The first day of our operation is usually filled with a lot of work preparing and testing the instruments we brought up here, preparing the airplanes, loading our equipment into the planes, setting up the equipment in the laboratory and preparing the sampling containers. Since our operation requires drilling holes through the sea ice, we [...]
April 27, 2011: We spent the night in Thule in the North Star Hotel. Before we could leave Thule the crew had to load the cargo back into the C130. Equipment is loaded onto palettes, and these palettes are loaded through the rear door into the plane. A C130 can handle four palettes with two tons of cargo [...]
Bags are packed and ready to go. April 25, 2011: We left Lamont in the afternoon to Schenectady, close to Scotia where the 109th Airlift Wing of the New York Air National Guard is located that will fly us up to CFS Alert. That unit provides extensive logistical support for all U.S. science operations in the arctic and [...]
Arctic summer sea ice is declining rapidly: a trend with enormous implications for global weather and climate. The multi-year Arctic Switchyard project will seek to distinguish the effects of natural climate variability from those of human-induced climate change.
Many scientists believe that jellyfish, particularly jellyfish swarms or blooms, are on the increase worldwide, turning up in regions where they never existed before. Research shows shows that many human activities are strongly correlated to jellyfish blooms.
“Humanity’s plastic footprint is probably more dangerous than its carbon footprint,” said Captain Charles Moore, who, in 1997, discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Its name is misleading because the huge expanse of floating marine debris is actually more like a soup of confetti-sized plastic bits, produced by the runoff of our throwaway lifestyle that [...]
State of the Planet is a forum for discussion on varying viewpoints. The opinions expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Earth Institute or Columbia University.
