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Rainbow in the Morning, Gives Fair Warning

October 19, 2014

A morning rainbow appeared behind the research vessel Knorr’s stack during a 2013 expedition known as the DeepDOM cruise. An interdisciplinary team of scientists onboard studied the composition of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in deep water from Uruguay to Barbados. During the nearly 5,000-mile route, researchers sampled the plume of the Amazon River and three large oceanic water masses. Their findings will help shed light on how carbon cycles from the ocean’s surface to its depths, and lay a foundation for future predictions on processes that are crucial to life in the ocean and the planetary climate system. (Photo by Krista Longnecker, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)