• Ocean

NOAA Extends Protections for Endangered Right Whales 

• endangered species
• fishing
• NOAA
• North Atlantic Right Whale
• ship strikes
• whales

AA announced this week that it is extending its ship speed protections for the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale until Nov. 15 in waters off of southern New England and east of Long Island, New York.  

Why this Matters: Earlier this year, even before the updated population count, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List downlisted North Atlantic Right Whales to “critically endangered,” just one step away from extinction.

• Climate Change

Trump Administration Foot Dragging on Next National Climate Assessment

• climate change
• Climate Denial
• National Climate Assessment
• NOAA

The next National Climate Assessment is supposed to be released in 2022, but it may be delayed because the Trump Administration is slowing the work by the interagency science group that prepares it, E&ENews reported yesterday.

Why This Matters:  These climate assessments are prepared every four years and provide the major description of what the U.S. can expect from climate change broken down by both region and economic sector.

• People

White House Pushes to Place Career Climate Deniers at NOAA

• climate deniers
• NOAA
• The White House

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the federal agency that helps us understand climate science. It’s satellites, models, outlooks, and teams of scientists are what help us make sense of the world around us and also prepare for storms and the effects of climate change. That’s why it was startling to learn that the […]

• Politics

“The Best” is Yet to Come: Denial, Privatization, Inaction

• climate change
• Hurricane Laura
• NOAA
• NWS
• Trump

by Monica Medina and Miro Korenha, co-founders and publishers, Our Daily Planet   While it’s now become a part of meme infamy, Kimberly Guilfoyle’s 2020 Republican National Convention speech made the argument that in America, through a second term of the Trump presidency, “the best is yet to come.” As the GOP’s convention followed that […]

• Weather

Unprecedented: Two Major Storms In Succession Will Pound Gulf Coast

• #Laura
• #Marco
• Gulf Coast
• hurricane
• Louisiana
• National Hurricane Center
• National Weather Service
• NOAA
• Texas

An unprecedented “double whammy “of hurricanes is bearing down on the Gulf Coast — the first storm to reach the U.S. will be Marco, that became a hurricane yesterday afternoon and it is forecast to reach Louisiana by Monday late afternoon. 

Why This Matters:  As many news outlets reported, “There has never been anything we’ve seen like this before, where you can have possibly two hurricanes hitting within miles of each over a 48-hour period,”

• Weather

Now NOAA Predicts So Many Hurricanes This Year They May Run Out of Names – YIKES

• #climatecrisis
• climate change
• hurricane
• NOAA
• science
• severe weather
• storms

Late last week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued its annual update on this year’s outlook for tropical hurricanes and they are now predicting the conditions are ripe for a huge season, with 19-25 named storms with sustained winds over  39 mph or greater, and even worse, 7 to 11 are expected to become hurricanes with winds of 74 mph or greater.

Why This Matters:  Hurricane season really gets serious only now, so the worst is still ahead of us. And the revised forecast is a big increase over what had been forecast at the beginning of the season when NOAA said it there was a 70% chance of 13 to 19 named storms.