News & Features

In late July and early August, unusually high temperatures dominated Europe, from the Mediterranean Sea northward to Scandinavia and the British Isles.This map shows temperature between July 16 and August 11, 2013, compared to the 1981-2010 average for the same time of year.

From devastaing fires to the year's strongest cyclone, explore this interactive map of significant weather and climate events documented in the State of the Climate in 2012 report.

Deke Arndt talks about how we can learn to make better decisions, become more resilient, and be “climate smart” in the face of extreme events.

Drought, cold, and massive storms were among the devastating climate-related events that struck the United States in 2012. These events were incredibly destructive and disruptive for people across the country.

Deke Arndt, Chief of the National Climatic Data Center’s Climate Monitoring Branch, uses a football field to explain how NOAA creates its Climate Extremes Index.

Record and near-record breaking temperatures dominated the eastern two-thirds of the nation and contributed to the warmest March in the contiguous United States since records began in 1895. The average temperature was 8.6 degrees above the 20th century average for March. In the past 117 years, only one month (January 2006) has ever been so much warmer than its average temperature.

In the first two weeks of March, a series of storms piled between 4 and 9 feet of new snow on the already deep powder on the western slopes of the Cascades.  

During the third week of August, portions of southern Europe and western Russia experienced a heat wave. Temperatures skyrocketed near 90 to over 100°F over several consecutive days, prompting emergency heat alerts.

From October 10-20, 2011, two separate storm systems dumped nearly five feet of rain across southern Central America, causing flooding and landslides in several areas.

What began as an ordinary Sunday on August 21, 2011, became anything but ordinary for residents of Goderich, Ontario, as an EF-3 tornado (winds between 136-165 mph) ripped through their historic town.