What's New Archive
PMEL’s Dr. Bob Embley and JISAO’s Dr. Joe Resing will lead an expedition back to the NE Lau Basin near Fiji to map hydrothermal sites and re-visit the explosive West Mata volcano. Discovered in 2008, the West Mata volcano is the deepest active underwater volcano ever caught on film (watch how it was discovered in the YouTube video above).
You can follow along with the expedition on NOAA’s Ocean Explorer website from September 9-26, which includes daily logs and a live feed from the seafloor.
In papers published in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Oceans and Pure and Applied Geophysics, scientists from NOAA’s Center for Tsunami Research at PMEL and the University of Washington estimated, for the first time, the total energy of the 2011 Japan tsunami from measurements made in real time during the tsunami propagation.
When using the new energy estimate in tsunami computer models, the model results matched actual tsunami flood levels along the coast of Japan with much higher accuracy than models run without the energy estimate. These results will help scientists to further improve the tsunami forecast system.
The Carbon Group in partnership with PMEL engineers will be sailing, gliding and diving their way along the West Coast from July to September to continue time series measurements of carbon dioxide and ocean acidification conditions along the coast.
By using data from ships, buoys, surface and subsurface gliders, PMEL and partners hope to demonstrate how all these observation systems can work together to help paint a more accurate picture of ocean acidification off the U.S. West Coast. Explore more at the Carbon Group website.
PMEL and University of Washington scientists will help campers turn into oceanographers at the 10th annual NOAA Science Camp in Seattle, Washington the weeks of July 9th and 16th. Middle school campers will get to experience what it is like to be an oceanographer by using instruments to measure physical properties of the water and atmosphere as well as getting the chance to see a working buoy in the water and learn how PMEL uses buoys to gather data around the world.
For more information please visit the Washington Sea Grant Science Camp website.
Recently published papers on Axial Seamount in the journal Nature Geoscience present, for the first time, precursory signals recorded by seafloor instruments before an undersea volcanic eruption. NOAA and Oregon State University scientists Dr. Bill Chadwick and Dr. Bob Dziak suggest that such signals could be used to issue both long-term and short-term forecasts of future eruptions at the site.
For more information please visit the NOAA Vents Program website.
Bering Sea marine mammals, birds, and fish are shifting where they eat, bear their young, and make their homes in response to changes in sea ice extent and duration. These patterns of change are documented in a special issue of the journal of Deep Sea Research II now available online with many authors from PMEL’s Ecosystem & Fisheries-Oceanography Coordinated Investigations program.
You can read more on the NOAA press release.
PMEL scientists with the Fisheries Oceanography program helped deploy a drifter adopted by Ballard High School's Oceanography class as part of NOAA’s Adopt a Drifter program. The drifter was lowered off the side of the NOAA ship Oscar Dysonin the Bering Sea and will travel with the ocean currents while students track its path and predict where it might go next.
For more information, please visit NOAA’s Adopt a Drifter program website.
Come explore, celebrate, learn and discover all that NOAA does in Seattle at an Open House on Friday June 8 as part of the 2012 Science Festival with the Pacific Science Center. Join us for guided tours, lectures, and films plus meet with real NOAA scientists and engineers to ask them those hard questions about what is happening to our planet.
For more information please visit the Science Festival calendar page. Hope to see you all there!
PMEL’s Dr. Richard Feely is one of the authors on a recently released article in Limnology and Oceanography providing the first concrete evidence in North America that carbon dioxide being taken up by the oceans is killing oyster larvae. Scientists found that when oyster larvae were exposed to deep, more corrosive waters they did not survive to adulthood.
For more information on ocean acidification and the research being done at PMEL please visit the Carbon Group web page.
PMEL scientists have found a large reduction in the amount of the coldest deep ocean water, called Antarctic Bottom Water, all around the Southern Ocean over the past few decades. Sarah Purkey, a University of Washington graduate student, and PMEL’s Dr. Gregory Johnson present these findings in Journal of Climate article now available online.
Changes in this water mass contribute to sea level rise and Earth’s heat uptake. Read more in the NOAA press release.