The Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) is a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Commerce. Scientists at ESRL study the dynamic physical, chemical, and biological processes that comprise the Earth's atmospheric system. These studies cover such subtopics as climate change, the carbon cycle, air quality, the ozone layer, climate and water systems, and the development of new observing systems, computational infrastructures, and technologies.

Everything you need to know about current and past hurricanes. Basic hurricane safety. Weather watches, warnings, and forecasts. Hurricane preparedness guides.

NOAA Fisheries Service is dedicated to the stewardship of living marine resources through science-based conservation and management, and the promotion of healthy ecosystems. As a steward, NOAA Fisheries Service conserves, protects, and manages living marine resources in a way that ensures their continuation as functioning components of marine ecosystems, affords economic opportunities, and enhances the quality of life for the American public.

Here you'll discover the marine life and extraordinary habitats that make up your nation's marine sanctuaries and our continuing effortts to conserve these ocean and coastal treasures. The mission of NOAA's National Marine Sanctuaries is to serve as the trustee for the nation's system of marine protected areas, to conserve, protect, and enhance their biodiversity, ecological integrity and cultural legacy.

A comprehensive website on drought in the historical and paleoclimatic records, designed to help educate, inform and highlight the history and importance of drought, and to show how paleoclimate research relates to drought and other important issues of climate variability and change.

The paleoclimate record shows rapid and dramatic changes in climate have occurred in the past on global and regional scales. Here's what we know and what we don't know about the causes and effects of these changes.

NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program is working with scientists from around the world to study past climate in hopes of achieving a better understanding of the Earth's present and future climate. This site was developed to help educate, inform and highlight the importance of paleoclimate research; as well as to show how paleoclimate research relates to global warming and other important issues of climate variability and change.

The NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii issued an information bulletin at 8:14 p.m. EST Saturday, indicating that a magnitude 8.0 earthquake had occurred off the west coast of Northern Sumatra. Within a few hours of learning of the tsunamis that killed thousands in Indonesia Saturday night, Vasily Titov, associate director of the Tsunami Inundation Mapping Efforts, or TIME, at the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Wash., and his counterpart in Japan had created preliminary model estimates of the event.

Here at NOAA Research (the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, or OAR) our work takes us from the surface of the sun to the depths of the ocean. Our scientists and their university partners across the country and elsewhere work to better understand the world in which we live. NOAA Research is where much of the work is done that results in better weather forecasts, longer warning lead times for natural disasters, new products from the sea, and a greater understanding of our climate, atmosphere, and oceans. NOAA research is done not only in what many would consider traditional laboratories, but also aboard ships, aloft in planes, and beneath the sea in the world's only undersea habitat. Our tools can be as high-tech as supercomputers or as basic as rain gauges. While we try to answer some of nature's questions, we also never lose sight of how our work will benefit the American public.

As the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season gets underway, NOAA has introduced a new way to follow specific tropical storms or hurricanes. NOAA Storm Tracker contains live links to advisories, tracking maps and satellite images of a particular storm that is projected to strike the United States or other nations in a storms path. Track Katrina, Rita, Wilma, and more.

NOAA's Undersea Research Program (NURP), within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), is a unique national service that provides undersea scientists with tools and expertise that they need to work in the undersea environment. Undersea research results in a greater understanding of the world's oceans, which make up more than 99% of the living volume of our planet. In spite of their prevalence, the oceans are still a frontier area. The Mid-Ocean Ridge, a mountain range spanning the ocean basins, was recognized only in the 1960s. Vents and seeps surrounded by life that exists without sunlight discovered in the 1980s revolutionized modern scientific theory about the origin and sustenance of life on Earth. NURP-funded scientists are a part of this advance on the frontier. Our research programs cover many undersea environments from the shoreline to the deep sea, capturing nearly all the scientific disciplines. Our recent scientific studies show the significance of gathering information from the ocean, and the delight and dedication associated with ocean research and discovery. Our reward comes from overcoming the obstacles of the sea and helping humans understand and live on the "water planet."

Aquarius is an underwater ocean laboratory located in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The laboratory is deployed three and half miles offshore, at a depth of 60 feet, next to spectacular coral reefs. Scientists live in Aquarius during ten-day missions using saturation diving to study and explore our coastal ocean.

The NAO is the dominant mode of winter climate variability in the North Atlantic region ranging from central North America to Europe and much into Northern Asia. The NAO is a large scale seesaw in atmospheric mass between the subtropical high and the polar low. The corresponding index varies from year to year, but also exhibits a tendency to remain in one phase for intervals lasting several years. The climate of the Atlantic sector and surrounding continents exhibits considerable variability on a wide range of time scales. Improved understanding of this variability is essential to assess the likely range of future climate fluctuations and the extent to which these fluctuations are predictable, and to assess the potential impact of climate change due to anthropogenic forcing.

The Northeast Fisheries Science Center is the research arm of NOAA Fisheries in the region. The Center plans, develops, and manages a multidisciplinary program of basic and applied research to: (1) better understand living marine resources of the Northeast Continental Shelf Ecosystem from the Gulf of Maine to Cape Hatteras, and the habitat quality essential for their existence and continued productivity; and (2) describe and provide to management, industry, and the public, options for the conservation and utilization of living marine resources, and for the restoration and maintenance of marine environmental quality.

NANOOS is the Pacific Northwest ocean observing system regional association established to address the ocean observing and prediction needs of users in Washington, Oregon, and northern California; strong links are established to British Columbia and Alaska observing programs. NANOOS will collect and disseminate coastal ocean and estuarine data and products.