Climate and environment updates: 7 key measures of Earth's health in danger, report warns

A new study from the University at Albany found that the data gathered during the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Hurricane Hunter flights during recent Atlantic hurricane seasons boosted the accuracy of forecasts as much as 24% compared to those without the data.

"Our study shows the positive benefits of adding [Gulfstream IV] and other aircraft observational data into weather models and suggests that future forecasting strategies should prioritize these missions," said Melissa Piper, a graduate student research assistant at the University at Albany and the study's lead author.

The study explored data from all tropical systems in the Atlantic basin from 2018 to 2022. It compared forecasts with new Hurricane Hunter data, specifically its Gulfstream IV flights, to those that didn't have access to the information.

The researchers noted the most significant improvement in track forecast accuracy from Hurricane Hunter mission data with weaker storms, such as tropical depressions or tropical storms.

"Previous studies have shown that weaker storms tend to have larger forecast errors," said Ryan Torn, chair and professor at the University at Albany's Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences and co-author of the study. "Therefore, the addition of more observations like G-IV data has greater potential to improve the track forecast of these storms," Torn added.

Hurricane Hunter mission data is also crucial for any areas that the National Hurricane Center is "investigating" because it's harder to determine the center of a developed or developing tropical system. Data from the flights helps forecast models more accurately predict the future track and intensity of storms.

NOAA announced last year that a new advanced plane, NOAA's G550, is expected to be in service with the rest of the Hurricane Hunter fleet later this year.

“Much of the gains in hurricane intensity forecasting over the last 10 to 15 years have come about thanks to the observations taken by Hurricane Hunters. With more observations in the model, you are more likely to obtain accurate forecasts of the hurricane. As shown in our study, these flights are essential for preparation and post-storm recovery,” Torn said.

-ABC News meteorologist Kyle David Reiman

Last month was the third-warmest July on record globally, trailing only July 2024 and 2023, according to new data analyzed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). The planet’s average surface air temperature was 16.68 degrees Celsius, or 62.02 degrees Fahrenheit.

July was just the fourth month in the last 25 that did not surpass the 1.5-degree Celsius warming threshold established in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Instead, it registered 1.25 degrees above the pre-industrial reference period (1850-1900).

Climate scientists anticipated a short-term drop in global temperatures due to the previous La Niña event in the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean. This climate pattern typically brings a temporary dip in global average temperatures. However, scientists caution that this pause is unlikely to last, as human-caused greenhouse gas emissions continue to fuel the long-term warming trend.

“The recent streak of global temperature records is over -- for now. But this doesn’t mean climate change has stopped. We continued to witness the effects of a warming world in events such as extreme heat and catastrophic floods in July. Unless we rapidly stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, we should expect not only new temperature records but also a worsening of these impacts – and we must prepare for that,” Carlo Buontempo, the director of C3S, said in a statement.

Global daily sea surface temperatures remained above average across much of the world’s oceans last month. Between the latitudes of 60 degrees south and 60 degrees north, the average global sea surface temperature was 69.39 degrees Fahrenheit, the third-highest value on record for July, according to the report.

Unusually warm sea surface temperatures could play a key role in tropical cyclone development in the coming weeks as the Atlantic hurricane season nears its Sept. 10 peak. NOAA is expected to release an updated seasonal outlook on Thursday.

-ABC News meteorologist Dan Peck

Forests play a crucial role in stabilizing the planet’s carbon balance, the equilibrium between carbon emissions and carbon absorption. They are also essential in limiting the worst impacts of human amplified climate change.

As essential carbon sinks, forests usually absorb more carbon dioxide than they emit. They also remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, providing a net reduction of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas. However, new research suggests that their vital role is now under threat due to increasing global wildfire activity.

In a typical year, forests and other vegetation absorb about 30% of the carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI). However, new data from WRI’s Global Forest Watch (GFW) and Land & Carbon Lab shows that in 2023 and 2024, extreme wildfires significantly reduced the ability of forests to absorb carbon dioxide, taking in only a quarter of their average annual carbon intake.

Globally, forests still remain a net carbon sink, but their influence is dwindling and this recent decline reflects a troubling longer-term trend. While some forest regions, including parts of the eastern U.S., continue to act as strong carbon sinks, others are shifting from net sinks to net sources of CO2.

For example, Canada’s boreal forests became a net carbon source in 2023 due to an extreme wildfire season, which accounted for 79% of global forest fire emissions, according to the analysis. That same year marked the lowest “forest carbon sink” in over two decades when factoring in both wildfire-related losses and ongoing deforestation.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), these effects extend beyond Canada, impacting the Arctic tundra. Rapidly warming conditions and increasing wildfire activity are now transforming the vast region, from a critical carbon sink that existed for thousands of years into a growing source of carbon dioxide emissions.

While reducing fossil fuel emissions is the most effective way to curb the impacts of human-induced global warming, protecting and sustainably managing forests is essential to preserving this vital carbon budget resource for future generations.

The Appalachian region in the eastern U.S. offers a promising example of how conservation efforts and natural regeneration can reverse the impacts of past land use. By the mid-20th century, much of the region’s forests had been cleared for agriculture and logging. However, many of these lands were later abandoned and allowed to regrow naturally. Today, according to WRI, these recovering forests now account for a quarter of the country’s net forest carbon sink despite only making up about 14% of U.S. forested area.

- ABC News meteorologist Dan Peck

A critical weather model used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is getting an AI-powered partner. The National Weather Service, part of NOAA, is beginning testing of an artificial intelligence version of the model to determine if it can more accurately forecast the weather and do so faster than traditional tools.

"This represents a significant leap forward in the application of artificial intelligence to environmental modeling," wrote project manager Isidora Jankov. "By leveraging new, high-resolution observations that help us better understand fine-scale physical processes, physical models can be improved, thereby improving the data on which AI-driven models are trained," she added.

NOAA recently announced it had turned over HRRR-Cast, a data-driven AI weather model, to the NWS for testing and evaluation.

The new model is NOAA's first experimental AI weather forecast system, and the agency said it's trained on three years of data from its widely used High-Resolution Rapid Refresh model, a short-term forecast model that has served as the agency's flagship for a decade.

The HRRR model and other traditional weather models combine real-time weather observations with complex atmospheric and physics-based equations to simulate weather conditions for a future period. Meteorologists and forecasters use these models to help predict events such as severe thunderstorms, heavy precipitation and other impactful weather phenomena on a global, regional and local level.

Unlike traditional weather models, which require a substantial amount of time and computing power to run, NOAA says HRRR-Cast can produce forecasts in a fraction of the time, on a single laptop, by learning to recognize specific weather patterns from historical data.

The developers found that the HRRR-Cast performed comparably to its traditional counterpart and even excelled in producing more realistic depictions of thunderstorm structure.

The developers also found that the AI model was 100 to 1,000 times more computationally efficient than the traditional model, meaning it can be run and deployed without relying on an energy and compute-intensive supercomputer.

Curtis Alexander, acting director of NOAA's Global Systems Laboratory, noted the AI model serves as a powerful proof of concept and the NWS will likely expand its capabilities by forecasting additional weather variables.

Both the AI version and the traditional version of the HRRR model will run together tangentially.

-ABC News meteorologist Kyle David Reiman