https://eos.org/research-spotlights/the-ai-forecaster-machine-learning-takes-on-weather-prediction By   Aaron Sidder , Eos/AGU A novel approach to weather forecasting uses convolutional neural networks to generate exceptionally fast global forecasts based on past weather data.  

https://eos.org/features/the-benefits-of-better-ocean-weather-forecasting By  Charlotte DeMott ,   Ángel G. Muñoz ,   Christopher D. Roberts ,   Claire M. Spillman  and   F. Vitart , AGU, Eos.  Excerpt: Like atmospheric variability, variability in ocean conditions, such as sea surface temperature and salinity and sea ice cover and thickness, can have major effects on human activities and ecosystems both at sea and on land. For example, this variability, also called “ocean weather,” can influence the occurrence of fair-weather coastal flooding, which disrupts transportation and degrades coastal infrastructure around the world. Meanwhile, sea ice movement in an increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean poses risks to high-latitude shipping. Elsewhere, changes in ocean upwelling can enhance coastal commercial fishing activity, whereas marine heat waves can disrupt fisheries and coral communities. As with atmospheric weather forecasts, knowing...

https://eos.org/articles/forecasters-navigate-a-highway-to-success-around-lake-victoria Source: By Munyaradzi Makoni, Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...Four years of testing an early-warning system (EWS) to inform fisherfolk in East Africa of approaching high-impact weather events on Lake Victoria recently concluded. The High Impact Weather Lake System ( HIGHWAY ) project successfully demonstrated how improved weather, water, and climate services can save lives and livelihoods, as well as support socioeconomic development of vulnerable communities. ...Lake Victoria’s size (it is the world’s second-largest freshwater lake, behind only Lake Superior in North America) allows it to generate its own weather patterns, sometimes suddenly and with human and economic casualties. According to its website,  HIGHWAY  aimed to “enhance the resilience of African people and economic development to weather and climate related shocks, with an initial focus on the Lake Victoria Basin.” The project was...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/12/climate/climate-change-weather-noaa.html Source: By  Henry Fountain  and  Jason Kao , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last week issued its latest “climate normals”: baseline data of temperature, rain, snow and other weather variables collected over three decades at thousands of locations across the country. ...Because the normals have been produced since 1930, they also say a lot about the weather over a much longer term. That is, they show how the climate has changed in the United States, as it has across the world, as a result of emissions of heat-trapping gases over more than a century. “We’re really seeing the fingerprints of climate change in the new normals,” Dr. Palecki said. “We’re not trying to hide that.” Not that they could. The maps showing the new temperature normals every 10 years, compared with the 20th century average, get increasingly redder [hotter]....

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/controversial-russian-theory-claims-forests-don-t-just-make-rain-they-make-wind Source:    By Fred Pearce, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: ...For more than a decade, [Anastassia] Makarieva has championed a theory, developed with Victor Gorshkov, her mentor and colleague at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI), on how Russia’s boreal forests, the largest expanse of trees on Earth, regulate the climate of northern Asia. ...water vapor exhaled by trees drives winds: winds that cross the continent, taking moist air from Europe, through Siberia, and on into Mongolia and China; winds that deliver rains that keep the giant rivers of eastern Siberia flowing; winds that water China’s northern plain, the breadbasket of the most populous nation on Earth. With their ability to soak up carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, the world’s great forests are often referred to as the planet’s lungs. But Makarieva and Gorshkov ...say they are i...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/aircraft-spies-gravity-waves-being-sucked-antarctica-s-polar-vortex Source:   By Eric Hand, Science Magazine. Excerpt: The Southern Ocean is famously stormy, home to waves taller than telephone poles. Yet 50 kilometers overhead, the weather is just as tempestuous, if less obviously so. Powerful waves in the air break and crash, dumping energy into the stratosphere and disrupting winds that help control the climate. ...Around the world, gravity waves often arise when winds shove air over a mountain range, although storms and jet streams can also touch them off. In each case, a parcel of air gets pushed up, and gravity pulls it down. It overshoots and bobs back up. When confined by overhead winds, the train of undulating air parcels plows ahead horizontally, leading to so-called lee waves that can shake up commercial flights. ... Some gravity waves crash in the upper stratosphere, about 50 kilometers up, but most keep rising into the mesosp...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/03/31/gulf-of-mexico-warm-tornadoes-hurricanes Source:   By Matthew Cappucci, The Washington Post. Excerpt: Water temperatures are running about three degrees above normal. Water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are running more than three degrees above average, increasing the prospects for severe thunderstorms and tornadoes this spring and potentially stronger hurricane activity in the summer and fall. The last time Gulf of Mexico waters were similarly warm in 2017, it coincided with an above-average tornado season through the spring, and then Category 4 Hurricane Harvey struck the Texas Gulf Coast at the end of summer....

https://eos.org/opinions/when-does-weather-become-climate Source:   By Oliver Bothe, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Individuals and political organizations alike often define “climate” as climate scientist John Kennedy did on Twitter: “Practically speaking: weather’s how you choose an outfit, climate’s how you choose your wardrobe.” Meanwhile, the scientific literature rarely defines climate more specifically than as the “statistics of weather.” ...Possibly the most common current definition is that from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, which distinguishes between “climate in a narrow sense…as the average weather…over a period of time ranging from months to…millions of years” and “climate in a wider sense” as “the state…of the climate system.” ...Earth’s climate system includes its atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere. Besides statistics, descriptions of the climate system’s behavior may employ thermodynamics and flui...

https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/state-of-the-climate/ Source:   By American NOAA, Meteorological Society (AMS). Excerpt: The report, compiled by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, is based on contributions from scientists from around the world. It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments located on land, water, ice, and in space....

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/polar-vortex-weather-forecasting-good-now/581605/ Source:   By Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic. Excerpt: The polar vortex is just the latest example of how reliable five-day forecasts have become. ... It is dangerous, record-breaking, can’t-look-away weather. Yet this cold snap’s arrival was preceded by a marvel so spectacular that we hardly noticed it: It was correctly predicted. As early as a month ago, forecasters knew that colder-than-average weather would likely strike North America this month; a week ago, computer models spit out some of the same figures that appeared on thermometers today. ...“A modern five-day forecast is as accurate as a one-day forecast was in 1980,” says a new paper, published last week in the journal Science. “Useful forecasts now reach nine to 10 days into the future.”...  See also How far out can we forecast the weather? Scientists have a new answer [ https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/ho...