North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies - NCICS

08/24/2026

Jenny Dissen of NCICS will play a key role in the first-ever NOAA Industry Partnerships Summit, Sept. 1-3 in Silver Spring, MD.

Celebrating the success of NOAA’s Industry Partnerships program, the summit will bring together scientific experts with industry leaders from the Insurance and Reinsurance (Sept. 1), Architecture and Engineering (Sept. 2), and Retail and Supply Chain (Sept. 3) sectors. Dissen, retail sector lead for the Industry Partnerships program, will moderate Day 3 of the summit.

NOAA NCEI provides trusted environmental data about historical weather, climate, ocean, and magnetic field conditions to drive resilience and prosperity.

08/10/2026

NCICS's Laura Stevens wrote a blog post detailing her work as North America chapter editor for State of the Climate in 2025, out today from the American Meteorological Society. Read it here:
https://headlines.ametsoc.org/2026/08/07/state-of-the-climate-in-2025-takeaways-from-north-america/

08/10/2026

State of the Climate in 2025, a comprehensive “annual physical” of the global climate, is out today. Read about key contributions from NCICS staffers Carl Schreck, Laura Stevens, John Uehling, Garrett Graham, and Jessicca Allen.

NCICS staff members made significant contributions to the State of the Climate in 2025, an annual assessment of the global climate released today by the American Meteorological Society.

06/16/2026

NCICS's Dr. Madhusmita Swain is lead author on a new paper in the journal Atmosphere (open access).

Precipitation is among the most uncertain and poorly predicted weather products in earth system science. Local convective precipitation is particularly sensitive to strong land–atmosphere coupling. Two indices derived from atmospheric thermodynamic vertical profiles, convective triggering potentia...

06/15/2026

NCICS’s Dr. Carl Schreck is quoted extensively in this in-depth report from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

“We are really confident that storms are getting wetter,” Schreck said. “Any rainstorm today is going to drop more rain than it would have 100 years ago.”

Civil engineers face six months of uncertainty as wetter hurricanes increase flood risk. See how stormwater managers are adapting aging infrastructure.

05/20/2026

The work of NCICS's Dr. Jennifer Runkle is featured in this Yale Climate Connections story on climate change and mental health.

"Direct exposures, such as extreme heat, storms, or air pollution, can affect the body’s stress response systems and disrupt sleep and physiological regulation,” explained Runkle.

Slow-moving changes to the environment are taking a toll.

05/12/2026

NCICS’s Laura Stevens, Mark Essig, and Liz Cox present “Exploring the State Climate Summaries,” 11–12:30 tomorrow (Wednesday) at the National Adaptation Forum in Pittsburgh. Details: https://whova.com/embedded/session/ImSwHrGPiqjAGsxJEeprWB0NhRgRxYO6LKHkiDy5rkQ%3D/5183009/?widget=primary

05/05/2026

NCICS’s Liz Cox, Philip Casey, and Alethia Kielbasa visited Black Mountain Elementary to teach fifth graders about weather and climate. Learn more in this story from Buncombe County Schools.

🌦️📡🌎 Black Mountain Elementary School (BMES) fifth grade students recently had the opportunity to s...

04/24/2026

NCICS is helping out with The Nature Record, the first major assessment of nature in the US. A working draft of the report is now open for public comment.

News about the natural world is often discouraging—declining songbird populations, toxic algae, trees killed by invasive pests, and more.

04/09/2026

“The State of the Cloud-Native Geospatial Ecosystem,” presented by Rich Signell of Open Science Computing, is now available on the NCICS YouTube channel. Dr. Signell discusses recent advances in infrastructure that have transformed remote sensing and Earth system model analysis.

Presenter: Dr. Rich SignellSignificant advancements in cloud-native geospatial infrastructure over the past year have transformed remote sensing and Earth sy...