Until recently, glaciers in the United States have been measured in two ways: placing stakes in the snow, as federal scientists have done each year since 1957 at South Cascade Glacier in Washington state; or tracking glacier area using photographs from airplanes and satellites.

Forecasters at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center released the U.S. Winter Outlook today, with La Nina potentially emerging for the second year in a row as the biggest wildcard in how this year’s winter will shape up. La Nina has a 55- to 65-percent chance of developing before winter sets in.

NOAA produces seasonal outlooks to help communities prepare for what's likely to come in the next few months and minimize weather's impacts on lives and livelihoods. Empowering people with actionable forecasts and winter weather tips is key to NOAA’s effort to build a Weather-Ready Nation.

Tropical rainforests continue to buffer wildlife from extreme temperatures even after logging, a new study has revealed.

NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite passed overhead and captured an image of Typhoon Lan in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean and saw a well-organized storm with a clear eye that was 50 nautical miles in diameter.

The ocean plays a critical role in climate and weather, serving as a massive reservoir of heat and water that influences tropical storms, El Nin~o, and climate change.  In addition, the ocean has absorbed 30 percent of the carbon dioxide associated with human activities, lessening the climate effects of fossil fuel combustion. 

The annual assessment of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the JRC and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) confirms that CO2 emissions have stalled for the third year in a row.

The Northwestern Pacific Ocean generated another tropical depression hours after a different system quickly faded. NASA’s Aqua satellite provided a look at Tropical Depression 27W after it developed about 300 miles from Chuuk. Earlier in the day, Tropical Depression 26W dissipated in the South China Sea.

The energy and climate benefits of cool roofs have been well established: By reflecting rather than absorbing the sun’s energy, light-colored roofs keep buildings, cities, and even the entire planet cooler. Now a new study by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has found that cool roofs can also save water by reducing how much is needed for urban irrigation.

Thirty years after NASA and NOAA launched a groundbreaking airborne campaign to study the Antarctic ozone hole, the two federal science agencies have once again joined forces over the world’s highest, driest and coldest continent to sniff out the secrets of the atmosphere.

On Oct. 14, NASA’s heavily instrumented DC-8 flew over Antarctica as part of the Atmospheric Tomography Mission or ATom, an unprecedented effort to sample the remote atmosphere to understand the distribution of man-made pollutants and short-lived greenhouse gases.

A newly described species of brown-and-white Philippine butterflyfish—the charismatic Roa rumsfeldi—made a fantastic, 7,000-mile journey before surprising scientists with its unknown status. Live specimens collected from 360 feet beneath the ocean’s surface in the Philippine’s Verde Island Passage escaped special notice until a single black fin spine tipped off aquarium biologists back in San Francisco. Deep-diving researchers from the California Academy of Sciences’ Hope for Reefs team—with genetic sequencing help from a parent–son team—share their discovery of a fifth species of Roa this week in ZooKeys.