If you felt like you did less ice scraping, cocoa brewing, teeth chattering, or parka donning over the past few months, new data from the NOAA suggests that you are not alone. In fact, this winter set numerous records for warm temperatures, including the warmest winter months (January – February) on record in the contiguous [...]
Archive for the ‘NOAA’ Category
27 Sep
Loch NPOESS Monster: The Environmental Satellite Rarely Spotted
On Friday, the GAO released written testimony before the Subcommittees on Oversight and Investigations and Energy and Environment, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on the topic of polar satellites. The testimony reviewed and summarized work that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of Defense (DOD) have been doing to develop individual [...]
16 Mar
NOAA Releases First National Aquaculture Policy Draft
Though it originally slipped past me, I was recently made aware (by way of a blog post on the Atlantic) of the release of NOAA’s Draft National Aquaculture Policy, which is intended to guide NOAA’s “actions and decisions on aquaculture and to provide a national approach for supporting sustainable commercial production, expanding restoration aquaculture, and [...]
28 Dec
Will Controversial Expansion of Naval Activities Harm NW Whales?
Last week the Navy cleared one of several final hurdles facing their proposed operations expansion at the Northwest Training Range Complex (NWTRC) when NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) granted them permission to “take” marine animals incidental to their training activities. An article published in the Bellingham Herald last weekend explains why the plan for [...]
6 Dec
Level of Intent x Level of Harm = NOAA’s Proposed Penalty Matrix
Seattle’s own Marten Law recently published an article on NOAA’s draft penalty policy, which aims to synchronize fair civil penalties and permit sanctions across the various statutes under which NOAA enforcement actions are brought. It never ceases to amaze me how fraught with controversy something as seemingly mundane as the standardization of Civil Administrative Penalties [...]
