Cooler and drier air injected into a hurricane can put the brakes on its growth. Scientists are learning more about how this process works and how forecasters can watch for it.
A thunderstorm complex that toppled trees and knocked out power from Illinois to the Delaware coast brought to light a weather term with an obscure but intriguing history.
A small, sophisticated instrument package developed at NCAR and dropped from aircraft has led to notable improvements in hurricane prediction. Now these devices are poised to deliver more data than ever, thanks to a new design and a remotely piloted NASA aircraft.
A multisatellite observing system that was only a gleam in researchers’ eyes in the 1990s is now a key tool for monitoring Earth’s atmosphere. An ambitious follow-up project could yield up to ten times the data gathered by the current satellites.
University students and faculty soon will have the chance to peer at day-to-day weather through the same lens used by National Weather Service meteorologists. A new version of the NWS’s workhorse graphics software will reach campuses through UCAR’s Unidata program.
Thanks to deicing treatment and careful route selection, commercial pilots now avoid most of the threat that ice will encase critical parts of a plane. But another, more mysterious kind of in-flight icing hazard is now gaining attention.
Scientists are targeting thunderstorms across the U.S. to discover what happens when clouds suck up air from Earth’s surface many miles into the atmosphere.
Many facets of everyday life, from boarding a plane to turning on the lights or driving down the highway, are becoming safer and more cost-effective with the help of technologies rooted in atmospheric science.
Why would a cooling of the Pacific Ocean help stoke tornadoes in the United States? Researchers are beginning to dig deeper into the connections between severe U.S. thunderstorms and the sea.
The winter of 2011–12 was the second in a row to feature La Niña, the quasi-cyclic cooling of the eastern tropical Pacific—but the two seasons departed from the La Niña script in strikingly different ways.
There’s much more to wind energy than throwing a few turbines up and watching the blades spin and the cash roll in. NCAR and partners are adding rigor and efficiency to wind power prediction and resource assessment.
Experts from a variety of disciplines are joining forces to improve how severe-weather warnings are crafted and communicated. The "Weather-Ready Nation" initiative comes on the heels of a year packed with U.S. weather disasters.
Researchers looking for images to help analyze and illustrate critical weather events may find what they’re looking for at the NCAR-based Meteorological Case Study Selection Kit.
Amid day-to-day weather forecasts and seasonal outlooks, there's a no-man's-zone of uncertainty one to two months out. A phenomenon called the Madden-Julian Oscillation may hold the key to better predictions in this intermediate period.
New research led by NCAR scientist Thomas Galarneau provides an in-depth analysis of two extreme weather events whose connection may come as a surprise: Russia’s intense heat wave in summer 2010 and the heavy rains that occurred simultaneously in Pakistan.
New research from NCAR is helping wind energy developers determine the best potential sites for capturing wind. Energy companies can lose money if they install turbines where winds are either too low to generate much power or so high that the turbines often need to be shut down to avoid damage.
