El Niño and La Niña are counterparts in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a cyclic warming and cooling of the eastern and central Pacific Ocean that exerts a major influence on global weather patterns, but they are not mirror images.
A team of scientists led by NCAR’s Keith Oleson has incorporated urban areas into a global climate model. The development is important because most models used for predicting future climate change do not account for the urban “heat island” effect.
Just as the U.S. economy began a dramatic nosedive in 2007, so did the Arctic’s summertime sea ice. In the summer of 2010, the ice—much like the economy—continued to struggle.
In 1988, it was the spectre of Yellowstone National Park on fire. In 2003, it was the horror of thousands dying from heat in prosperous western Europe. The planet’s standout heat wave in 2010 plagued much of European Russia, including Moscow.
In Kansas City and Tulsa, overnight lows have seldom dipped much below 80°F, with consistently oppressive humidity. Pulses of tropical air flowing north and east from the Gulf of Mexico are largely to blame.
As the public and political dialogue surrounding climate change heats up, UCAR's Jack Fellows finds that climate change science has never been more rigorous and exciting.
During the stormy summer of 2005, hurricanes Katrina and Rita raised concerns about the potential effects of global warming on tropical cyclones. At the same time, the Amazon rainforest was experiencing one of its most intense droughts of the last century.
A study led by NCAR visiting scientist Erich Fischer analyzes regional climate simulations to project where heat-wave-related health risks will increase in Europe as Earth’s climate warms.
Students, gardeners, retirees, and other volunteers taking part in a nationwide initiative, Project BudBurst, are finding hints that certain plants are blooming unusually early.
A new study led by NCAR scientist Peter Lawrence has found that impacts to Earth's hydrological cycle are the most important driving force in how land use changes affect climate.
Years before Congress began debating greenhouse-gas reduction, more than 500 U.S. cities had pledged to reduce their carbon footprints in line with the goals of the Kyoto Protocol. Now American cities are leading the way on adapting to climate change.
In eastern Tennessee a portrait of Earth's progression from ice age to present is taking shape. Each day, up to 100 years of climatic history unfolds. By early this year, the story will be complete, thanks to some five million processing hours on supercomputers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
A growing body of research now confirms that the Montreal agreement averted at least one catastrophic form of climate change, even if others still loom. "The Montreal Protocol is a major success story," says William Randel.
Even if the onslaught paled next to great winter outbreaks of the past, it was impressively persistent across some influential areas, including southeast England and the U.S. mid-Atlantic.
Clearly, the end of the Copenhagen conference isn’t the end of work on climate change—though, with regards to Winston Churchill, it might be the end of the beginning.
Policymakers should focus on what needs to be achieved in the next 40 years in order to keep long-term options viable for avoiding dangerous levels of warming, a new study concludes.
In a vivid example of how a small geographic feature can have far-reaching impacts on climate, new research shows that water levels in the Bering Strait helped drive global climate patterns during ice age episodes dating back more than 100,000 years.
Amid the strife of the Copenhagen climate summit, one area of acknowledged progress was in ways to help preserve tropical forests and their vast stores of carbon in developing countries.
Sometimes the numbers just don’t add up, even when you know they need to. Attendees at the Copenhagen meeting got a taste of that as the massive meeting struggled to accommodate its guests.
A year after she was finishing a two-year appointment at NCAR, Mercy Borbor Córdova was literally on the world stage, serving as a delegate from Ecuador at the Copenhagen climate summit.
