January 25, 2021 By Chris Mooney and Andrew Freedman The Washington Post
Global ice loss has increased rapidly over the past two decades, and scientists are still underestimating just how much sea levels could rise, according to alarming new research published this month.
November 18, 2020 By Paul Voosen Science Magazine
Ask climate scientists how fast the world’s oceans are creeping upward, and many will say 3.2 millimeters per year—a figure enshrined in the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, from 2014. But the number, based on satellite measurements taken since the early 1990s, is a long-term average. In fact, the global rate varied so much over that period that it was hard to say whether it was holding steady or accelerating.
June 8, 2020 By Heather Murphy The New York Times
The first American woman to walk in space has become the first woman to reach the deepest known spot in the ocean. On Sunday, Kathy Sullivan, 68, an astronaut and oceanographer, emerged from her 35,810-foot dive to the Challenger Deep, according to EYOS Expeditions, a company coordinating the logistics of the mission.
April 14, 2020 By Paul Voosen Science Magazine
Late in 2018, just after its arrival in orbit, NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite passed over an iconic site from the atomic age. By chance, its laser altimeter, used mostly to measure the changing height of polar ice, bounced light off the exposed rocks of Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific Ocean, home to 23 nuclear weapons tests. Then, mission scientists looked closer: To their surprise, the laser was also generating underwater reflections.
April 7, 2020 By Nadia Drake National Geographic
A new book by NASA astrobiologist Kevin Hand argues the first step to finding aliens should be exploring the depths our own planet’s oceans.