Latest Bill Patzert Stories
Every ten days, the NASA/French Space Agency Jason-2 satellite maps all the world's oceans, monitoring changes in sea surface height, a measure of heat in the upper layers of the water. Because our planet is more than 70% ocean, this information is crucial to global forecasts of weather and climate.
Based on satellite data, experts have found near-normal sea-surface height conditions across the equatorial Pacific Ocean, indicative of a so called “La Nada” event.
California has had its fair share of earthquakes, but could the Golden State ever be hit by a hurricane? One NASA researcher recently looked into the matter.
It's shaping up to be a fiery summer across the United States.
For the first half of this year's winter, the big news was warm temperatures and lack of snow. Ski resorts were covered in bare dirt, while January temperatures in southern California topped July highs.
Record snowfall, killer tornadoes, devastating floods: Thereâ€™s no doubt about it - since Dec. 2010, the weather in the USA has been positively wild.
Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif, has been honored by the American Geophysical Union with its 2010 Athelstan Spilhaus Award for his contributions to improving public understanding of Earth science.
Climatologists have long known that human-produced greenhouse gases have been the dominant drivers of Earth's observed warming since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Since May 2009, the tropical Pacific Ocean has switched from a cool pattern of ocean circulation known as La NiÃ±a to her warmer sibling, El NiÃ±o.
The Myanmar cyclone. The earthquake off the coast of Japan. The Chilean volcano. Has Earth gone bonkers? Not at all. This level of natural activity is normal for Earth, scientists say.
- A political dynamiter.