PMEL in the News
El Niño Again? This Is Why It’s Hard to Tell
The tropical Pacific Ocean is once again carrying on a will-it-or-won’t-it flirtation with an El Niño event, just a year after the demise of one of the strongest El Niños on record. The odds right now are about even for an El Niño to develop, frustrating forecasters stuck in the middle of what is called the spring predictability barrier. During this time, model forecasts aren’t as good as seeing into the future, in part because of the very nature of the El Niño cycle.
Soundscape of the deep ocean
The Economist Radio: A new form of bioengineering ditches the cell and could speed up innovation. Five giant tech firms are hoarding most of the world's data. Is it time to break up the oligopoly? Also, an ambient soundscape from the deepest known part of the ocean (STARTS AT 13:10)
Students learn real-world robotics
LINCOLN CITY — After 100 hours of designing, building and tweaking an underwater robot, four students from Taft High School stood eager to show a panel of judges just what their remotely operated vehicle could do.
This Drone Once Fought Wars. Now It’s Fighting Climate Change
THIS MARCH, A truck pulled onto a runway in Oregon, towing a miniature plane for a test flight. At 650 pounds, the plane was too large to be a toy, but too small to fit a pilot. That’s because the ArcticShark isn’t a toy, and it doesn’t need a pilot. It’s a drone.
The Bloop: An Underwater Mystery That Took Nearly 20 Years to Solve
In 1997, while searching for underwater volcanoes off the coast of South America, scientists recorded something they couldn't explain: a strange, exceptionally loud noise. They called it "the bloop." The bloop was one of the loudest underwater sounds ever recorded: hydrophones (underwater microphones) more than three thousand miles apart all captured the same noise.