Highlights Archive

As the 2025 hurricane season ramps up, NOAA will be testing small, uncrewed instrumented sailboats built by a robotics company to capture weather and ocean data in the path of tropical storms. The observations from these robots will help scientists...

On Tuesday, July 29th, 2025, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake occurred off the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, triggering numerous tsunami alerts in Alaska, Hawaii, the U.S. west coast, and throughout the Pacific. At the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental...

Surprising findings from a pair of NOAA buoys show the importance of frequent, long-term observations

While the global ocean has long been recognized as a crucial carbon sink, quantifying the exchange of carbon dioxide (CO₂) between the ocean and...

On May 9, 2025, a research-enhanced weather buoy was deployed at 40.50°N 69.25°W for an expected observing period of one year. Working alongside a team of engineers and technicians at the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC), Dr. Yolande Serra's (UW...

The Surface UNcrewed Fleet (SUN Fleet) — a new network of ocean robots — could solve longstanding scientific challenges.

The surface of the global ocean, where the sea meets the sky, is one of the most important physical boundaries on the planet.

Here...

For decades, firefighting crews counted on falling temperatures and rising humidity at night to dampen wildfire activity, allowing them to rest, regroup and prepare for the next day.

Over the last 20 years though, satellite measurements have...

The global ocean covers 71% of the planet. Across these vast spaces, interactions between the ocean and atmosphere are primary drivers of Earth's weather, climate and marine productivity.

Satellites, instrumented moorings, and infrequent ship-borne...

Despite rapid Arctic warming, plan for more frigid spells

New research on the Arctic confirms that even as the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the world, cold-air outbreaks from the polar region will continue across the Northern Hemisphere...

Rare observations of surface currents to the left of winds in the Bay of Bengal

One of the foundational principles of modern oceanography is that ocean surface currents on our rotating planet will be deflected to the right of the winds in the...

Humans generate about 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide pollution every year, about 30 percent of which are absorbed by the oceans. While that means there's less carbon dioxide (CO₂) heating the atmosphere, the result is that the chemistry of the...

The North Pacific has warmed significantly faster than any other ocean basin on Earth since 2013, enduring two major marine heat waves in five years that had devastating effects on marine mammals, seabirds, as well as fisheries and the communities...

Unprecedentedly low sea ice cover in the northern Bering and Chukchi seas during back-to-back winters from 2018 to 2019 caused a cascade of impacts that abruptly transformed the regional marine ecosystem, compounding challenges faced by the...

The extraordinarily powerful eruption of Hunga volcano in the Tongan archipelago in the southern Pacific Ocean on January 15, 2022 blasted gas and ash 36 miles high, generating atmospheric gravity waves, two different types of destructive tsunamis...

As the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to increase and climate change impacts become more costly, the scientific community is redoubling efforts to investigate the potential risks and benefits of artificially shading Earth’s...

Over the past 20 years, researchers have been studying how the atmosphere reacts to changing ocean temperatures globally, sparking debates on the exact mechanisms at play.

Using advanced tools like uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs), moored ocean...

Hurricane intensity predictions would benefit from timely, more accurate ocean temperature, salinity and wave measurements, NOAA researchers find.

On September 30, 2021, a saildrone uncrewed surface vehicle made history by intercepting the eyewall...