South Pole sees first sunrise in 6 months with arrival of spring

The fall equinox signals the coming of winter for the Northern Hemisphere, but heralds the arrival of spring — and the first sunrise since March — for researchers at NOAA’s South Pole Atmospheric Baseline Observatory.

Ozone treaty taking a bite out of US greenhouse gas emissions

The Montreal Protocol, the international treaty adopted to restore Earth’s protective ozone layer, has significantly reduced emissions of ozone-depleting chemicals from the United States. In a twist, a new study by NOAA and CIRES scientists shows the 30-year old treaty has had a major side benefit - reducing climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S.

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.