By Mara Freilich, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. // ABOARD THE SALLY RIDE // While doing oceanographic fieldwork, we live and work on the ship. This is the second week that we have been at sea. While there is a rhythm to life at sea, every day is different. Since we are …
By Kathryn Cawdrey, Science writer for NASA's Earth Science News Team //OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN NEAR CABO VERDE// When the dust that wafts off the Sahel and Sahara regions of Africa mixes with tropical clouds, it creates what's known as a rainy "disturbance" in the eastern Atlantic. These disturbances are hurricanes in their youngest form, …
By Dante Capone, Ph.D. student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography // ABOARD THE SALLY RIDE // Being a biological oceanographer on a physical oceanographic voyage has highlighted a key distinction between the two disciplines. Physical oceanographers rely on sensing – deploying instrumentation that measures properties of the water: temperature, velocity, oxygen, etc. Those data …
By Erica McNamee, Science Writer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center //OVER NEW YORK STATE// I grew up flying in planes. I'm comfortable in them. But there's one part of flying I've never gotten used to: turbulence. It's common on commercial flights, so over the years I've learned a few tips and tricks on how …
By Erica McNamee, science writer for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center // GREENBELT, MARYLAND // Look up to the blue skies, look right to the boats floating out at sea, look left to the deep green marshes of the Everglades and Big Cypress National Parks in Florida. This mangrove ecosystem contributes to the larger cycle …
By Sarah Lang, Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island. // Aboard the Bold Horizon // If you asked a random person about the color of the ocean, they would probably tell you that it's some shade of blue or green. But perhaps that shade of blue looks slightly different …
By Audrey Delpech, postdoc in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences department at UCLA Being part of the NASA S-MODE oceanographic mission was a great experience for me. It was only my second oceanographic mission and my first one on a US research vessel. I learned a lot about how to use the different instruments, interpret …
By Kelly Luis, NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology // Aboard the Bold Horizon // ʻAʻohe o kahi nana o luna o ka pali; iho mai a lalo nei; ʻike ke au nui ke au iki, hea lo a he alo. The top of the cliff isn't the …
By Gwendal Marechal, postdoctoral researcher at the Colorado School of Mines // Aboard the Bold Horizon // Upon leaving the Breton coastlines after my Ph.D., I started a postdoc at the Colorado School of Mines. After one month in the Colorado mountains, I traveled to Newport, Oregon, to board the Bold Horizon for one month …
By Joseph D'Addezio, oceanographer with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory // NASA's Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi // NASA's S-MODE mission faces quite the challenge: robustly observe, for the first time, ocean features spanning up to about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) across. Currently, the oceanographic community routinely observes and studies very large ocean features, …
