Weather News

Below is a quick review of some of the biggest environmental stories of 2012. The "top stories" are listed in no particular order. Scientists: we're reaching a tipping point (Hance)…

Hurricane Sandy storm surge on the New Jersey shore. Photo by: Master Sgt. Mark C. Olsen/U.S. Air Force/New Jersey National Guard. At a news conference today, a question by New…

Children stand in sweet potato fields in Indonesian New Guinea. A new report finds that poor and small-holding farmers are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Photo by:…

Hurricane Sandy near Jamaica. Sixty-nine people were killed in the Caribbean from the storm to date. Photo by: NOAA. While scientists are still debating some fundamental questions regarding hurricanes and…

Wind turbine in Minnesota, U.S. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. According to a new poll, 74 percent of Americans agree that climate change is impacting weather in the U.S., including 73…

Sea ice extent hit a record low on August 26th, and then continued to decline another 700,000 square kilometers. Image courtesy of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center…

Image of San Francisco taken on August 16th. Image by NASA. Click to enlarge. The short answer to why San Francisco, California is foggy? The Pacific Ocean's marine layer. A…

Study reveals the effects of deforestation on rainfall. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon Deforestation could cause rainfall across the Amazon rainforest to drop precipitously, warns a new study published in…

Salt compounds released by fungi and plants in the Amazon rainforest have an important role in the formation of rain clouds, reports research published in the journal Science. Scientists in…

The Las Gralarias glass frog is the world's newest glass frog. It was discovered by Carl Hutter on the Reserva las Gralarias, after which the researcher subsequently named the new…

Sea ice extent hits record low on August 26th. Image courtesy of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). One of the most visible impacts of climate change—melting…

Bottom blue line represents sea ice extent as of August 13th, tracking well below the record set in 2007. Graph courtesy of U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. Click…

Year-to-date temperature, by month, for 2012 (red), compared to the other 117 years on record for the contiguous U.S., with the five ultimately warmest years (orange) and five ultimately coolest…

Hitting France especially hard, the Europe 2003 heatwave left tens of thousands of people dead. A new statistical analysis argues that climate change was the cause of this and other…

Focusing on extreme weather events in the U.S. this summer, a new compilation video highlights the connection between climate change and increasing and worsening extremes, such as heatwaves, droughts, and…

Fire scar from Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado. Photo by: NASA. According to new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s National Climatic Data Center, the last twelve…

Map shows the level of drought and dryness across the US in July 2011. Map courtesy US Department of Agriculture. Click to enlarge. Climate change is here and its increasing…

Over 30 fires burning in Eastern Russia yesterday. Photo by: NASA. It's not only the U.S. that has experienced record-breaking extreme weather events recently, in the last couple months extreme…

The map depicts the relative concentration of aerosols from wildlife smoke in the skies above the continental U.S. on June 26, 2012. Image by: NASA. A noted climate scientist says…

New Mexico's biggest fire ever as seen on May 29th from NASA's Aqua satellite. Photo by: NASA. Spring in the U.S. was the warmest on record, beating the past record-year…

NASA map shows temperature anomalies from March 13-19, 2012 as compared to the same eight day period during the past 12 years. The map is based on data captured by…

Activists hold a banner in front of a damaged coral reef in the vulnerable Marshall islands. Rising temperatures and increased CO2 uptake are raising the acidity of the ocean, which…

High school students in Texas connect the dots between climate change and tornados that appear earlier and earlier ever year. Scientists are just beginning to explore whether or not there…

NASA map shows temperature anomalies from March 13-19, 2012 as compared to the same eight day period during the past 12 years. The map is based on data captured by…

NASA map shows temperature anomalies from March 13-19, 2012 as compared to the same eight day period during the past 12 years based on data captured by the Moderate Resolution…

The Amazon rainforest meets cleared area for cattle pasture. A radical meteorology theory argues that loss of forest, both in temperate and tropical regions, will lead to less precipitation over…

Despite being a strong La Niña year, which tends to be cooler than the average year, 2011 was the ninth warmest year on record and the warmest La Niña yet,…

Victories won by activists around the world tops our list of the big environmental stories of the year. In this photo: a young woman is placed in handcuffs and arrested…

Before and after satellite images of flooding in Ayutthaya Province, Thailand. Photo by: NASA. The year 2011 has presented the world with a shocking increase in irregular weather and disasters…