By Walt Meier May 27, afternoon – After our morning orientation and introduction sessions, I headed out onto the ice for the first time. We were split into four teams; each team will rotate through a different activity every day with each activity being led by one or two experts that will serve as our guide. I was assigned to the Red Team. […]
Today is the last first day of a station, since we reached station five around midnight last night. I think the entire ship was glad to finally have a day to sleep as we traveled yesterday! It was business as usual for the aerosol people though, since we do not have to deploy most of […]
The CPC is counting 100 particles/cm3, which is 10 times lower than you normally breathe in room air. We breathe the fresh Atlantic marine air and marine aerosols. The size of particle is less than 500 nm, which is invisible, you can’t even feel it and you can’t take a photo with your iphone. This […]
When people hear I am heading to sea for a month I am regularly asked: “What is the food like?” Often this is accompanied by a pained expression, as if the questioner is concerned I will waste away being fed like Harry Potter when he is home for the summer holidays. There is no cause […]
By Walt Meier I have arrived in Barrow, Alaska. It was an interesting flight up from Anchorage: the plane had seats only in the back half of the plane because the front half is used for cargo. That is because there are no roads into Barrow, so supplies need to be brought in by plane […]
By Walt Meier Whenever I tell people that I’m a polar scientist or that I study sea ice, inevitably one of the first questions I’m asked is, “so, have you been to the ice?” I’ve always had to answer no. I’m a remote sensing scientist who works with satellite data. Other than a few aircraft […]
The Dark Side of Optics at Sea & The Development of Boat Brain The old adage of Murphy ’s Law states that: ‘If there is the opportunity for something to go wrong then it will inevitably happen’ Well for all Oceanographic engineers it’s obvious that Murphy spent a considerable amount of time trying to get […]
The Light Side of Optics Have you ever stopped to think about the color of the ocean? I mean, really stopped to think about why the ocean looks the way it does? If you’ve been to a variety of beaches, you’ve probably noticed that some waters are crystal blue, while others are emerald green, and […]
A Peek into the Inner Space of the North Atlantic Thinking of a “NASA mission” generally conjures images of a telescope pointed towards outer space visualizing a myriad of stars, planets and other celestial bodies. However, NASA’s NAAMES mission turns it focus, quite literally, from outer space to the Earth’s inner space, the North Atlantic […]
The Ocean. A chemical soup that covers 70% of the Earth’s surface with a total volume that provides approximately 300 times more space for life than that combined by freshwater and land. Tiny microbes…phytoplankton, zooplankton, bacteria, viruses, but also fish and marine mammals live in that mighty ocean, which is tightly coupled to the atmosphere, […]
