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How the Climate System Works
Department:September 28, 2012According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, weak El Niño conditions may develop this fall. How might a full-fledged El Niño event this winter influence weather where you live?
Department:August 15, 2012The average global temperature for July 2012 was more than 1° Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average, making it the fourth warmest July since record keeping began in 1880
Department:July 10, 2012The lead character in the 2011 climate story was La Niña—the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation—which chilled the central and eastern tropical Pacific at both the start and the end of t
Department:July 10, 2012In 2011, Earth’s atmosphere was cooler and drier than it had been the previous year, but it was more humid than the long-term average.
Department:July 10, 2012Except for some La Niña-cooled regions of the tropical Pacific and a few other cool spots, the upper ocean held more heat than average in 2011 in the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Southern Oceans.
Department:July 10, 2012In early 2011, stratospheric temperatures rose over the tropics due to La Nina while temperatures over the poles fell below the long-term average.
Department:June 19, 2012In late-April 2011, an unusual, post-winter Nor’easter brought much-needed rain the Northeast United States.
Department:April 12, 2012Although solar flares can bombard Earth’s outermost atmosphere with tremendous amounts of energy, most of that energy is reflected back into space by the Earth’s magnetic field or radiated back to space as heat by the thermosphere.
Department:February 15, 2012James Roger Fleming presents a historical perspective on how our understanding of Earth's climate system developed through innovations and discoveries by pioneering scientists in the 1800s and 1900s who asked and answered fundamental questions about the causes and effects of global climate change.
Department:February 15, 2012Although they are related, meteorology and climatology have important differences, particularly in how scientists develop and use weather and climate models. What makes climatologists think they can project climate scenarios decades into the future when meteorologists cannot accurately predict weather more than two weeks in advance? This presentation by Wayne Higgins of NOAA's Climate Prediction Center clarifies the relationships and differences between weather and climate, as well as the differences between natural climate variability and human-induced climate change.
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