PMEL in the News
Listening to Icebergs’ Loud and Mournful Breakup Songs
In March 2000, the iceberg B-15 broke off from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. It was the largest iceberg ever documented, with a surface area of more than 4,200 square miles—more than twice the size of the state of Delaware. After it started breaking up, the largest of its pieces, B-15a, drifted along the coast of Antarctica, lingered on a shallow seamount, and collided with an ice tongue, before running aground and breaking again.
Everett breaks record for amount of rainfall
A climatologist says record-breaking rains aren’t so bad. The lettuce and spinach sprouts in his garden are growing. Slugs hiding in the underbrush are laughing and waiting to feast, he said. Everett broke a 1999 record for the most rain in February and March, said Nick Bond, a climatologist with the state and a research scientist with the University of Washington.
The Hunt for Undiscovered Drugs at the Bottom of the Sea
In 2009, Kerry McPhail descended Jacques Cousteau-style towards the Axial Volcano, inside the cramped, 30-year-old little submarine DSV Alvin, with a pilot and another scientist. Three hundred miles off the coast of Oregon, they were collecting tubeworms, bacterial mats and bivalves living near a deep sea volcanic vent.
A Century-Old Arctic Shipwreck Could Help Us Predict Extreme Weather
In 1879, the USS Jeannette and her crew left San Francisco, headed for the Bering Strait with a dream: to win the race to reach the North Pole. After months of perilous sailing, the Jeannette made it through the strait. But soon after, she got stuck in the grip of ice floes, or sheets of floating ice.
NOAA ship Ronald Brown home from Antarctica
The ship had cruised the Arctic last year, so the towering Antarctic icebergs caught the eye of Capt. Robert Kamphaus more than anything else in the seas in January. "Just the size and the numbers were impressive. Because they're calving off these massive ice sheets, they're pretty significant" after the more open Arctic Ocean, Kamphaus said.