Near infrared (NIR) light includes wavelengths between 700 and 1,100 nanometers. Water absorbs NIR, so these wavelengths are useful for discerning land-water boundaries that are not obvious in visible ...

Hello SEAT blog followers. I am Summer Ruper, and I would like to share with you a little bit of the ice coring adventure that begins well before the field team heads to Antarctica. Before we start ...

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When on land, an oceanography brain usually associates the term ocean motion with the movement of seawater in the form of ocean currents. However, when actually on the ocean, the biggest signal for ...

One of the best surprises of my life was turning on my brand-new iPhone—before it had even been activated—glancing down at the screen, and seeing an image I had made. Apple chose the NASA Blue Marble ...

A number of the instruments deployed during SPURS are “works in progress.” They work well, but need exercise in new or more challenging environments to perfect them. The whole of SPURS is an ...

If Mandelbrot’s statement is true, maybe oceanographers studying ocean microstructure (caused by turbulence), besides writing journal articles about mixing in the ocean also work on padding their ...

In the United States, we say “it’s raining cats and dogs” when we get a heavy downpour. In South Africa, it rains “women with clubs.” In Slovakia, a good soak means “tractors are falling.” World ...

Just as the incoming and outgoing energy at the Earth’s surface must balance, the flow of energy into the atmosphere must be balanced by an equal flow of energy out of the atmosphere and back to space ...

Light rain this morning in Svalbard, but we soon took off and left the clouds behind for bluer skies. Today’s plan was ambitious since ice cover was present at almost every drop point. Ice conditions ...

Vishnu, an Earth Observatory reader, posed a great question after viewing “The Six-Million Mile View of Earth and Moon“: “I’ve never seen a photo like that. Was the background beyond Earth ...

For nearly 20 years, Jim Acker, a contract support scientist at the NASA Goddard Earth Science Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC), has helped oceanographers compile and study data ...