Extreme heat in the North Pacific: The Blob

Water is strangely warm in parts of the North Pacific: in the Gulf of Alaska, off Southern California, and stretching across the Bering Sea. A NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center press release reported: Not since records began has the region of the North Pacific Ocean been so warm for so long. That references over a […]

atmosphere earth interactions

Precautions amidst uncertainty

“The question is not ‘do we know everything?’ it is ‘do we know enough?’ or ‘how can we best make a decision using what we do know?’ ~ Sense About Science publication: ‘Making Sense of Uncertainty’ In cities where heat waves are already becoming more frequent or more intense, the installation of heat watch warning […]

cross country skiing Alaska

Trapped in a cracked snow globe

Laura Nielsen for Frontier Scientists – Snowball fights. Snow angels and lovely ice sculptures. You can truck across it or ski through it. Snow might be a heavy reality you shovel every day, or a glittering crystalline landscape far away. Or both. Whatever snow means to you, it means something much more complex to the […]

Extreme Weather, Extreme Christmas Tree

Liz O’Connell for Frontier Scientists – A Ponderosa Pine grove towers over my house roof.  The 100 foot trees grow naturally and swiftly east of the Cascades in Oregon.  Before Thanksgiving, extreme winds blew over the Cascade mountain barrier and whipped around central Oregon. The night after, I checked my yard from a window—dried pine […]

Crashing Waves

By Carin Ashjian for The Arctic Winter Cruise 2011 Another day, another storm.  The Bering Sea is relentless!  We managed to sneak in three stations yesterday afternoon and early this morning but then the weather deteriorated and our sampling operations were shut down again.  This time we were out in the open, far from the […]

Racing the Storm

By Carin Ashjian for The Arctic Winter Cruise 2011 We’re racing a storm across the Bering Sea, going 15 knots between stations to try to get as many done as possible before the storm catches us from behind.  Fifteen knots feels really fast, Healy shudders a little bit as she goes.  The wake is white […]