Highlights Archive

It’s unclear when the human fascination with the voices of humpback whales began, but with the release of the album “Songs of the Humpback Whale” in 1970, humpbacks became arguably the most listened to whales in the world. But humpback whales do more...

Projections of Arctic sea ice through the end of the 21st century indicate the likelihood of a strong reduction in ice area and thickness in all seasons, leading to a substantial thermodynamic influence on the overlying atmosphere. In this study, the...

NOAA has led, for 28 years, a team of international scientists in issuing annual reports on the state of the climate focusing on the year just passed. The State of the Climate in 2017 report was published as a supplement to Bulletin of the American...

The northern California Current and Salish Sea ecosystems are hotspots for acidified ocean conditions, which are impacting many marine organisms and intensifying due to on-going ocean acidification. “Ocean acidification” (OA) refers to the global...

The first decade of the 21st century witnessed a slowdown in the rise of global surface atmospheric temperatures, referred to as the global warming hiatus. During this time, the tropical Pacific Ocean absorbed more heat from the atmosphere than in...

The Earth-Ocean Interactions (EOI) group at the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory explores the solid Earth impacts on ocean chemistry and biological productivity. Of particular interest is the role of submarine volcanoes in providing iron...

Studies of underwater eruptions are essential to understand the processes that form oceanic crust, and the role submarine volcanoes have in exchanging heat and chemicals with the ocean and in supporting chemosynthetic biological communities. The...

This paper describes currents in the Chukchi Sea and their relationship to ice and winds. The Chukchi Sea consists of a broad shallow shelf, extending more than 800 km northward from its southern boundary at Bering Strait to the shelf break bounding...

Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, human activity has caused atmospheric CO2 levels to rise. During this time, the ocean has absorbed roughly one third of emitted anthropogenic (human-derived) carbon, so ocean carbon uptake therefore...

Fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) spend most of their lives ranging widely throughout ocean basins and thus can be extremely difficult to study. Nevertheless, understanding the fin whales’ population structure is of particular importance for...

Atmospheric aerosol particles affect the Earth’s radiation balance directly by scattering and absorbing incoming solar radiation. In addition, aerosol particles are required for clouds to form. Particles serve as surfaces for water vapor to condense...

NOAA has led, for 27 years, a team of international scientists in issuing annual reports on the state of the climate focusing on the year just passed. The State of the Climate in 2016 report, published as a supplement to Bulletin of the American...

This month's featured article provides an overview of the first Saildrone mission conducted jointly between NOAA Fisheries Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) and Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL).

The Saildrone is an autonomous...

Over the last decade, a number of tsunami events originating from distant regions of the Pacific Ocean have impacted the US West Coast. In some cases, the arrival of tsunami waves associated with these events has coincided with low tide levels, such...

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, human activity has increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) released into the Earth's atmosphere, with nearly 30% of that CO₂ being absorbed by the oceans. Decades of observations have shown that the...

You might imagine the bottom of the ocean’s deepest point, seven miles down, to be a very quiet place. However, NOAA and partner scientists, making the first recordings from the Challenger Deep trough in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, found...