Editor’s note: This is the fifth dispatch from Jeremy Mathis, director of NOAA’s Arctic Research Program, who is leading a team of NOAA scientists on a research cruise in the Arctic aboard the USGCGS Healy.
Editor’s note: This is the fourth dispatch from Jeremy Mathis, director of NOAA’s Arctic Research Program, who is leading a team of NOAA scientists on a research cruise in the Arctic.
Editor’s note: This is the second dispatch from Jeremy Mathis, director of NOAA’s Arctic Research Program, who is leading a team of NOAA scientists on a research cruise in the Arctic.
This blog post by Jeremy Mathis, director of NOAA's Arctic Research Program, is the first in a series of posts from NOAA scientists aboard US Coast Guard Cutter Healy who are measuring Arctic environmental change.
On Friday, August 25, U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy will sail from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, with a team of NOAA scientists and collaborators on a 22-day cruise to study environmental change in the western Arctic Ocean.
Over the next four months, NOAA scientists will launch unmanned ocean vehicles, called Saildrones, from the Arctic to the tropical Pacific Ocean to help better understand how changes in the ocean are affecting weather, climate, fisheries and marine mammals. The wind and solar-powered research vehicles that resemble a sailboat will travel thousands of miles across the ocean, reaching some areas never before surveyed with such specialized technology.
Ocean acidification is spreading rapidly in the western Arctic Ocean in both area and depth, potentially affecting shellfish, other marine species in the food web, and communities that depend on these resources, according to new research published in Nature Climate Change by NOAA, Chinese marine scientists and other partners.
At first glance they might be mistaken for toys, but these remote-controlled devices aren’t for play. Unmanned aircraft and watercraft are being put to work by NOAA scientists to gather astonishing new data from our wildlands and waterways.