This website provides access to information designed to protect and prepare individuals from severe weather. Materials presented here include forecasts for aviation and marine interests and the general public, maps, statistical data, educational materials, publications, and links to related sites. Full description.

This poster shows how oceanic circulation helps to control global climate. In general, warm surface currents flow from the tropics to higher latitudes, driven mainly by winds and the Earth's rotation. Fast, warm surface currents like the Gulf Stream are concentrated at the western boundary of ocean basins. The poster is part of a collection of images associated with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's ... Full description.

Milutin Milankovitch formulated a comprehensive mathematical model that calculated latitudinal differences in solar radiation upon the Earth's surface and the corresponding surface temperatures for 600,000 years prior to the year 1800. Readers can learn how Milankovitch developed his theories and how they were confirmed years later by climatic data found in deep-sea sediment cores, which indicated ... Full description.

Desertification, the degradation of formerly productive land into desert, is a complex process. It involves multiple causes, and it proceeds at varying rates in different climates. This web page, produced by the U.S. Geological Survey, features text and photographs that explain what desertification is, how human activities may contribute to it, how satellite imagery is used for monitoring vulnerable ... Full description.

This site, part of NASA's Classroom of the Future program, describes how oceanic temperatures, currents, and atmospheric pressure patterns vary and, under certain conditions, produce an ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) event. It features text, scientific illustrations, a glossary, teacher pages, and a list of references. Full description.

This webpage is part of NASA's Classroom of the Future program. It provides background information about how ocean temperatures, currents, and atmospheric conditions combine to produce an El Nino event. The site features text, scientific illustrations, a glossary, and links to other Classroom of the Future pages. Full description.

The ocean and atmosphere each react to changes in the other. These reactions and counter-reactions can snowball until the system builds to a point where potentially disastrous effects occur, such as the El Nino events of 1982-83 and 1997-98. This site describes how the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's TOPEX-Poseidon satellite was used to monitor the amount of sea level rise in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, ... Full description.

To gather long-term information about the world's oceans and currents, orbiting instruments must take extremely precise measurements of the height of the ocean surface. Ocean surface topography data contains information that has significant practical applications in such areas as the study of worldwide weather and climate patterns, the monitoring of shoreline evolution, and the protection of ocean ... Full description.

Much like El Nino, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) varies in a rhythmic pattern from decade to decade. The NAO is the relationship between a high-pressure system over the Azores Islands and a low-pressure system over Iceland. This site uses text, photographs, and maps to explain what the NAO is and how it affects weather in Europe, the United States, and as far away as the Middle East. Full description.

The major wind systems of the earth determine much of the large scale oceanography with which we are familiar. The local winds modify the ocean and the overlying atmosphere on a minute-to-minute and day-to-day basis. This site consists of imagery of different types of local winds taken by the Space Shuttle. It also features text descriptions of local winds such as katabatic winds in Europe, the harmattan ... Full description.