climate

Critical Needs: Climate Change

To better equip society for a changing climate:

Encourage research and improve models to understand the connection between Earth’s systems, human activity, and climate change. For more than four billion years, land, water, ice, and the ocean have helped shape, and have been shaped by, a changing climate. Understanding past climates through evidence preserved in the geologic record increases the accuracy of today’s climate models and the ability to forecast how ecosystems will respond to climate change.

Visualization of Earth's key climatic indicators over time

NASA's Climate Time Machine allows users to explore how various indicators of the Earth's climate have changed over time and what the impact of further changes could be. The climatic indicators explored in the visualization are sea ice, sea level, carbon dioxide, and global temperature.

Click here to use NASA's Climate Time Machine visualization 

Source: NASA

 

Interactive map of the U.S. energy sector's vulnerabilities to climatic conditions

The U.S. Department of Energy's interactive map of the energy sector's climatic vulnerabilities allows users to explore how climatic events have impacted the energy sector over recent years. You can view how impacts due to increasing temperatures, decreased water availability, and increasing storms, floods, and sea level rise have adversely affected energy resource development, distribution, production, and transmission.

Click here to use the interactive map.

Visualization of drought in California

The U.S. Geological Survey provides a website of visualizations that show how California's extreme drought in the early-mid 2010s progressed through the early-mid part of the decade and then was relieved with significant rain and snowfall in 2016-2017. Visualizations of the extent and severity of drought, change in reservoir volumes, and streamflow compared to historic rates are all available on the website, which you scroll through to see different features.

Click here to see the visualization of California's drought

United States Arctic opportunities hearing

Icebergs in Greeland
Witnesses
Admiral Robert Papp
U.S. Department of State Special Representative for the Arctic
The Honorable Lesil McGuire
Alaska State Legislature Representative
The Honorable Bob Herron
Alaska State Legislature Representative
The Honorable Charlotte Brower
Mayor of North Slope Borough
Dr. Cecilia Bitz
University of Washington College of the Environment, School Atmospheric Sciences Professor
Mr. Patrick R. Arnold

Interactive map of drought conditions across the United States

The U.S. Geological Survey's WaterWatch program maps below-normal 7-day average streamflow, identified through comparison to historical streamflow readings, to produce their DroughtWatch map. The map identifies drought conditions ranging from extreme hydrological droughts to below normal streamflow conditions across the entire U.S.

Click here to use the DroughtWatch interactive map

Source: U.S. Geological Survey WaterWatch

EARTH Magazine: Hundreds of Methane Seeps Discovered Along the U.S. East Coast

Submitted by mmoses on

The discovery of hundreds of methane seeps on the seafloor along the U.S. East Coast suggests that hydrocarbon reservoirs may be more common along passive margins than previously thought. The release of such methane globally may have a significant influence on climate, scientists say.

Water Quality Basics

Why does water quality matter?

Contaminants are harmful to human health, especially to vulnerable populations such as the elderly or the very young. The quality of a stream or wetland affects everyone's health, from the plants and animals that live in it to the people who live downstream. If water is unsuitable for a particular purpose, we have to find alternative resources, sometimes at high cost.

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