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, …
By Leo Middleton, Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute // Aboard the Bold Horizon // It's like stumbling through a thick forest and breaking out into a glade. A quiet has settled on this piece of sea as the waves calm. You can't make a good map to get to this place. In the ocean, …
By Alex Kinsella, Postdoctoral Investigator at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution // Aboard the Bold Horizon // My favorite part of being at sea is the opportunity to see unique parts of the natural world that aren't accessible from land. My colleagues have done a fantastic job in their blog posts explaining the science that we've …
By Mackenzie Blanusa, M.S. student at the University of Connecticut // Aboard the Bold Horizon // I had been patiently waiting and dreaming about this research cruise for months. Yet a few days before traveling from Connecticut to Oregon for ship mobilization, I couldn't shake a feeling of denial – like I couldn't believe I …
By Sarah Lang, Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island. // Aboard the Bold Horizon // Going to sea for the first time as part of NASA's S-MODE mission has been an experience like no other. You establish a new normal on the boat and quickly fall into new routines. …
By Igor Uchôa, Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department // Aboard the Bold Horizon // NASA's S-MODE mission was designed to measure and understand the complex oceanic features classified as "submesoscale," i.e., features spanning up to 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) across. Such fine filaments and sharp density …
By Sofie Bates / FAIRBANKS, ALASKA / "This lake wasn't here 50 years ago." Katey Walter Anthony, an ecologist at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, dips her paddle into the water as her kayak glides across the lake. "Years ago, the ground was about three meters taller and it was a spruce forest," she says. …
By Sofie Bates / FAIRBANKS, ALASKA / There's a freezer door in the mountainside outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. Tom Douglas opens it and we step inside, breathing in cold air and musky dust as we start to walk back through time. This isn't fantasy. It's the Permafrost Tunnel run by the U.S. Army's Cold …
By Jude Coleman A low, surging wind picks up as the first few raindrops splatter onto dusty ground. Dense cumulonimbus clouds, like soot-stained cotton balls, knot tighter and tighter in the sky. While the thick scent of petrichor and ozone invades the air, an electric burst of lightning slashes through the sky; deafening cracks of …
