National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Goddard Space Flight Center

Arctic Fires Summer 2019 - fine particulates

The GMAO Research Site

The Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) supports NASA's Earth Science mission. Activities in Earth System modeling and data assimilation aim to maximize the impact of satellite observations on analyses and predictions of the atmosphere, ocean, land and cryosphere.

Science Snapshots

Science Snapshot Archive »

Dynamical Drivers of the Exceptional Warmth Over Siberia During the Spring of 2020

The extreme Siberian warmth can be attributed to persistent atmospheric ridging over northern Asia associated with Rossby wave trains originating from the North Atlantic (cf. panels a and b).

Continental Patterns of Bird Migration Linked to Climate Variability

For ~100 years, for management purposes, the continental patterns of avian migration in North America have been described in the context of three or four primary flyways.

The Detection of Atmospheric Rivers in Reanalyses and its Influence on Precipitation

Eleven Atmospheric River Detection Tools were used with three reanalyses to help quantify uncertainties in our ability to detect Atmospheric Rivers. For the Pacific Coast of the US, results show that, due to an elevated climatology for precipitable water vapor in MERRA-2 relative to ERA5 and JRA-55, more ARs are detected.

Unprecedented Amount of Water Vapor Injected into the Stratosphere by the Hunga Tonga Eruption

The eruption of the submarine volcano, Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha'apai, on 15 January 2022, injected a large amount of water vapor into the middle atmosphere, increasing stratospheric moisture to levels much higher than previously observed.