After 2000-era plateau, global methane levels hitting new highs

Following a plateau in the early 2000s, global concentrations of the powerful greenhouse gas methane have hit new highs in recent years. Chemical fingerprint tests seem to rule out a major role for fossil fuels. With more than half a dozen possible natural and human sources, how will scientists figure out where it's coming from?

NOAA’s Greenhouse Gas Index up 40 percent since 1990

NOAA’s Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, which tracks the warming influence of long-lived greenhouse gases, has increased by 40 percent from 1990 to 2016 — with most of that attributable to rising carbon dioxide levels, according to NOAA climate scientists.

Possible new threat to Earth’s ozone layer

The Montreal Protocol has been hailed for controlling chlorine-based chemicals that created a vast hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. But new research by British and American scientists suggest a chemical not controlled by the international treaty poses a potential risk to the Earth’s protective ozone layer.

As Alaska's North Slope warms, greenhouse gases have nowhere to go but up

The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) being released from tundra in the northern region of Alaska during early winter has increased 70 percent since 1975, according to a new regional climate paper by scientists participating in a research project funded by NOAA and NASA.

Study published on reduced lifetime for a future strong greenhouse gas

NOAA/ESRL scientists and their colleagues at the University of East Anglia, Utrecht University, and NCAR calculated an atmospheric lifetime of the trace gas, sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), based on measurements in the polar stratospheric vortex and modeled transport into the stratosphere.

Fifty years ago, a historic balloon launch that changed the way we see the ozone layer

What started out as a modest research project driven by scientific curiosity provided the agency that would later become NOAA with some of the first insights into how ozone was distributed in the atmosphere.

Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide

A trace gas present in the atmosphere in miniscule amounts is helping scientists answer one of the biggest questions out there: Has plant growth increased alongside rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

Watch a weather balloon explode 100,000 feet high in the atmosphere

Patrick Cullis of the GMD Ozone and Water Vapor Group, created a video of a weather balloon bursting, posted at Washington Post.

NOAA study shows as US drilling surged, methane emissions didn’t

A new NOAA study shows that methane emissions from the United States did not grow significantly from 2000 to 2013 and are not likely to have been an important driver of the increase in atmospheric methane levels observed worldwide after 2007, as other studies have suggested.

Carbon dioxide levels rose at record pace for 2nd straight year

Carbon dioxide levels measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Baseline Atmospheric Observatory rose by 3 parts per million to 405.1 parts per million (ppm) in 2016, an increase that matched the record jump observed in 2015.

Photo: Last flight from the South Pole

As winter closes in, flights to the international research compound are suspended for the long Antarctic winter.