A repeat of last year's mild La Ni�a conditions, with a stormy winter in the Pacific Northwest and a dry winter in the southwestern United States, will be the likely outcome of sea-surface heights observed by NASA's TOPEX/Poseidon satellite, according to Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists. The height of the sea surface over a given area is an indicator of ocean temperature and other factors that influence climate.

The first high-resolution radar map of one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of Earth ? Antarctica ? was released today by NASA. The map, created from images taken by a NASA-launched Canadian satellite called Radarsat, has answered some questions about the icy continent and left scientists scratching their heads about what to make of strange features never seen before.

NASA satellite images reveal that the ozone hole has shrunk since last year. Richard Peters, principal investigator of the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer instrument that measured the ozone hole, said that the ozone hole is still large, but it is smaller than it was last year.

Smoke from forest fires has, for the first time, been proven to inhibit rainfall, according to an analysis of data taken from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Spacecraft. Daniel Rosenfeld, TRMM science team member, reports that the team has observed that smoke can suppress precipitation almost completely in some areas.

Increased air traffic at 35,000 feet could be detrimental to the Earth's atmosphere according to scientists. Knowing how much airliners and rockets contribute to ozone levels in the atmosphere is an important factor in climate research said Anne Thompson of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.