Variations in the amount of precipitation that feeds the Amazon River, ranked as the world’s largest river in terms of annual discharge, can profoundly impact the marine ecosystem in the region where the fresh river water enters the salty ocean (Amazon plume region) and influence the hydroclimate over the tropical Atlantic.

This protype milestone is an important step toward increasing the use and accessibility of NOAA’s ocean data collected at the Pacific Marine Environmental Lab and other U.S. institutions.

Arctic change is generally discussed with average changes, but extreme events and changes to extremes are felt the most by humans and ecosystems.

This is the first North America-focused study to investigate how well and how consistently reanalysis datasets identify extreme temperature events.

Analysis of the last millennium reanalysis climate reconstruction shows a clear connection between Southwest drought and La Niña sea-surface temperature patterns. However, this pattern only explains a small part of the variability associated with past U.S. droughts.