Have botanical expertise in Japan? See the request below. 🧪

And...splashdown! Congrats Artemis II on a successful mission!! 👏 👏

Holy smokes! An incredible start to the 'Wildfire Season' in the US this year - owing to an abnormally hot and snowless winter in some parts of the country.

"Climate science is not innately politically charged, whatever the administration says. No one I worked with had (or wanted) the power to make policy. It was our job to study the laws of physics, which remain true no matter who’s in power." - @drkatemarvel.bsky.social 🧪

It's back up! Well, mostly. Only charts like the quoted one are available at the moment; anomaly versions are forthcoming.
kouya.has.arizona.edu/tropics/SSTm...

For context, here's a map of all 17 (!) regions now displayed on this page.

Did Trump Just Threaten to Use Nuclear Weapons in Iran? If such an order comes to pass, the military can and must refuse.

If Trump does give an order to attack civilian targets that have no military value as a means of collectively punishing the Iranian people - and make good his threat to begin a genocide - Marco Rubio should resign and the military must refuse the order.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Lunar Flyby - NASA

😍 Amaze, amaze, amaze! This is the time science needs help from poets for descriptions. 🧪 #ArtemisII #LunarFlyby

Today is a good day to remember that Carl Sagan was as outspoken about the dangers of war and nuclear weapons as he was an advocate of space exploration.

Graph showing the NOAA Colorado Basin River Forecast Center's forecasts of April to July inflows to Lake Powell from 1991 to 2026, with colored lines showing how each season's forecast evolved from January through July. The latest Forecast, April 2026, is the lowest outlook for this time of year since at least 1991, at 22% of average inflows.

March was...not helpful.

NOAA CBRFC's April 1st (50% exceedance) forecast now has Lake Powell April-July inflows at 1400 KAF, 22% of average.

Only 2002 (963 KAF) and 1977 (1208 KAF) ended up with lower inflows than that. If dry conditions continue through spring, 2026 could drop below 2002.

View of the spacecraft (bright, on the left), a dark thin crescent of Moon, and a very small, bright thin crescent of Earth next to it

"Orion, the Moon, and the Earth. EVERYONE, in that picture" - #Artemis II Mission Control.

There are two nearly-identical storms centered just 1300 miles apart in the South Pacific. #Maila is near the Solomon Islands and #Vaianu is near Fiji.
I just started a radar loop for Vaianu from Nadi, Fiji. You can find that in the usual spot... this is the 618th radar loop in that archive.

What a beautiful moment.

Award Spotlight: A Conversation with Harold E. Brooks This year’s recipient, Harold E. Brooks of the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory, is recognized for both his scientific contributions and his deep dedication to mentorship. Over the course of his...

Harold E. Brooks received the 2026 AMS Robert H. & Joanne Simpson Mentorship Award for guiding generations of atmospheric scientists.

In this Award Spotlight, he reflects on mentorship, severe storms research, and making forecasts meaningful.

Read the full conversation here: https://bit.ly/4cmCWH1

While the Bluesky app works for me...a shout out to Artemis II for passing Apollo 13's distance record. Looking forward to the lunar flyby.

Time series of elevation and storage for Lake Powell (1963 to March 2026)

Time series of elevation and storage for Lake Powell (1963 to March 2026)

For everyone wondering when the lunar flyby will be and how you can follow along, it looks like NASA will have live coverage starting at 1 pm ET Monday on YouTube/NASA+

I tell my students that writing is an exercise in figuring out what you think; it's not a place to deposit what you've already worked out.

If you step on a frictionless surface, momentum takes over and you just slide; there's nothing to interact with, which means there's nowhere to stand.

A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)

More context on this #Artemis II image:

* This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right

* The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon:
☀️🌍🚀🌕

Spectacular high-resolution image of our home planet viewed through the Orion Crew Module window by the Artemis II astronauts as they continue their journey to the Moon on Flight Day 2, 3 April 2026 (pic: NASA)

A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)

😮 Awesome views from Day 2 of #Artemis II this morning.

@exploration.esa.int @esaearth.esa.int

"Life Unearthed" premieres tomorrow! See quoted post below for details. 🧪

An 800+ mile long haboob sweeping across northwest Africa.

My oh my...

Here We Go Sherman Bell GIF ALT: Here We Go Sherman Bell GIF

Watch Director Bhattacharya's performance at CPAC really got to me.

I chose to share some of my observations with him.

Hold on...

1/11

Again, the first Tea Party rallies in April 2009 -- heavily promoted in advance by Fox News -- only had about 300,000 attendees across 750 cities, but the media treated it like the Second American Revolution.

There will be multiple *individual* No Kings rallies today that have more people at them.

World-renowned climate scientist and author Kate Marvel, Ph.D., returns to Project Drawdown Marvel to lead new initiative focused on advancing critical climate solutions. “I’m unbelievably excited to return to Project Drawdown."

BIG, EXCITING NEWS!

Dr. Kate Marvel @drkatemarvel.bsky.social -- world-leading climate scientist and author -- is coming to Project Drawdown after leaving NASA.

She will be a Senior Scientist, leading an exciting new initiative on "Emergency Brake" climate solutions.

drawdown.org/news/world-r...

Folks sharing the Western Journal article about an interview with Andy Weir: WJ is a right-wing rag, and the quote being attributed to Weir about “wokeness” is taken from the person interviewing the author, not Weir (it’s right in the text). The title is rage-bait. Don’t fall for psy ops.

Current snapshot from NRCS snow dashboard for the Upper Colorado River Basin, depicting snow water equivalent taking an extraordinary nosedive in March and moving well into record-low territory for the calendar date.

The astonishing rate of March snowmelt in Colorado River Basin continues, and is now well into record-low territory (even, it appears, relative to pre-SNOTEL era). And the extreme regional heatwave is only slowly fading, with unprecedented March melt continuing in meantime.

🧪
With increasing aridity in the US southwest, more #dust activity occurs and thus the need to better understand how the #health impacts of dust itself causes and/o the pathogens they carry. So it is not a surprise that we start to see such studies, here in one of the dustiest places of the USA.