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Category Archives: History
Who conducts the National Climate Assessment?
The U.S. National Climate Assessment is mandated by the Global Change Research Act of 1990. The assessment has been conducted about every four years since 2000 and is an authoritative scientific analysis of climate change risks, impacts, and responses in the U.S. The resulting report, mandated by Congress, explains how climate change affects every region of the U.S.
The nation completed its fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) in November 2023. The assessment results from an extensive process that includes internal and external review from federal agencies, the public, and external peer review by a panel of experts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the administrative agency for NCA5 and certifies that the report meets the standards required by the Information Quality Act and Evidence Act. Continue reading
Did weather forecasting play a role in D-Day?
Last Friday was the 81st anniversary of the Allied invasion of Europe that began with the landings on the beaches at Normandy. The combined land, air, and sea assault of June 6, 1944 remains the largest such event in history. The success of the invasion was extraordinarily dependent of weather conditions. More than three months before the invasion, a combined British and American forecasting team began rigorous forecast exercises designed to iron out the physical and logistical kinks of such a coordinated effort. As June drew near, the nature of this collaboration was still problematic as the two groups employed vastly different methods in fashioning the requisite 3-5 days forecasts – at the time, absolutely primitive in the underlying science as compared to what is possible at such ranges today. The British were attempting to make such forecasts based upon the understanding of atmospheric dynamics that had grown substantially during the war. The Americans were employing a method based on a statistically- based search through old weather data for historical analogues that could be used to guide the forecast. Continue reading
Category: History, Meteorology, Severe Weather
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Is there scientific consensus on global warming?
Global warming refers to the recent rise in Earth’s average temperature caused by human activities that emit higher levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. Scientists understand the physics and chemistry of how these gases warm the atmosphere.
The global average temperature has increased about 1.7°F since 1970. During this same period, temperatures have risen around 2.5°F in the contiguous United States and 4.2°F in Alaska. The 10-year period 2014–2023 was the warmest decade on record. Such warming has, of course, altered average weather conditions, including temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind patterns, atmospheric pressure, and ocean temperatures and so global warming is nearly synonymous with climate change. Although it is difficult to directly attribute specific weather events to global warming/climate change, data analysis indicates that global warming is linked to more extreme weather events such as droughts and floods. There has also been an increase in days with temperatures above 90°F and heat waves. Heat waves, defined as periods of unusually hot weather lasting two or more days, have become more frequent in major cities across the United States, rising from an average of two heat waves per year in the 1960s to over six per year in the 2020s. Continue reading
Why is May 6 such a special day in weather science history?
Immediately after WW II, it became fashionable to imagine technologies that might allow human beings to control the weather. In fact, one goal advanced by influential scientists was actually to explode nuclear bombs in the right locations and in the right quantity so as to alter the weather in favorable ways. Such an enterprise would require accurate forecasts of the weather thought possible by using the brand new computer technology to make the millions of requisite calculations.
The drive to use computer models for weather forecasting was initiated at a secret meeting at the U.S. Weather Bureau headquarters in Washington D.C. on the rainy morning of January 6, 1946. After a series of successes and setbacks that mostly discouraged the broad meteorological community, the first operational computer generated forecasts were issued on the afternoon of May 6, 1955. Continue reading
Should we stop climate research?
Scientific evidence for slow, ongoing, systematic warming of Earth’s atmosphere is unequivocal. This conclusion comes from evidence-based science and a physical understanding of that evidence. Regular scientific assessments of global and regional climate began in the 1970s. These assessments, along with a physical understanding of the atmosphere, show that the impact of human activities on this warming has evolved from theory to established fact. This is not a radical political statement; it is a firm conclusion based on the analysis of carefully considered observations.
Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gases, which are transparent to solar radiation but absorb large amounts of terrestrial infrared radiation that results in warming the atmosphere. The planet’s average surface temperature has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 1800s. Most of that warming has occurred in the past 40 years. Continue reading
