By Eric Lindstrom We had a whirlwind of preparations after the Labor Day Weekend. All the gear was loaded on the ship and lashed down. The scientific party (22 people) arrived and set up in various spaces around the ship. Bill Ingalls, a NASA Headquarters photographer, captured many great shots of the Knorr and the […]
Every day we bring you a different view of Earth, as only NASA can see it…from high above, and usually from space. One of our colleagues has also been working since 2000 to bring you breathtaking views of Earth…albeit, from a perspective that’s a bit closer to the ground. Together with a few professional helpers […]
Image credit: NASA/MSFCOn Aug. 31, if the night sky is clear, you will be able to see the second full moon of the month, which is called a “blue moon.”You may have heard the expression, “once in a blue moon,” meaning “almost never,” because having 13 full moons in a calendar year — instead of …
This week’s Earth Indicator is 4 million…as in 4 million square kilometers. It’s a number that scientists studying sea ice never thought they would see. Every year, the sea ice at the top of our planet shrinks and grows with the seasons. But because ocean water lags behind the atmosphere in warming up and cooling […]
By Eric Lindstrom The SPURS experiment involves not only sea-going oceanographers but modelers, and of course, remote sensing scientists using satellite data. As part of the daily posts from R/V Knorr I will go into more detail on the role of the models and satellite data in the overall scientific enterprise. I will profile the […]
NASA Earth Observatory writer Adam Voiland spoke with Columbia University climatologist Richard Seager about the widespread drought currently affecting North America. The current dry spell has been called a “flash drought.” Has it really come on that quickly or as a surprise? No, I wouldn’t say it has been a surprise to those of […]
By Eric Lindstrom As I mentioned in my previous post, our cruise will depart from Woods Hole, MA on September 6. Roughly, it will take eight days for our ship, R/V Knorr, to transit from Woods Hole to the SPURS central mooring site at 25N, 38W, the saltiest spot in the subtropical North Atlantic. Then […]
Read our recent Image of the Day to find out more about the Yanqi Basin, the answer to August’s puzzler. Congratulations to Yiannis Raftopoulos for being the first to identify the location. We posted the mystery image on Monday at 6:17 p.m. and on our social media accounts on Tuesday morning. Within minutes of appearing […]
By Eric Lindstrom On September 6, a bunch of NASA-funded scientists, and me among them, will depart on an expedition across the North Atlantic Ocean to study salt concentration levels of seawater. But why do we want to spend six weeks at sea measuring ocean saltiness? Hopefully, over the coming months you will come to […]
Greenbelt, MD 84°F High 74° F low Sunny The transition from a remote-area scientific expedition to everyday life comes fast and hard. Even though the flight from Tura to Baltimore consumes over 24 hours, those are the last slow moments that the scientist will experience. The moment the aircraft touches down, the race begins. It […]
