Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences

Established in 1949, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, provides warnings for teletsunamis to most countries in the Pacific Basin as well as to Hawaii and all other US interests in the Pacific outside of Alaska and the US West Coast. Those areas are served by the West Coast / Alaska Tsunami Warning Center (WC/ATWC) in Palmer, Alaska. PTWC is also the warning center for Hawaii's local and regional tsunamis.

The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC), located at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), is the primary climate change data and information analysis center for DOE. CDIAC is supported by DOE's Climate and Environmental Sciences Division within the Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER).

CDIAC's data holdings include estimates of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel consumption and land-use changes; records of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other radiatively active trace gases; carbon cycle and terrestrial carbon management datasets and analyses; and global/regional climate data and time series.

The PRISM Climate Group gathers climate observations from a wide range of monitoring networks, applies sophisticated quality control measures, and develops spatial climate datasets to reveal short- and long-term climate patterns. The resulting datasets incorporate a variety of modeling techniques and are available at multiple spatial/temporal resolutions, covering the period from 1895 to the present. Whenever possible, we offer these datasets to the public, either free of charge or for a fee (depending on dataset size/complexity and funding available for the activity).

This page presents images and news releases based on observations of the El Nino, La Nina phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean by the U.S./French TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, and other NASA/JPL satellites and instruments.

PIRATA (Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Tropical Atlantic) is a project designed by a group of scientists involved in CLIVAR, and is implemented by the group through multi-national cooperation. The purpose of PIRATA is to study ocean-atmosphere interactions in the tropical Atlantic that are relevant to regional climate variability on seasonal, interannual and longer time scales. The array consists of moored buoys that measure surface meteorological data, sea surface temperatures, salinity, and ocean currents that are relevant for studying climate change, global warming, El Nino and La Nina related conditions, hurricanes, tropical storms, and more.

Arctic climate impact assessment reports from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP). The reports cover the impacts of global warming and climate change on the arctic climate system, physical and biological systems, and human activities including health care, fishing, agriculture, forestry, wildlife, and other conservation issues.

Ocean carbon dioxide measurements and carbon dioxide geological sequestration. Ocean carbon dioxide data; Carbon sequestration; Air-sea carbon dioxide flux.

The GLobal Ocean Data Analysis Project (GLODAP) is a cooperative effort to coordinate global synthesis projects funded through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study - Synthesis and Modeling Project (JGOFS-SMP). Cruises conducted as part of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE), JGOFS, and the NOAA Ocean-Atmosphere Exchange Study (OACES) over the decade of the 1990s have created an oceanographic database of unparalleled quality and quantity. These data provide an important asset to the scientific community investigating carbon cycling in the oceans. The central objective of this project is to generate a unified data set to help determine the global distributions of both natural and anthropogenic inorganic carbon, including radiocarbon. These estimates provide an important benchmark against which future observational studies will be compared. They also provide tools for the direct evaluation of numerical ocean carbon models.

NorthWest Research Associates, Inc., (NWRA) is a small scientific research group with a primary focus in the geophysical sciences that includes, but is not limited to: oceanography, sea-ice mechanics, and atmospheric, ionospheric, and solar physics. NWRA is owned and operated by the Principal Investigators of the company and has over 70 employees in three office locations.

NASA EOS Aqua Project. Aqua scientists and engineers describe Aqua's mission and answer questions about climate science in this interactive multimedia website that is complete with animations, sounds, and video.

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.

Background on the discovery of the ozone hole and subsequent scientific studies from the NOAA Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Lab (CMDL).

CESM is a fully-coupled, community, global climate model that provides state-of-the-art computer simulations of the Earth's past, present, and future climate states. The CESM project is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Administration of the CESM is maintained by the Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory (CGD) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Weather Underground was originally launced in 1993 as the first online weather service. Weather Underground releases daily forecasts and reports on hourly weather conditions across the United States and the globe.

The Cooperative Institute for Climate Science (CICS) is a collaboration between Princeton University and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) to carry out basic research in the climate sciences.

CICS provides expertise and performs research in the climate sciences including climate change and variability, and biogeochemical cycles. Through its graduate and postdoctoral and visiting research program, CICS educates and trains future generations of scientists for NOAA and the nation.

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.

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.

The Pew Institute for Ocean Science is dedicated to conducting, sponsoring, disseminating, and promoting world-class scientific activity aimed at protecting the world's oceans and the species that inhabit them. Established in October of 2003 in partnership with the University of Miami Rosenstiel School for Marine and Atmospheric Science, the Institute is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and other philanthropic individuals and organizations.

The Pew Center on Global Climate Change was established in 1998 as a non-profit, non-partisan and independent organization. The Center's mission is to provide credible information, straight answers, and innovative solutions in the effort to address global climate change.Working on an issue that is often polarized and politicized, the Pew Center provides a forum for objective research and analysis and for the development of pragmatic policies and solutions. In its first five years, the Pew Center has become a leading voice for sensible action to address the most pressing global environmental problem of the 21st century.

The Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center is a multi-college unit at UC Berkeley, with the goal to broaden the atmospheric sciences beyond its traditional boundaries to embrace the biogeochemical frontier and the human dimension. The Center facilitates communication and integration across these traditional boundaries. In doing so, we aim to define a new paradigm for investigating changes in the atmosphere by integrating the microscopic mechanisms of chemical, physical, and biological processes with large-scale ecological and geological interactions between the geosphere, biosphere, and oceans, and how these interactions alter atmospheric composition.