Warmer air temperatures high above the Antarctic led to the second smallest seasonal ozone hole in 20 years, according to NOAA and NASA satellite measurements. This year, the average size of the ozone hole was 6.9 million square miles (17.9 million square kilometers). The ozone layer helps shield life on Earth from potentially harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation that can cause skin cancer and damage plants. - read more »

Before there were satellites, weather data transmitters, or computer databases, there were the ship’s logs of Arctic sea voyages, where sailors dutifully recording weather observations. Now, a new crowdsourcing effort could soon make of the weather data from these ship logs, some more than 150 years old, available to climate scientists worldwide. - read more »

NOAA and the University of New Hampshire have announced more than $4.9 million to fund nine collaborative research projects aimed at making coastal communities and environments more resilient to rising sea levels, changing weather patterns, extreme storms, and ocean warming and acidification. - read more »

The western half of the continental U.S. and central and northern Alaska could be in for a warmer-than-average winter, while most of Florida might be colder-than-normal December through February, according to NOAA’s annual Winter Outlook announced today from the agency’s new Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, Md. - read more »

According to NOAA scientists, the globally-averaged temperature for September 2012 tied with 2005 as the warmest September since recordkeeping began in 1880. It also marked the 36th consecutive September and 331st consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. (full report, summary) - read more »