Just how powerful is the current El Niño? There’s more to the story than the very warm equatorial Pacific.
News & Features
“Arctic amplification” of climate change remained in full swing in 2015, according to the 2015 Arctic Report Card. Broad areas of the Arctic were more than 5°F (3°C) warmer than average during the report card’s monitoring year (October 2014-September 2015).
Increasing air and sea surface temperatures, decreasing sea ice extent and Greenland ice sheet mass, and changing behavior of fish and walrus are among key observations released today in the Arctic Report Card 2015.
Few places on Earth are more strongly affected by El Niño than the Galápagos Islands, which straddle the equator in the eastern tropical Pacific. Guest blogger Kris Karnauskas explains why these unique islands are so biologically productive—and what happens to that productivity during El Niño.
In mid-November, California canceled the opening of its Dungeness crab fisheries, the latest in a series of closures up and down the U.S. West Coast this summer and fall linked to an unusually widespread bloom of toxic algae that thrives in warm waters.
This week, Beyond the Data looks at one of the more well-grounded “rules of thumb” for understanding climate change: cooler "things" are warming more quickly than warmer things.
With multiple sea surface temperature datasets come questions. What are they all for?
Warmer-than-average waters in the tropical Pacific are expected to reach their peak soon. How has El Niño affected global weather so far this year?
Coastal erosion has repeatedly damaged surfside bike paths and parking lots near Ventura, California. It took local groups with varying viewpoints more than a decade to agree upon a strategy, but the first phase of their solution is now complete.
When it comes to what causes climate to vary over seemingly short distances, few things can compare to the influence of topography. This week in Beyond the Data, Jake Crouch talks about how climate scientists account for topography in interpreting climate patterns and trends.