Invisible forces: Through the cloud of atmospheric aerosols

If you’re a scientist in an oceanography department, you’re probably studying the ocean, right? Well, part of your job might be studying things like phytoplankton, the tiny oceanic powerhouses that play a crucial role in our planet’s ecosystem. But how about clouds? Oh, and the properties of light, too?

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Solving for climate: Coasts in the machine

The Earth’s oceans play a crucial role in regulating the planet’s climate by absorbing and storing vast amounts of heat and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, due to human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, the oceans are warming at an alarming rate. This increase in ocean temperature is causing a range of devastating impacts, from more frequent and severe storms to rising sea levels and bleached coral reefs.

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21-Storied careers: Scouring seas from the skies

This episode is about how satellite technology is being used to study a big chunk of the earth’s surface. Seventy percent of the earth comprises water but we know very little about it. Color sensors aboard some satellites can actually reveal a lot about phytoplankton or microalgae blooms that are linked to ocean temperatures. These tiny organisms contribute to half the photosynthesis on the planet.

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16-Ice: Shells of an ice-less past

Brian Huber is a climate detective at the Smithsonian who grew up collecting arrowheads in the woods of Ohio, but now collects and studies fossils from sediment cores. Brian uses fossils of tiny organisms − foraminifera − to track climate over millions of years, including the Cretaceous Hot Greenhouse climate.

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Discovering Europe’s History Through its Timbers

An analysis of timber used to construct buildings in Europe hundreds of years ago is giving scientists and historians new insights into the region’s history from the 13th to 17th centuries. Using samples of wood taken from old buildings in Europe, Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, a historian and paleoclimatologist at Stockholm University, and Andrea Seim, a…

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E19 – Eavesdropping on the Ocean

To those of us on land, the world underneath the oceans seems quiet and serene. But scientists who study ocean acoustics will tell you it is anything but tranquil underwater. Our oceans are home to a cacophony of sounds – from the songs of marine mammals to the cracking of icebergs to the rumbling of earthquakes to the roar of ships.

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Centennial E3 – Rifts Beneath the Ocean Floor

Kathy Crane is a true adventurer. As one of the first women in the field of marine geophysics in the 1970s, she hypothesized and then helped discover the existence of hydrothermal vents on the Galápagos Rift along the East Pacific Rise in the mid-1970s and was one the first people to see many of the strange creatures that make their home in this improbable environment.

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E7 – From Landfills to Martian Hills

Building instruments to search for the building blocks of life in the rocks of Mars is no small feat. These gadgets must endure spaceflight, landing on the Martian surface, intense radiation, wild swings in temperature, uneven surfaces and then beam data collected millions of kilometers away back to expectant researchers on Earth.

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