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Much of our weather in the United States depends on what is happening in the tropical Pacific Ocean. During an El Niño event, which is happening now, the eastern tropical Pacific is warmer than average. During La Niña events, the eastern tropical Pacific is cooler than average. While South America’s west coast may seem far [...]

Glaciers have a mass balance. Glaciers lose mass by melting during the warm season (primarily the summer months) and gain mass by accumulating snow during the cold season (centered around the winter months). If a glacier accumulates more mass during the cold season than it loses during the warm season, it is said to have [...]

The energy moving in both weather systems and through the wires that power your home can be measured in watts. The Sun heats the Earth causing the fluids of the atmosphere and the oceans to move, creating the winds and currents of Earth’s climate. The vast majority of the energy in the climate system moves [...]

The temperature/pressure difference between the equatorial regions and the poles is at its maximum during the winter months. The energy this difference generates is thought to power the “storm tracks,” or the bands in the mid-latitudes where east to west traveling storms (cyclonic high and low pressure systems) are most common. The storm track over [...]

More heat in the Earth system leads to sea level rise through two main processes: thermal expansion and the melting of glacial (land) ice. Over the past 100 years, global sea levels have been rising at a rate of 0.7 inches per decade. Sea level rise impacts include increased coastal erosion, submergence of land surfaces [...]

Some of  Earth’s most diverse and colorful ecosystems are shallow-water coral reef ecosystems, which are built on the skeletons of animals called corals. One critical part of these ecosystems, known as zooxanthellae – the single- celled organisms that live in coral skeletons – use their photosynthetic ability to manufacture sugars from the sun, which they [...]

Carbon is a critical element in the Earth system. Carbon molecules are constantly moving from different states and from reservoir to reservoir. One reservoir is the terrestrial biosphere (the life systems that exist on land), which holds carbon primarily in the form of plant matter and soil. The atmosphere holds carbon in the form of [...]

Even if the sun’s energy suddenly stopped, Earth would still give off heat for a while. This is because while much of the sun’s energy is reflected back into space, much of the energy that does reach the Earth is “stored” by the atmosphere, the oceans and the land. These bodies gradually release accumulated solar [...]

In the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, strong winds accompany strong ocean currents that move carbon from the ocean surface to the depths and from the depths to the surface. This ocean is considered to be a “Carbon dioxide (CO2) sink,” or a component of Earth’s climate that takes in more atmospheric CO2 as carbon concentrations [...]

The amount of solar energy Earth receives varies according to the “11-year solar cycle,” which corresponds to a cycle in the frequency and distribution of sunspots on the sun’s surface. The difference in solar energy between high and low points of the solar cycle is about two watts per square meter. About 35 percent of [...]

Temperature records suggest that the Earth’s surface temperatures warmed during the early part of the 20th century, cooled from the period 1940-1970 and have since been warming. While Arctic temperature trends have corresponded to this general warming and cooling pattern, it has followed these trends more severely. During the warming period from 1910-1940, the Arctic [...]

Much attention has been given to the decline of sea ice over the North Pole, which fell to a September minimum of 1.6 million square miles in 2007, about 40 percent below normal levels. On the other side of the world, the sea ice that extends from Antarctica’s continental ice sheets out over the ocean [...]

December is East Coast Winter Storm (ECWS) season. These storms are powered by warm water that flows from the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream current flows along the Eastern Seaboard past Florida and the Carolinas before reaching Cape Hatteras, where the warm water heads out into the Atlantic. ECWS’s travel northward along the coast causing [...]

Winter storm season is here. Storms will be blowing in from the Pacific, bringing rainfall to lower elevations and snow to the mountains. This year, the eastern tropical Pacific is in an El Niño phase, meaning that its waters are warmer than average. When the eastern Pacific is in an El Niño phase, the northwestern [...]

Winter storm season is here. Storms will be blowing in from the Pacific, bringing rainfall to lower elevations and snow to the mountains. This year, the eastern tropical Pacific is in an El Niño phase, meaning that its waters are warmer than average. When the eastern Pacific is in an El Niño phase, the southern [...]

Winter storm season is here. Storms will be blowing in from the Pacific, bringing rainfall to lower elevations and snow to the mountains. This year, the eastern tropical Pacific is in an El Niño phase, meaning that its waters are warmer than normal. When the eastern Pacific is in an El Niño phase, the southwest [...]

What do ceiling fans and tropical cyclones have in common? How about ocean currents and the microwaves that heat your food? Both ceiling fans and tropical cyclones have kinetic energy – energy that an object possesses due to its motion. Ocean currents have kinetic energy as well, and microwaves are powered by electricity that is [...]

At 27 degrees North and ten miles east of Florida’s Jupiter Inlet, a 50-mile wide current of warm water flows past the Peninsula at an average rate of 412 million cubic yards per second. Known as the Florida Current, this is a critical component of the Gulf Stream, which is in turn a critical component [...]

Along with heavy rains and high winds, the impacts of landfalling hurricanes and tropical storms also include more tornado formation. The larger the tropical cyclone and the longer it spends over land, the greater the probability that tornadoes will form as the system moves. Since 1995 in the Gulf of Mexico, hurricane strength has increased [...]

In today’s modern Holocene climate, warm surface waters in the tropical oceans gradually transition into the near-freezing surface waters near the poles. During warmer periods of Earth’s distant past, this temperature gradient was far less pronounced. In the early Eocene epoch (56-53 million years ago), average annual temperatures in Siberia and Canada were about 65 [...]