Multimedia

Rainfall prediction illustration

June 22, 2024

Spring winds boost Atlantic salinity, fueling summer rains in Africa and the U.S. via soil moisture buildup, convection, and increased moisture transport.

Recent Past and Near-Future Sea Level Rise Rates

Dispersants break oil into tiny droplets using detergents and solvents, but sunlight quickly weakens their effectiveness on oil floating at the sea surface.

A microbial garden beneath the seafloor

Chemical reactions below the seafloor create energy-rich fluids that sustain a vast, diverse microbial biosphere adapted to specific underground niches.

A smorgasbord of chemical reactions

Deep-sea microbes thrive near hydrothermal vents by using diverse chemical reactions—both with and without oxygen—to extract energy and grow underground.

Right whale detection mooring operation

To quiet noisy recordings in rough seas, WHOI engineers created a two-tiered mooring. A bungee-like top line absorbs motion, keeping the hydrophone stable below.

Ropeless fishing technology to release a trap line entangling a right whale

WHOI engineers created a ropeless fishing system that releases lines using acoustic signals—now moving from successful land tests to at-sea trials and refinements.

Pinocchios Nose: A warm water intrusion along the New England Shelf

Map from 2014 showing sea surface temperatures with a glider track highlighting a warm-water intrusion called Pinocchio’s Nose.

Scale depicting the concentration of pH and examples of solutions

Seawater is becoming more acidic as CO? levels rise. Even small drops in pH can harm marine life that builds shells or skeletons from calcium carbonate.

Scallop Life Cycle being affected by ocean acidification

Climate change and ocean acidification could wipe out over half of Atlantic sea scallops in 3080 years—unless strong management and CO? cuts slow the trend.

Groundwater cycle

Groundwater flows into the ocean through coastal sediments, carrying chemicals that can impact ocean chemistry—an overlooked part of Earth’s water cycle.

Methods for data collection under and on the world’s ocean

Methods for data collection under and on the world’s oceans

Microbial "Trojan horses" stages

Some bacteria ingested by protists escape digestion, survive, and even reproduce—eventually returning to the environment, potentially still infectious.

Microbial Life Tree

Genetic analyses trace deep-sea microbes’ diverse metabolic paths across bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes, unveiling life’s complex tree.

Microplastics breaking down in different areas of the environment

Scientists study how larger plastics break down into microplastics, exploring land and ocean processes like sunlight, temperature, and abrasion that cause plastic fragmentation.

Microplastics in the Food Chain illustration

Plastics that get into the ocean often degrade into microplastics that are ingested by fish and shellfish and can go up the food chain to be ingested by humans.

Mid-Ocean Ridges: Magnetics and Polarity, featuring seafloor spreading

Lava at mid-ocean ridges records Earth’s magnetic flips, creating stripes that reveal seafloor spreading rates and past reversals of Earth’s magnetic field.

Monsoon circulation cycle

WHOI scientists study the Indian Ocean monsoon cycle, where ocean winds pick up moisture that condenses into heavy rains vital for billions of people’s crops and livelihoods.

Monsoon season rain cycle

WHOI scientists are studying the link between water at the surface of the Indian Ocean and predicting monsoon rains.

Multibeam sonar image of Galápagos seamounts

Multibeam sonar provided 1-meter-per-pixel resolution of seafloor bathymetry, compared with 800-meter-per-pixel resolution of the same area provided by satellite altimetry data.

Multifrequency sonar image of underwater topography of an iceberg

Researchers created a colorful image of underwater topography in Greenland’s Sermilik Fjord using sonar data to estimate iceberg melting rates.

Nitrogen cycle, with imbedded callouts, captions

Chemical detectives follow nitrogen’s elusive and essential trail in the ocean.

Sinking water in the North Atlantic

Global map showing warm Gulf Stream waters flowing north toward the Arctic, where they cool, sink, and return south as part of the global ocean circulation.