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Exploring Ocean Worlds

Ocean Exploration Fueled by Girl Power

18 members of the E/V Nautilus Lōʻihi Seamount's 31-person science team are women. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman

This photo essay-letter was created on board the Exploration Vessel Nautilus during the 2018 Lōihi Seamount Expedition, a joint project between Ocean Exploration Trust, NASA, NOAA, and a number of academic institutions. The mission used this underwater volcano off the coast of Hawai`i as an analog for future space exploration to distant ocean worlds. Click on photo captions to scroll through the images and read more detailed bios of these phenomenal women working in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math fields.

Dr. Zara Mirmalek and Mary Nichols on the social deck. Zara is an ethnographer studying communication, and work practices among scientists and engineers conducting science and exploration in the ocean (with remotely operated and autonomous robots) and in planetary analogs (for future human and robotic planetary exploration). Mary is a video engineer and professor emeritus at Middle Tennessee State University. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Martynas Graban is the first officer on the Nautilus where she has served for two years. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Basia Marcks is an ocean science intern on the Nautilus and a PhD candidate at University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. Her research focuses on the interactions between biology, geology, and chemistry in past periods of climate change. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Proteus Executive Director and Lead Science Communication Fellow for the E/V Nautilus Jenny Woodman. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman

Dear 2nd Graders,

I really enjoyed speaking with your class this morning. It is always fun to tell people about the work we are doing on board the Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus, a 211-foot science vessel outfitted for exploring the ocean floor with robots and studying what is happening in our planet’s ocean.

After we ended our talk with you, one of your comments stuck with me. Your teacher asked me to speak about what girls do on our ship, adding that you all thought only boys could be engineers and that made me a little sad.

As a matter of fact, I couldn’t sleep for quite some time even though it was 4:30 in the morning here off the coast of Hawai`i. But, I woke up with a plan: I’d gather all the girls on our ship (there are a lot of us) and take a photo for you. I thought maybe if you saw how many girls are out here doing exciting work, you might start to see how many important things get done by both boys and girls.

But there was one really big problem…

Jess and Antonella prepare Hercules for his next dive to an underwater volcano off the coast of Hawai’i. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Jessica Sandoval is an Argus pilot on the Nautilus and a Ph.D. student at at the University of California, San Diego. She works on bio-inspired robotics and bio-materials. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Antonella Wilby is a Ph.D. student at the Contextual Robotics Institute at UC San Diego, where she builds robots to explore extreme environments, in particular, ocean environments. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Wendy Snyder repairing Argus’s frame. Wendy is a graduate student at University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography; she is working on low power inertial navigation systems for glider type underwater autonomous vehicles (AUVs).

All the girls working on the Nautilus are very, very busy. Eighteen members of the 31-person science team on the Nautilus are women. We serve in all roles — from engineering to communications, from the very highest leadership position down to our student interns. There is no place on the Nautilus where women do not work incredibly hard.

I went to the back deck of the ship where Wendy, Jess, and Antonella were busy repairing our robots, Hercules and Argus. Without these robots, (we also call them remotely operated vehicles or ROVs) we wouldn’t be able to travel to the ocean floor to learn about volcanoes, octopuses, sharks, and creatures no one has ever seen before. As ROV pilots, a big part of their job is maintaining and fixing the ROVs – Wendy, Jess, and Antonella are engineers, so they are really good at what they do!

I ducked around the corner and up the stairs, following Mary and Nicole, but it turned out they were busy too. A camera needed fixing, and as video engineers, they needed to tackle the job. Cameras are very important to the work happening on the Nautilus; they are like eyes on the robots and they help the pilots to safely move around; cameras also record all the amazing images from places humans can’t safely go. As a retired journalist and video engineer, Mary has lots of experience to help guide and train Nicole who just graduated from college.

Dr. Leigh Marsh is a deep sea ecologist who specializes in the acquisition, processing, and analysis of ROV and AUV imagery and remote sensing data for vulnerable ecosystems in the deep ocean. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Brianna Alanis is a graduate student at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Her work focuses on creating autonomous proxies for primary production measurements using dissolved oxygen. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Leigh Marsh and Megan Lubertkin in the Nautilus lounge. Megan is a graduate student at University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
One sample from the ocean floor is divided up into many samples for scientists all over the country. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Repairing a camera housing — Nicole Gottschalk, video engineering intern, and Mary Nichols. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman

Our science data team — Leigh and Megan were also quite busy. They spent part of the afternoon brainstorming how to manage the thousands of images and samples being gathered with each dive, and they met with expedition leaders to share their ideas about how to do even more with the limited space available for so many scientists on the ship.

Then, I went to the wet lab, but another member of the science data team, Brianna, was busy organizing the equipment the science team uses after Hercules collects those samples and brings them back to the ship; one of her jobs is to prepare those specimens for scientists all over the country to study back on dry land.

Dr. Elizabeth Trembath-Reichert is a member of the Nautilus’s science/data team. She is doing post-doctoral work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she studies the microorganisms that live in environments where sunlight (or products of sunlight) cannot be used for energy.
Samples from the ocean floor must be divided up, preserved, and prepared for delivery to many scientists around the country. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Vice President of Exploration and Science Operations and Expedition Lead Nicole Raineault and Sam Wishnak, digital media coordinator for Ocean Exploration Trust. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
As the Vice President of Exploration and Science Operations for the Trust, Dr. Nicole Raineault works with the Nautilus team’s extended network of scientists to organize and plan the science objectives of the cruises. As an Expedition Leader she facilitates seeing those plans through on board the vessel. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman

I ran over to the social deck, just in time to see Elizabeth rushing off to her lab. She had to place a bottle of seawater in an incubator, which is like a small oven. She wanted to test how long it will take her to process the samples Hercules will bring up to the ship from the volcano.

I was sure I’d be able to wrangle Sam and Nicole, but as part of the leadership responsible for the success of this and future expeditions, they were busy coordinating the hundreds of items that need addressing each day.

First Officer Martyna Graban helps survey the ship’s hull. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Ariel and Mugdha work on telling the story of this Nautilus expedition. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Science Communication Fellow Mugdha Flores is a marine biologist and informal educator; she loves teaching students about the ocean and aim to inspire them to become stewards of our ocean. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Thais Drummond da Silva is the third officer on the ship who stands watch on the bridge and is in charge of keeping everyone safe. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman

Speaking of the people who help this ship run smoothly, Thais and Martyna are officers in charge of running the ship so all this amazing science can happen. Today, Martyna took a crew out on a small boat to inspect the hull, and Thais makes sure everyone on the ship is safe at all times.

My friends Ariel and Mugdha were also busy, shooting video to help tell the story of science, ocean exploration, and marvelous feats of engineering.

Even I had to stop and take a break from writing this letter to you; Amy and I were needed in the studio where you saw us this morning. We had to talk to a group of people gathered at a museum in San Francisco – we showed them pictures and answered their questions just as we answered yours.

Dr. Darlene Lim is the principle investigator for this NASA SUBSEA project; she’s based at the NASA Ames Research Center where she is actively involved in the development of operational concepts for human scientific exploration of our solar system. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Darlene Lim in the wetlab with Jeff Seewald. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Amy Smith and Jenny Woodman in the television studio speaking to a group gathered at a museum in San Francisco. Dr. Smith is an astrobiologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute; she studies where microbiology, astrobiology, and the origin of life meet. She seeks answers to whether life could exist on other worlds in our solar system and beyond. Image Credit: Sam Wishnak
Science Communication Fellow Ariel Waldman is the founder of Space Hack and serves as an adviser to NASA. Image Credit: Ariel Waldman

My last stop on this adventure was the lounge where Darlene was sitting at her laptop on a big leather sofa. As principle investigator for this project, her days are really long – she’s working even when she looks like she might be relaxing. When I found her, she was getting ready to go on NASA TV and talk about the work we are doing; two million people tuned in to watch her today!

I’m writing this letter because I’d hate to think that there are any young girls in your class who think it isn’t cool or possible for them to build robots or rockets, and I’d hate to think that there are boys who think they shouldn’t do the thing they dream about doing, whatever it may be.

Following science out to sea has taken me to some pretty extraordinary places. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman

And, if you don’t want to be a scientist or engineer, but you love the sea creatures — if you dream about what it might be like explore the ocean, I have a secret for you: not everyone involved studying the ocean is a scientist or engineer. I’m a writer. My job is telling true stories about this work so people can better understand the world we live in. Folks like me — anthropologists, painters, teachers, filmmakers, chefs, and all sorts of people play a big part, making amazing things happen every day for organizations like the Nautilus!

Thanks for asking us such smart questions. I hope you will stay curious, have fun and keep exploring!

Jenny

Jenny Woodman, Proteus founder and executive director, is a science writer and educator living in the Pacific Northwest; she is a 2018 lead science communication fellow on board the Exploration Vessel Nautilus. In 2016, she wrote her masters thesis on women in STEAM and continues to explore this topic in her work. Follow her on Twitter @JennyWoodman.

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Categories
Exploring Ocean Worlds

Underway

Europa Galileo
This image of Jupiter’s Europa moon was captured by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s; scientists are studying deep sea volcanoes on Earth in preparation for future exploration to places like Europa where they expect to find oceans and hydrothermal activity beneath the moon’s surface. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute

On August 21, a team of scientists, engineers, and students arrived in waves, loaded with personal gear and equipment for deep sea exploration off the coast of Hawaii. The mission, a joint project with NASA, NOAA, Ocean Exploration Trust and a number of academic institutions, is to explore the Lōihi Seamount with remotely operated vehicles, or robots.

Conditions at this underwater volcano are similar to what scientists believe exist on moons in the outer regions of our solar system. Experts from NASA’s Systematic Underwater Biogeochemical Science and Exploration Analog (SUBSEA) team think it is likely that oceans and hydrothermal activity exist beneath an icy crust on Saturn’s Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa.

Robotic dives at Lōihi also offer the opportunity to practice and develop protocols for future missions. Someday, when we reach distant ocean worlds, it is unlikely that humans will be able to enter into these hostile environments; it is more likely that they will deploy robots and explore from the safety of their ship or some other location, much like ocean explorers do today.

In order to develop protocols to guide those future missions, NASA and their partners have gathered a science team at the Inner Space Center at Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography; this team will remotely oversee and direct operations on the Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus here in Hawaii. The work will serve as an analog for expeditions where astronauts will communicate across great distances. Experiencing delays and possible technical difficulties first-hand on Earth will enable NASA and their partners to be better prepared for the challenges of deep space exploration.

Back on board the Nautilus last Monday, there were hugs and laughs as those who had sailed on the ship reunited and newcomers were introduced. We were eager to get going, but Hurricane Lane had other plans. The storm intensified and the Coast Guard ordered all ships over a certain size out of the port of Honolulu. Nicole Raineault, vice president of exploration and science operations for the Ocean Exploration Trust shared the news that expedition leaders and the ship’s captain, Pavel Chubar, didn’t feel the science team would be safe on board the ship during the storm. The Nautilus was going to ride out the weather in safer waters north of Maui, but the seas would be rough nonetheless – it was not going to be a place for non-professional mariners.

On Wednesday August 22, we repacked our gear, secured science equipment on the ship, and offloaded in Honolulu. As stores and restaurants closed all over Waikiki where we were staying, it was surreal to see the images of an immense storm heading our way while tourists poured in and out of the shops. The island chain is no stranger to powerful storms, but the last major hurricane occurred in 1992; Hurricane Iniki caused $3.1 billion in damage.

Lane ISS
Hurricane Lane from the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA

Lane was expected to hit Hawaii on Friday or Saturday, so we stocked up on food and water in case the storm disrupted power and transportation. (Experts recommend your family’s disaster supplies include one gallon of water per person, per day as well as enough food, medicine, and creature comforts like activities for little ones to last at least two weeks. For more on how to prepare your family for disaster visit here and here.)

The slow-moving storm never made landfall on O’ahu, but caused catastrophic flooding to the Big Island, dumping over 50 inches of rain in just a few days.

On August 26, we were transported to the Nautilus via water taxi and immediately set off as teams worked to prepare equipment for operations on Monday morning. The seas weren’t quite as calm as most would like and many napped and stared at the horizon in an effort to quell uneasy stomachs. Most over the counter motion sickness medicines cause drowsiness (and mine was no exception — although the box was labeled “less-drowsy,” it would be more apt if it read “may cause light coma”).

The E/V Nautilus underway, heading towards the Kilauea lava flow. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman

We’re now our way to the Kilauea lava flow, a slow-moving eruption that has caused extensive damage to the Big Island since early spring. Data from the previous Nautilus expedition, Mapping Pacific Seamounts, included signals that look like little bubbles, which they’d never seen before.

Chris German is a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and leader of the science data team for this expedition. “It is a process we’ve not had the chance to study previously,” German added as he explained that they are returning to the same spot in order to see if those mysterious bubbles are still present.

He and his team are eager to determine an ideal location future dives. The Nautilus team uses sonar mapping technology to both enhance our understanding of the processes occurring on the ocean floor and to accurately identify where to deploy the robots for exploration. “This may be another kind of hydrothermal system nobody’s ever seen before,” German added with a grin.

We expect to be able to see the flow area from a distance after breakfast Monday morning, and we’re looking forward to launching our first dive operation on the Lōihi Seamount at midnight (HTC) Tuesday morning. Whenever the robots are deployed, the video feed is live-streamed to viewers all over the world at www.nautiluslive.org. 

Jenny Woodman, Proteus founder and executive director, is a science writer and educator living in the Pacific Northwest; she is a 2018 lead science communication fellow on board the Exploration Vessel Nautilus. Follower her on Twitter @JennyWoodman.

This piece was updated on August 27.

Read more

Discovering Ocean Worlds by Jenny Woodman
Ocean Worlds by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Categories
Arctic Change

Arctic Worries

A lone Black Guillemot and sea ice off Cooper Island. Image Credit: George Divoky
A lone Black Guillemot and sea ice off Cooper Island. Image Credit: George Divoky
Black Guillemots and sea ice off Cooper Island. Image Credit: George Divoky
Mandt’s Black Guillemots. Image Credit: George DIvoky

George Divoky frets–with good reason. In 2016, CNN Correspondent John D. Sutter called him the man who is watching the world melt. The description is as distressing as it is apt.

George sends us regular dispatches from a small field camp on Cooper Island, about 25 miles east of Utqiaġvik, where he has studied a colony of nesting Mandt’s Black Guillemots for the last 44 years. Since his work began in 1975, the research has morphed into one of the longest-running studies of seabirds, sea ice, and climate change.

Guillemots look like small penguins headed off to a fancy party replete with ice sculptures and all-night dancing. Unlike other seabirds that migrate out of the region seasonally, they live out over the frigid waters year-round, only returning to land to breed and fledge their young–this makes them an excellent indicator of how climate change is impacting the Arctic.

Weather delayed the start of this research season in early June. While warm temperatures in the Arctic have made headlines in recent months, unusually late snow and ice kept the guillemots from reaching their nesting boxes until mid-June; the first egg was laid on June 24.

His communications are tinged with an effort to buoy spirits–I’m guessing his own more so than ours. This week, the bad news came first: a 29-year-old female died. He wrote that she had been banded during the first George Bush administration. (While many humans rely on a simple Gregorian calendar, George’s memories appear to be synchronized according to a timeline rooted firmly in geopolitics.)

Bad news was followed with happy; two siblings from the 2014 cohort returned and recruited partners for breeding.

Otherwise, it’s been a stormy week on the island. On July 20, he wrote that the wind was finally dying down. A bad week for the infrastructure, the camp’s weather station was blown over and part of the heavy-duty WeatherPort tarp separated from the frame, which caused a number of things to get wet. On Wednesday he saw record high rainfall for that date.

Egg laying hit an all-time low this year, with fewer breeding pairs than any previous year.

He’s asking questions about how changing ice conditions will impact these seabirds – his seabirds. In his most recent field report, he spoke at length about the relationship between the guillemots and nearshore sea ice. The location of the sea ice impacts how far parents will have to fly to access suitable prey for their chicks. Increased travel time means greater energy expended by parents – for seabirds that live predominantly out in open waters, it’s all about balancing resources and energy. The presence or absence of sea ice combined with the temperature of the ocean waters impacts the availability of Arctic Cod, the small nutritious fish the guillemots prefer.

George hopes the slowly departing nearshore sea ice will keep ideal prey in foraging range for the seabirds. He wrote, the cod is “urgently needed for the colony to reduce its current population decline.”

A MODIS image from July 11; snow and ice are cyan color while clouds tend to be more grayish. Image Credit: NASA Worldview
A MODIS image from July 16; snow and ice are cyan color while clouds tend to be more grayish. Image Credit: NASA Worldview

David Douglas is a research wildlife biologist for United States Geological Survey (USGS) Alaska Science Center; he and George are frequent collaborators. This week he emailed the MODIS images displayed above and wrote that Cooper Island was pretty well surrounded until July 16 when the persistent ice immediately around the island broke up and melted.

Studies like George’s will help scientists to better understand the ramifications of long-term warming and less sea ice for wildlife in the region. Impacts to wildlife will directly affect the lives of the people who depend on subsistence fishing and hunting for survival.

Warming Arctic conditions have persisted with 2018 reaching record lows for sea ice extent, according to a report published by NOAA and University of Alaska Fairbanks’s International Arctic Research Center.

Late ice formation and early retreat in the Chukchi and Bering Seas impacted local communities by making travel for subsistence hunting and fishing dangerous and, at times, impossible. Storm damage and erosion was worsened by exposed shorelines, left unprotected by a lack of sea ice. Island villages and coastal communities experienced flooding and property damage as well. You can read more about the storm impacts here and here.

The report attributes late and minimal ice coverage to warmer temperatures, particularly over the last four years. Increased temperatures combined with stronger storms helped break up weaker ice.

In 2018, there was less sea ice in the Bering Sea than any year since 1850, when commercial whalers began recording this data. Experts agree, loss of sea ice is a result of climate change. Continued warming creates a feedback loop where warming temperatures melt ice; without a reflective snow and ice covering, the ocean absorbs more of the sun’s warming rays and temperatures continue to rise.

sea-ice
Sea ice since 1850. Image Credit: NOAA and University of Alaska Fairbanks International Arctic Research Center (UAF-IARC).

As for future winters, what can people expect to see if warming continues at current rates?

“Communities need to prepare for more winters with low sea ice and stormy conditions. Although not every winter will be like this one,” concludes the report, “there will likely be similar winters in the future. Ice formation will likely remain low if warm water temperatures in the Bering Sea continue.”

And for George’s seabirds? How many birds will successfully fledge this year? How many will return next?

We’ll just have to wait and see.

This piece is part of an ongoing series titled Arctic Change centered around George Divoky’s 44th field season studying Black Guillemots, sea ice, and climate change on a remote Arctic island off the coast of Alaska. To donate and support Divoky’s work on Cooper Island, visit the Friends of Cooper Island website.

Read More

Historic Low Sea Ice in the Bering Sea by Kathryn Hansen for NASA Earth Observatory

Arctic Sea Ice a Major Determinant in Mandt’s Black Guillemot Movement and Distribution During Non-Breeding Season By G. J. Divoky, D.C. Douglas, and I.J. Stenhouse

Melting Arctic Sends a Message: Climate Change Is Here In a Big Way by Mark Serreze

The First Frontier: Creating a Climate Displacement Fund for Displaced Alaska Communities By Wen Hoe

Categories
Arctic Change

Take the A-Train to the Arctic

This Aqua satellite was launched in 2004; it collects about 89 Gigabytes of data per day about elements of the Earth’s water cycle -- including water in liquid, solid, and vapor form. Image Credit: NASA’s Earth Observing System
Aqua_b
This Aqua satellite was launched in 2004; it collects about 89 Gigabytes of data per day about elements of the Earth’s water cycle — including water in liquid, solid, and vapor form. Image Credit: NASA’s Earth Observing System

In the Arctic, much depends on ice. Pack ice. Drift ice. Old ice. New ice. For some wildlife, ice provides safe haven from predators and for others, it offers access to prey. For humans, many of whom are living in isolated coastal communities with no roads in or out, ice is everything.

Sailors and explorers have kept sporadic records about ice conditions dating back thousands of years, but only since 1979, with the launch of Earth observing satellites, have streams of near-constant information about Arctic sea ice been available. Using images and observations captured daily, scientists are able to measure ice thickness, area of coverage, and seasonal fluctuations in the advance and retreat of ice coverage.

Real-time sea ice images and data are vital for the safety of researchers like George Divoky and for people in Arctic communities who depend on ice for subsistence hunting and fishing. Anthony Fischbach is a wildlife biologist for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in the Alaska Science Center Walrus Research Program, where he has worked since 1994. Fishbach delivers a daily “Ice Mail” to just over 100 people interested in up-to-date information on Arctic sea ice. Subscribers include Divoky, scientists in Russia, and remote Inuit communities who may not have easy access to internet connections capable of retrieving large amounts of data.

“The main niche I’m trying to fill is a way to get meaningful sea ice imagery and charts in the palm of your hand or on the deck of a ship where you’ve got really minimal bandwidth,” said Fischbach. “If you’re in a remote community that has 2G cell phone connection or if you’re on an Iridium-linked vessel, the existing ways of accessing the data just don’t meet the need.”

He described his own experiences of working in Arctic coastal communities or being on board a retrofitted crabber, “We just struggled to get the data through the existing methods and we couldn’t get all the data we wanted.”

Today, Fischbach relies heavily on two satellites we’ll be following closely this summer — Aqua and Terra. Both are part of NASA’s Afternoon Constellation or A-Train, which is a convoy of satellites operated by NASA and international partners. The satellites travel together, completing a polar orbit twice a day; because of the Earth’s rotation, a polar orbit means that the satellites will observe the entirety of the planet’s surface every one to two days.

The A-Train crosses the equator at about 1:30 a.m and 1:30 p.m.; the Terra satellite passes the equator in the early morning, Aqua in the afternoon. This timing and repetition allows scientists to generate cloud-free images and to study how temperatures over land and water change from day to day.

By flying satellites loaded with a host of Earth-observing instruments in a formation, scientists are able to gather a great deal of meaningful data. According to NASA, flying in concert “allows for synergy between the missions—synergy means that more information about the condition of the Earth is obtained from the combined observations than would be possible from the sum of the observations taken independently.”

While each satellite is tasked with different mission objectives, the data from individual instruments can be combined to paint a more vivid and informative picture of the Earth’s climate and atmospheric systems.

This visualization shows the orbits of NASA-related near-Earth science missions that are considered operational as of March 2017. Video Credit: Greg Shirah for NASA Visualization Studio

A key instrument on board Aqua and Terra is a moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer, or MODIS for short, which is capable of of observing across 36 spectral bands or wavelengths at different resolutions (250, 500, and 1000 meters). (A complete technical profile of this instrument and the data it provides can be found here.)

MODIS is an integral instrument for studying the ocean, because it aids in the creation of ocean color maps. Ocean color reveals much about phytoplankton productivity, which, according to NASA, forms the basis of the ocean’s food chain and plays a big part in carbon storage and movement. MODIS also allows for detailed maps of sea surface temperatures, which are known to influence weather patterns. Since MODIS is able to study water in liquid, solid or gas form, the instrument aids measurement of snow and sea ice and how much solar energy is being absorbed or reflected back to space.

IceMap_bothMODIS_2018_05_23
This ice map for May 24, 2018, generated by United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Alaska, combines MODIS images from Aqua and Terra with National Ice Center data. Image Credit: Anthony Fischbach for USGS

Fischbach explains that the images in his daily emails (seen above) are processed with false color so you can distinguish the white of the clouds with the white of the sea ice; sea ice is aqua-colored and the clouds appear white. The images show detail down to 250 meter resolution, meaning you can clearly see objects that are 250 meters or 820 feet wide.

To people living and working in the the Arctic, these sea ice data could be comparable to monitoring hazards on roadways in the lower 48, because the ice and water provide access for both transportation and food.

The ice is moving constantly, which creates precarious decision-making choices in remote regions without the right information. With several days of ice data in hand, people in the field  like Fishbach and Divoky can make better choices.

“I’d really like to know as much as I can about how the ice is moving. Is there more ice coming this way? Is it going to be congesting? Is it going to be opening up?” he asks. “You know, do I launch boat out in to the ice —  the shifting seascape — where I could get pinned in and trapped and not make it home?”

This story is part of an ongoing series titled Arctic Change centered around George Divoky’s 44th field season studying Black Guillemots, sea ice, and climate change on a remote Arctic island off the coast of Alaska. To donate and support Divoky’s work on Cooper Island, visit the Friends of Cooper Island.

Read More

Arctic Sea Ice By NASA Earth Observatory

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Monitoring Sea Ice by NASA Earth Observatory