Maine Climate Office News

A new book, Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations, by public health expert Anthony McMichael and epidemiologist Alistair Woodward, sheds light on how sensitive humans may be to climate change by looking at how climate has changed over time in the past and how those changes impacted […]

Ice core records show that until the Industrial Revolution atmospheric CO2 levels remained fairly steady at around 280 ppm (parts per million). By 1961, CO2 data collected at a monitoring station at the summit of Hawaii volcano showed that atmospheric CO2 levels were rising steadily by about 2 ppm per year. In 2005 the station […]

Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) recently announced that January 2017 was the third warmest January on record since 1880, when the record for modern global temperatures began. January 2017 was 0.92° C warmer than the average January temperatures from 1951-1980. The monthly analysis of global temperatures is compiled from publicly available […]

Exceptional warmth for this time of year continues across the Arctic. Temperature at North Pole is forecasted just below the melting point today. This delay in cold temperatures across the basin means reduced ice thickening with implications for thin ice at the start of next year’s melt season. Unless there is some major pattern change, we […]

The first half of October 2016 was likely the warmest across the Arctic for this time of year since at least 1948, says Maine’s state climatologist. In the Arctic — 65–90 degrees north latitude — on Oct. 7, 2016, the mean daily temperature averaged a balmy minus 3.5 C (25.7 F), a value that’s 6.6 […]

Quarterly Climate Impacts and Outlook recently published Significant Events, Climate Overview and Regional Impacts for June – August 2016, and Regional Outlooks for autumn 2016. Parts of the region saw well below normal precipitation this summer. Five Nova Scotia sites had their second driest June on record. Boston, MA and three sites in southwestern Nova […]

The National Weather Service has posted a Summer 2016 northern and eastern Maine seasonal climate narrative. Overall, northern and eastern Maine for summer (June 1st – August 31st) 2016 experienced above normal temperatures, with decidedly above normal rainfall across the north and significantly below average rainfall over downeast portions of the region. Read the entire […]

See the updated Gulf of Maine Climate Impact Report (PDF) for summer 2016. This two page NOAA/NIDIS publication summarizes significant events in the region, a climate overview, and regional impacts and forecasts. Climate updates for other US regions can be found here.

Read the most recent Quarterly Climate Impacts and Outlook publication (PDF), focused on the Gulf of Maine. This is a two page NOAA/NIDIS publication summarizing significant events in the region, a climate overview, and regional impacts and forecasts. Quarterly reports for other US regions, including the Northeast, can be found here.  

Read transcript University of Maine researchers, including Kit Hamley, explore how extinct and introduced animals affect the Falkland Islands and seek to help farmers, sheep, tussock grass, tourists and penguins coexist in light of competing interests, sea-level rise and erosion. Hamley helped develop the 4-H Follow A ResearcherTM program at UMaine, which connects K–12 students […]