Honeywell’s high-altitude LiDAR atmospheric sensing (HALAS) system measures atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction. Credit: Honeywell

NOAA and Honeywell to explore use of HALAS upper-air data to aid in weather forecasting

2/22/2024 - By weather.gov. February 7, 2024 - NOAA’s National Weather Service and Honeywell Aerospace Technologies signed a two-year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement to deploy a high-altitude LiDAR Atmospheric Sensing (HALAS) ground system and to evaluate the upper-air data gathered to determine if it could aid in weather forecasting. Honeywell’s HALAS ground system uses… SEE MORE
NOAA Beechcraft King Air N65RF taxis to the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center upon arrival in Lakeland, Florida. (Image credit: NOAA)

NOAA welcomes third Beechcraft King Air to its Specialized Aircraft Fleet

2/19/2024 - By noaa.gov. NOAA’s newest aircraft, a Beechcraft King Air 360 CER turboprop, has arrived at the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center in Lakeland, Florida. The new aircraft, designated N65RF, is configured to support NOAA coastal mapping missions and aerial surveys of damage in communities after events like hurricane landfall, tornadoes or flooding. With… SEE MORE
Straddling the equator, the Amazon River Basin occupies more than a third of South America. Rainfall is seasonal, shifting north of the equator in Northern Hemisphere summer and south of the equator in Northern Hemisphere winter. NOAA Climate.gov image, based on NASA Blue Marble collection.

Preliminary Analysis Says Global Warming More to Blame than El Niño for Amazon’s Ongoing Record Drought

2/18/2024 - By REBECCA LINDSEY. The devastating drought in the Amazon River Basin that we wrote about in October has continued into Northern Hemisphere winter, which is the heart of the wet season in the southern part of the basin. The drought is cutting off rural and riverside communities from food supplies, markets for… SEE MORE
Spring Chinook salmon. (Image credit: Michael Humling, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

U.S. Department of Commerce allocates over $20.6M in fishery disaster funding

2/14/2024 - By noaa.gov. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo announced today the allocation of $20.6 million to address a fishery resource disaster that occurred in the 2023 Sacramento River Fall Chinook and Klamath River Fall Chinook ocean and inland salmon fisheries. NOAA Fisheries used revenue loss information from the commercial, processor and charter… SEE MORE
Scientists study shipwreck sites to better understand ecological processes like succession, zonation, connectivity, energy flow, disturbance, and degradation. In the future, shipwrecks may provide opportunities to establish a global monitoring network for studying these processes in aquatic environments. Illustration by Alex Boersma.

Scientists Study Shipwrecks to Understand Underwater Ecology

1/28/2024 - By coastalscience.noaa.gov. In a newly published paper in BioScience, NCCOS scientists collaborated with an international team of ecologists and archaeologists to describe how shipwrecks provide a unique opportunity to study complex ecological processes. The synthesis focuses on a range of fundamental ecological functions and processes and how they manifest on and around shipwrecks.… SEE MORE