Researchers at NOAA developed Science On a Sphere^® as an educational tool to help illustrate Earth System science to people of all ages. Animated images of atmospheric storms, climate change, and ocean temperature can be shown on the sphere, which is used to explain what are sometimes complex environmental processes, in a way that is simultaneously intuitive and captivating.

On November 16, NOAA Administrator, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, and Kelly Wright, Director of NOAA’s Technology Partnerships Office, awarded the NOAA Patent Holders Award to James Ronald Jordan, James Harwood Churnside, and Paul Ernest Johnston of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, Earth Systems Research Laboratory (ESRL) for successfully patenting a system for “detection of transient signals in Doppler spectra”.

On November 16, NOAA Administrator, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, and Kelly Wright, Director of NOAA’s Technology Partnerships Office, awarded the NOAA Patent Holders Award to Dr. Chung -Chu Teng, Richard Bouchard and Dr. Rodney Riley of the National Weather Service (NWS) National Data Buoy Center, for successfully patenting a system for “measuring spectra of surface ocean waves in near real-time.”  The patent, which was awarded in June 2012, describes a “moored buoy floating at the ocean surface and anchored to the seafloor precisely measur[ing] acceleration, pitch, roll, and Earth's magnetic flux field of the buoy over a limited sampling period.”