous Satellite Data Maps of the Earth

NASA’s Earth Observatory has spent over fifteen years using satellites to collect hordes of real-time data across our planet’s surface. They reveal everything from temperature and energy use, to how much radiation we beam into space. Here’s how to understand satellite data maps to understand our planet’s vital signs. Above: Carbon dioxide absorption by Earth’s…

Massive Forest Fires Could Be Cooling the Earth

Wait, what? A forest fire may not sound like a great way to cool off, but Earth’s climate is a complicated beast. It turns out that some of the world’s fiercest blazes are actually lowering our planet’s temperatures. Top image: Wikimedia The remote boreal forests that blanket massive swaths of Canada and Alaska aren’t just…

Scientists Weigh in on Plans to Hack the Weather and Cool the Earth

Geoengineering, i.e. tinkering with the climate to stop the rising tides of climate change, is a provocative and frankly still kinda crazy idea. Two long-awaited reports from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) out today have some pretty harsh words about geoengineering. The reports don’t use the term “geoengineering” but are instead titled “Climate Intervention.”…

U.S. Senate Agrees Climate Change Is Real, 98 Votes to 1

The U.S. Senate has voted overwhelmingly in agreement that climate change is real, with a staggering 98 votes to 1. All that remains is for them to agree on the cause. The vote, Circa reports, was a non-binding amendment, to the controversial Keystone XL pipeline bill, which declares that climate change is “not a hoax.”…

Even our underwater forests are dying off. Kelp forests have been undergoing huge losses in the last 75 years. So what’s causing the disappearance? NASA’s Earth Observatory identifies three of the biggest problemsas warmer oceans, more intense storms, and invasive species moving into the area.

Here’s a Shocking Visualization of the Planet’s Rising Temperatures

Last week, NASA and NOAA announced that 2014 was the hottest year in Earth’s recorded history. This animation by Bloomberg brings that finding into sharp focus. https://gizmodo.com/2014-was-the-hottest-year-in-earths-recorded-history-1679954696 Most graphs of the planet’s rising temperature just show one bar, averaged out over the year. In this animation, though, we see monthly records for each year overlaid…

2014 Was the Hottest Year in Earth’s Recorded History 

It’s official: 2014 is the hottest year since we humans started recording temperatures on Earth, according to two independent analyses by NASA and NOAA. Last year’s global temperatures broke record a record set in 2010 and, before that, in 2005. We are on a steady march toward a warmer Earth. January in the northern hemisphere…

You Can Trace a Typhoon Through Changes in Ocean Life

You’re looking at a selection of marine life, from shrimp to jellies. But what’s special abou these little blighters is that they reveal the presence of a typhoon in their past. Research Mary Grossmann from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University has been snapping images of ocean life 20 metres below the…