In 1971, meteorologists Roland Madden and Paul Julian studied weather data from near equatorial Pacific islands. To their surprise, tropospheric winds, pressure and rainfall oscillated with a period of about 40 to 50 days.

A Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is a massive weather event consisting of deep convection coupled with atmospheric circulation, moving slowly eastward over the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Despite its enormous influence on many weather and climate systems worldwide, it has proven very difficult to simulate an MJO because of assumptions about cumulus clouds in global meteorological models.

Mean-sea-level data from coastal tide gauges in the north Indian Ocean were used to show that low-frequency variability is consistent among the stations in the basin. Statistically significant trends obtained from records longer than 40 years yielded sea-level-rise estimates between 1.06

On December 13, 2006, scientists warned that the Arctic ice is melting at a rate faster than was estimated. The ice has been shrinking steadily over the past 30 years, but now scientists say there's a possibility of an ice-free Arctic in the next few decades.

Monthly and 3-hourly precipitation data from twentieth-century climate simulations by the newest generation of 18 coupled climate system models are analyzed and compared with available observations. The characteristics examined include the mean spatial patterns, intraseasonal-to-interannual and ENSO-related variability, convective versus stratiform precipitation ratio, precipitation frequency and intensity for different precipitation categories, and diurnal cycle.