Occurring frequently over the Southern Plains, droughts are the second most costly U.S. weather and climate disaster. Many efforts have been made to advance drought monitoring, but modeling water variability during drought remains a challenge as numerous physical processes control soil moisture variability.

In honor of Women's History Month, NOAA is highlighting a few of its female scientists and funded researchers who are making significant strides in the climate sciences and other science fields. The following interview is with Dr. Elizabeth Barnes, Associate Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. Her research is funded in part by the NOAA Climate Program Office’s Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) Program. She focuses on climate variability and change, and how data science can help improve our understanding.

NOAA buoy observations collectively enabled a systemic synoptic-scale analysis of a 39-year record of atmospheric rivers, offering a unique view of coastal air-sea processes at the time of atmospheric river landfall.

The Los Angeles Basin is often thought of as a dry, smoggy, overdeveloped landscape. But a new study funded in part by CPO's Atmospheric Chemistry, Carbon Cycle, and Climate Program shows that the manicured lawns, emerald golf courses and trees of America’s second-largest city have a surprisingly large influence on the city’s carbon emissions.