The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has more than $3 billion ready to fund projects that bolster natural systems which can buffer the impacts of climate change.
In California, funded projects could include sand replenishment, wetlands recovery and expansion, or natural projects that fight coastal erosion.
The lack of winter cold snaps are now another issue piling on the the climate change situation. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), released it’s climate summary findings, and in California, the key messages involved a 3°F temperature increase over the 20th century.
The warming temperatures over time are causing big swings across the board. Warmer temperatures mean snow is prone to fall at higher altitudes. What would have fallen at lower altitudes is becoming rain. The lack of snow limits our use of snowpack, a natural reservoir in California.
California is likely to emerge from the winter with little relief from drought, federal climate experts said Thursday, setting the stage for a third year of dry weather and continuing water shortages. The monthly climate report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects that drought conditions will persist in almost all of California through February. With the next three months historically the state’s wettest, the opportunity for drought recovery is essentially lost.
California just closed the books on its hottest July on record, a whopping 5.3 degrees above normal.
It was the latest in a rash of record-setting months over the past year, as the state saw its hottest July, June, October, September and August in history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
NOAA data shows that the average monthly temperature in July was 80 degrees, 5.3 degrees above normal, or the average temperature from 1901 to 2000. June’s average temperature was 75 degrees, 6.8 degrees above normal.
Happy new year! We all know keeping New Year’s resolutions is often a fruitless endeavor, but here’s hoping that Mother Nature will make—and keep—a resolution for a less bonkers climate year in 2021. To kick start 2021 in the United States, the January outlook from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center favors wetter- and warmer-than-average conditions for much of the country, which is particularly good news across drought- and wildfire-stricken parts of northern California.
Just how warm Earth stays this December will determine if 2020 goes down as the hottest year on record. And it’s looking a lot like it will.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calculated Monday that last month globally was the second hottest November on record, behind only 2015. Yet NASA and a European climate monitoring group said it was the hottest November on record. NASA has coverage over the poles that NOAA does not — and both the Arctic and Antarctic were very warm in November, NOAA climate scientist Ahira Sanchez-Lugo said to explain the difference.
Throughout the year, a weather system known as an “atmospheric river” can impact the West Coast of the U.S., causing flooding, heavy snow and possible mudslides.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines an atmospheric river as a huge plume of subtropical moisture that moves with the weather, carrying water roughly equivalent to the average flow at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
“Atmospheric rivers are relatively long, narrow regions in the atmosphere – like rivers in the sky – that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics,” the NOAA states.
Southern California will get a chance to dry out this week after a string of storms dumped rain and snow across the region over the last few weeks.
“Basically, we’ve got an area of high pressure moving in from the West, and it’s deflecting the storms to the north,” said David Sweet, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
The weather is expected to stay dry through at least Sunday, forecasts show. Temperatures are also expected to warm up later in the week, with highs in the mid-60s to lower-70s on Friday and Saturday, according to the weather service.
The U.S. government’s oceans and waterways agency will provide $30 million to improve coastal resilience, officials said, aiming to reduce the impacts of worsening storms, flooding and rising seas in nearly half of U.S. states.
Grants through the program are designed to restore or expand coastal wetlands, dunes, reefs, mangroves and barrier islands that are key to coastal protection, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in an announcement.
Coastlines worldwide are being damaged or threatened by more extreme and destructive weather, higher temperatures and rising seas that scientists attribute to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Much of the planet sweltered in unprecedented heat in July, as temperatures soared to new heights in the hottest month ever recorded. The record warmth also shrank Arctic and Antarctic sea ice to historic lows.
The average global temperature in July was 1.71 degrees F above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees, making it the hottest July in the 140-year record, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. The previous hottest month on record was July 2016.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
