Posted by Editor | Nov 17, 2009 | 0 Comments
Michael Studinger, Instrument Co-Principal Investigator, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory:
PUNTA ARENAS, Chile–The weather forecast for our survey over the Larsen C Ice Shelf looks good. Given the difficult weather over the past couple of days this is a welcome change. After studying satellite images and computer models and talking to the meteorologist at the Punta Arenas airport [...]
Posted by Editor | Nov 5, 2009 | 0 Comments
Nick Frearson, Gravimeter Instrument Team, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory:
PUNTA ARENAS, Chile–Not all rides in the DC-8 are smooth and effortless. Our flight down the Thwaites Glacier was a race against weather, with the stomach-churning quality of a carnival ride. Both the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers flow into the Amundsen Sea. This section of Antarctica, along [...]
Posted by Editor | Oct 28, 2009 | 0 Comments
Nick Frearson, Gravimeter Instrument Team, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory:
PUNTA ARENAS, Chile–Skimming across the Weddell Sea at 250 miles per hour I am finally on the way to Antarctica. Even though my visit to the white continent will be at a height of 1500 ft I still feel a sense of ‘homecoming’, as if I am back [...]
Posted by Editor | Oct 28, 2009 | 0 Comments
PUNTA ARENAS, Chile–After flying for several hours over a windswept Southern Ocean, the mission director announces that we will be slowly descending towards Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier. Just below are the Hudson Mountains, a small group of extinct volcanoes poking through the ice.
As we approach our survey area, John Sonntag from NASA’s flight facility on [...]
Posted by Editor | Oct 20, 2009 | 0 Comments
Nick Frearson, Gravimeter Instrument Team, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory:
PUNTA ARENAS, Chile–I have become a night watchman of sorts. The gravimeter we’re using in our flights over Antarctica must remain powered at all times, so between flights I hole up in the old terminal next to the aircraft watching, …and watching. We won’t be on the first [...]
Posted by Editor | Oct 12, 2009 | 0 Comments
Nick Frearson, Gravimeter Instrument Team, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory:
The flight engineer ticks off instruments over the intercom. “LVIS, ready.” “Gravity, ready.” “DACOM, ready.”
We are about to take the DC-8 on its first test flight before Antarctica. The pilots, clipped and professional, have just described the day’s flight plans and the plane is bustling with people making [...]
Posted by Kim Martineau | Oct 9, 2009 | 1 Comments
Before airplanes and satellite phones, polar exploration was a more dangerous undertaking than it is now. Many who set out for the frozen ends of the earth did not come back. Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen and British explorer Ernest Shackleton were some of the few who brought their entire crews home safely.
Nansen began his expedition [...]
Posted by Kim Martineau | Sep 15, 2009 | 0 Comments
Bärbel Hönisch, an expert on ocean acidification at Columbia, will speak after a screening of the film “A Sea Change” this Thursday.
Posted by Kevin Krajick | Sep 15, 2009 | 0 Comments
That rumbling you feel is not necessarily a passing subway. New York City and the surrounding region gets a surprising number of small earthquakes, and a 2008 study from the region’s network of seismographs, run by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, suggests that the risk of a damaging one is not negligible. This week, the federal government announced a major upgrade [...]
Posted by Kim Martineau | May 12, 2009 | 0 Comments
Another world lies beneath the Hudson River, as scientists have shown using pulses of sound to map the bottom. In recent years, the bathymetry maps developed at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Stony Brook University have turned up hundreds of shipwrecks and a new channel off Battery Park City, drawing interest from treasure hunters and mariners alike. Now a new group is finding inspiration: artists.
