news report
NOAA Diving Records Carry 336 Annual Burden Hours
The agency estimates 141 respondents for medical and equipment records supporting more than 300 divers, with comments on the renewal due Oct. 13.
Section
Weather & Climate
news report
NOAA Seeks Comment on Right-Whale Vessel Speed Records
The agency proposes no changes to required safety-deviation logs and voluntary operator surveys, estimating 3,624 respondents and 674 annual burden hours.
news report
Papua’s Last Tropical Glacier May Disappear by Early 2027
WMO says the remaining ice is about 2% of its 1988 area, one signal in a South-West Pacific report documenting exceptional ocean heat and rising seas.
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Unalaska Harbor Plan Faces Sea-Otter Review
A proposed federal authorization estimates that pile work at Robert Storrs Harbor could disturb up to 112 sea otters during as many as 100 nonconsecutive workdays.
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Prescribed Burns Made Giant Sequoias Nearly Four Times More Likely to Survive
A NASA-funded analysis of 26,403 trees across 19 groves estimates earlier controlled fire saved roughly 1,800 giant sequoias in 2020 and 2021.
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GAO Flags Missing Goals for $125 Million in Wildlife Resilience Work
The Fish and Wildlife Service has restored thousands of acres, but auditors say it cannot yet measure whether nine projects meet their broader resilience objectives.
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NOAA Tests 150-Band Flights to Improve Great Lakes Ice Tracking
Hyperspectral cameras aboard a Cessna and drones can distinguish spectral fingerprints in rapidly shifting ice that satellites and models may miss.
news report
USGS River DroughtCast Forecasts Low Streamflow Up to 90 Days Ahead
The machine-learning system covers more than 3,000 streamgages and correctly predicts the first week of severe or extreme drought about 75% of the time.
news report
NOAA Begins 30-Day West Coast Ocean Acidification Survey
The R/V Sikuliaq is measuring chemistry, biology and physics from Southern California to Washington while an uncrewed vessel samples southbound.
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NOAA Finds Cleaner Urban Air Is Unlocking an Understudied Particle Pathway
Aircraft and satellite measurements suggest falling nitrogen oxides are giving some organic molecules more time to form particle-building compounds.
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Drought Covered 48.54% of the Lower 48 in Early August
The Aug. 4 Drought Monitor showed another weekly increase as conditions worsened in the Northern and Southern Plains and the Northwest.
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NASA Model Tracked Wildfire Brown Carbon Across North America for a Week
The GEOS reconstruction followed smoke from July 14-20 as air quality fell from southern Ontario through parts of the Midwest and Northeast.
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NWS Proposes Twice-Daily Full-Ocean Sea-State Analyses
The agency would add Atlantic and Pacific basin products at 00 and 12 UTC while discontinuing eight regional wind-and-wave analyses; comments close Aug. 31.
news report
NOAA Raises Odds of a Below-Normal Atlantic Hurricane Season to 75%
The Aug. 6 update projects 7–13 named storms for the full season and cites a strengthening El Niño, while stressing that it is not a landfall forecast.
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Atlantic Sargassum Belt Hits No. 2 Satellite-Era Peak as Gulf Sets Record
NASA and University of South Florida measurements put June 2026 biomass at regional records in the Caribbean and Gulf, with July observations showing a decline.
news report
Landsat Shows Elbe Estuary’s 2.9-Meter Tide Reshaping a Shipping Route
Paired satellite views reveal mudflats, sandbars and channels where tidal asymmetry moves sediment toward Hamburg and North Sea ports.
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NASA PREFIRE Maps Two Full Years of Hidden Heat at Earth’s Poles
Twin CubeSats captured opposite seasonal swings in the Arctic and Antarctic while measuring a major, previously sparse part of Earth’s outgoing energy.
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EPA Starts Six Pacific Southwest Superfund Cleanups Covering 8 Million Cubic Yards
The work ranges from uranium-mine waste on Navajo Nation lands to residential soil replacement and groundwater treatment in California.
news report
Arctic Sea Ice Was 21.9% Below Its Aug. 5 Median, NSIDC Data Show
The preliminary daily extent measured 6.255 million square kilometers—11th-lowest among 43 years with an observation for the date.
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NOAA: June 2026 Was the World’s Second-Warmest June
Global ocean temperatures set a June record, the Arctic had its warmest June, and combined sea ice ranked fourth smallest in 48 years.
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July Heat Dome Set All-Time Records in Montana, Utah and Wyoming
NASA’s GEOS analysis shows air temperatures near or above 113°F, while Miles City broke its previous record by four degrees and Deseret reached 115°F.
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NASA Puts Global Sea-Level Rise at 102.4 Millimeters Since 1993
The July indicator carries ±4.0 millimeters of uncertainty and attributes roughly two-thirds of current rise to melting land ice.
news report
NOAA Moves Operational Weather Models to Commercial Cloud
Google Cloud will support the agency’s high-performance forecast computing as NOAA seeks a system that is easier to update and scale.
news report
NOAA Forecasts 7,027-Square-Mile Gulf Dead Zone for Summer 2026
The model estimate is above the 39-year measured average despite low May river flow, as nitrate and phosphorus loads moved in opposite directions.
news report
NASA Will Chase the Aug. 12 Eclipse With a Jet and 86 Balloons
A WB-57 at 50,000 feet will image the solar corona while student teams in Iceland and Spain measure atmospheric changes before, during and after totality.
news report
NOAA Logs 374 Preliminary Tornado Reports in a Stormy June
Illinois, Indiana and Missouri set state June report records while the western United States completed its warmest first half of a year on record.
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EPA Proposes State Control of Public Comment for Minor Air Permits
The plan would remove the federal minimum process for public participation while leaving emissions limits and other air-quality requirements in place.
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USGS Finds 356 Billion Tons of Federal Coal—But 4.2 Billion in Reserves
A new inventory shows why geologic resources cannot be read as an economically recoverable supply forecast.
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NOAA’s Week-Two Outlook Puts Southern Heat and Southwest Monsoon Rain Side by Side
The Aug. 13–19 outlook carries a moderate extreme-heat risk in the Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley, a heavy-rain signal in the Southwest and rapid-onset drought risk between them.
news report
June Brought 374 Preliminary Tornado Reports as Western Drought Persisted
Three Midwest states set June report records. National precipitation ran above average, but nearly half the contiguous U.S. remained in drought at month’s end.
news report
NOAA’s “Coral Torpedo” Delivered New Colonies 217 Feet Below the Gulf
A spring mission planted 26 lab-reared corals about 217 feet down, propagated 16 more in the field and mapped more than 14 square nautical miles—while leaving long-term survival as the next test.
explainer
The hurricane cone now shows inland warnings. It still does not show who is safe
The National Hurricane Center’s operational 2026 graphic adds inland tropical-storm and hurricane watches and warnings. The cone itself still represents only the probable track of the storm’s center, not its size or complete hazard footprint.