NASA GISS: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

2018 was Fourth Warmest Year in Continued Warming Trend

Earth's global surface temperatures in 2018 were the fourth warmest since 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and NOAA. (2019-02-06)

Drought Persists in the U.S. Southwest

Map of United States showing drought conditions

Persistent drought conditions have spread across the U.S. Southwest, with the Four Corners area standing out as extremely dry. (2018-11-08)

The New UN Climate Report in One Sentence

Global map of the 2005-2014 temperature anomaly

The essence of the recent UN/IPCC report about the planetary disruption resulting from the carbon that human activity puts into the atmosphere can be summed up in a single sentence. (2018-10-19)

GISS Scientists Select Best Institute Paper of 2017

Scientists at NASA/GISS have voted the article “An improved convective ice parameterization for the NASA GISS Global Climate Model and impacts on cloud ice simulation” by Gregory Elsaesser et al. as the top work among over 180 research publications by institute staff published in 2017. (2018-08-15)

Forecasting Fire

One frame of an animation of the GFWED Fire Index

The Global Fire Weather Database accounts for local winds, temperatures, and humidity, while also being the first fire prediction model to include satellite–based precipitation measurements. (2018-07-03)

Will We Know Life When We See It?

Artist conception of an exoplanet surface

Thousands of planets have been discovered outside our solar system. If some of them host life, will we be able to recognize it? (2018-06-25)

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About GISS

Research at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) emphasizes a broad study of global change, which is an interdisciplinary initiative addressing natural and man-made changes in our environment that occur on various time scales — from one-time forcings such as volcanic explosions, to seasonal and annual effects such as El Niño, and on up to the millennia of ice ages — and that affect the habitability of our planet.

GISS is located at Columbia University in New York City. The institute is a laboratory in the Earth Sciences Division of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and is affiliated with the Columbia Earth Institute and School of Engineering and Applied Science.

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Recent Publications

Tapiador, F.J., R. Roca, A. Del Genio, B. Dewitte, W. Petersen, and F. Zhang, 2019: Is precipitation a good metric for model performance? Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc., 100, no. 2, 223-233, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-17-0218.1.

Alexander, P.M., A.N. LeGrande, E. Fischer, M. Tedesco, X. Fettweis, M. Kelley, S.M.J. Nowicki, and G.A. Schmidt, 2019: Simulated Greenland surface mass balance in the GISS ModelE2 GCM: Role of the ice sheet surface. J. Geophys. Res. Earth Surf., early on-line, doi:10.1029/2018JF004772.

Oltmanns, M., F. Straneo, and M. Tedesco, 2019: Increased Greenland melt triggered by large-scale, year-round cyclonic moisture intrusions. The Cryosphere, 13, 815-825, doi:10.5194/tc-13-815-2019.

Baek, S.H., J.E. Smerdon, R. Seager, A.P. Williams, and B.I. Cook, 2019: Pacific Ocean forcing and atmospheric variability are the dominant causes of spatially widespread droughts in the contiguous United States. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., early on-line, doi:10.1029/2018JD029219.

Cesana, G., A.D. Del Genio, A.S. Ackerman, M. Kelley, G. Elsaesser, A.M. Fridlind, Y. Cheng, and M.-S. Yao, 2019: Evaluating models' response of tropical low clouds to SST forcings using CALIPSO observations. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 19, 2813-2832, doi:10.5194/acp-19-2813-2019.

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National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Goddard Space Flight Center
Sciences and Exploration Directorate
Earth Sciences Division