PMEL in the News
Seafaring robot crashes into iceberg, still finishes scientific trip around Antarctica
13,670 nautical miles. 50-foot waves. One big collision. Over the weekend a Saildrone — a 23-foot long uncrewed marine robot — withstood the tempestuous seas around Antarctica to complete the first-ever circumnavigation of the continent by a drone. Adrienne Sutton is quoted.
Saildrone’s Journey Around Antarctica Uncovers New Climate Clues
The robot sailboat is called #1020. It’s a lackluster moniker for a machine that just spent seven months battling its way through 12,500 miles of frigid, massive waves to circumnavigate Antarctica. The robot, made by startup Saildrone, is the first of its kind to complete the harrowing journey. More important, it’s the only scientific vehicle to have captured such a detailed environmental picture of the state of the Southern Ocean, bringing back data that could be key to our understanding of climate change. Adrienne Sutton is quored.
Six underwater volcanoes found hiding in plain sight
When the rocky mound lurched onto his computer screen aboard the R/V OGS Explora, geophysicist Emanuele Lodolo couldn’t believe his eyes. Just four miles off the coast of Sicily, the team had stumbled on a previously unknown volcano with an old lava flow trailing some 2.5 miles westward across the seafloor. Bill Chadwick is quoted.
The river runs alarmingly low in North Bend, due east of Seattle
It’s been raining this July, but much of Washington is still in a drought, because of our hot, dry spring and early summer. Just 30 minutes outside Seattle, in the town of North Bend, most development is on hold till an issue of water is resolved. Nick Bond is quoted.
This is now the world's largest volcano, geologists say
In 2013, a team of scientists rocked geology fans when they reported that Mauna Loa, a 2,000-square-mile shield volcano in Hawaii, was probably not in fact the largest volcano in the world. That accolade, the team suggested, belonged to Tamu Massif, an extinct volcanic mountain on the seafloor east of Japan that appeared to be a single shield volcano covering a whopping 100,000 square miles, roughly the same size as the state of Arizona. Bill Chadwick is quoted.