Hurricanes that intensify rapidly — a characteristic of almost all powerful hurricanes — do so more strongly and quickly now than they did 30 years ago, according to a study published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Everyone seems to be wondering, "What happened to spring?" Last month, a persistent flow of Arctic air blanketed the eastern two-thirds of the nation. Record cold, and even snow in some areas, delayed the onset of warm spring-like conditions.

NOAA’s National Weather Service is tapping technology to automate weather balloon launches in Alaska, a move that will allow staff to improve public service across the state while saving federal tax dollars.

Scientists drilling deep into ancient rocks in the Arizona desert say they have documented a gradual shift in Earth’s orbit that repeats regularly every 405,000 years, playing a role in natural climate swings. Astrophysicists have long hypothesized that the cycle exists based on calculations of celestial mechanics, but the authors of the new research have found the first verifiable physical evidence. They showed that the cycle has been stable for hundreds of millions of years, from before the rise of dinosaurs, and is still active today. The research may have implications not only for climate studies, but our understanding of the evolution of life on Earth, and the evolution of the Solar System. It appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As coastal lands in Louisiana erode, researchers, environmentalists and engineers are all searching for ways to preserve the marsh coastline.

Researchers at Indiana University have developed a new method for identifying communities that may be negatively affected by clean energy policies designed to hasten the move from fossil fuels to more environmentally friendly solutions.

New research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and collaborators found that most marine life in marine protected areas will not be able to tolerate warming ocean temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Marine protected areas have been established as a haven to protect threatened marine life, like polar bears, penguins and coral reefs, from the effects of fishing and other activities like mineral and oil extraction. The study found that with continued “business-as-usual” emissions, the protections currently in place won’t matter, because by 2100, warming and reduced oxygen concentration will make marine protected areas uninhabitable by most species currently residing in those areas.

Kilauea — Hawaii's most active volcano — began spewing lava into a residential area on Thursday, prompting evacuations after hundreds of small earthquakes in recent days telegraphed an impending eruption.

Strong vertical wind shear had taken its toll on Tropical Cyclone Flamboyan when NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the Southern Indian Ocean. Flamboyan, now a subtropical cyclone, had been stretched out and its only precipitation pushed southeast of the center.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite provided a visible image of Flamboyan on May 2 at 3:50 a.m. EDT (0750 UTC). The storm was devoid of rainfall with the exception of the southeastern quadrant. Wind shear has pushed all the storm southeast of the center.

The intensity and frequency of strong tropical cyclones, as well as cyclone landfalls, have increased in recent decades in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, raising speculation about the root cause of the surge in destructive Category 4 and 5 storms.

Now atmospheric researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa‘s International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) have published a study in Scientific Reports showing a strong connection between sea surface temperature patterns associated with the Global Warming Hiatus phenomenon and changes in cyclone activity over the northwest Pacific Ocean, particularly increasing intensities in coastal regions of East Asia.