Multimedia Items
How does the ocean impact hurricanes?
Hurricanes are the most powerful storms on the planet, spanning hundreds of miles. We know them for the destruction they cause when they reach land. Their high winds, heavy rains, and storm surges cause billions of dollars in damage each year. But the effects of hurricanes aren’t limited to landfall. They have an outsized impact on the ocean, as well.
Read MoreOcean Encounters: Hurricanes
Coastal cities lie at the intersection of many issues—ocean and climate, ecosystems and human infrastructure, and a rapidly growing population on a constantly changing landscape between land and sea. Hurricanes present dramatic and often wholesale change that need multidisciplinary, collaborative solutions, that focus on supporting communities through uncertain times.
Read MoreForecasting Future Hurricanes
A Portal to Hurricanes—Past and Future
This is a bird’s-eye view of a blue hole in the Bahamas. In the middle of it, WHOI researchers in a pontoon boat prepare to extract cores of sediments that…
Read MoreWhere Hurricanes Are Born
Most Atlantic hurricanes begin to form over Africa, where hot, dry desert air meets cool, wet air over jungle regions farther south. In the seam between these high- and low-pressure…
Read MoreEvidence of Hurricanes
Hurricanes have left their mark on Cape Cod, and members of the Coastal Systems Group go to great lengths to find evidence of past storms in local ponds and marshes.…
Read MoreBlue Holes and Hurricanes
The dark blue patch in the bottom right of this aerial shot of Discovery Bay, Jamaica, is a “blue hole.” These large sinkholes formed as caves on land during the…
Read MoreTracing the History of Hurricanes
WHOI guest student Dan Litchmore and research assistants Charlotte Wiman and Nicole D’Entremont (left to right) conduct a sonar survey of coastal ocean bottom sediments near the Caribbean island of…
Read MoreTremors of the deep sea
We can all imagine the devastation hurricanes bring ashore. Well it turns out that hurricanes could be just as devastating to denizens of the deep ocean.
Read MoreLong-Buried Trends
This is a bird’s-eye view of a blue hole in the Bahamas. In the middle of it, WHOI researchers in a pontoon boat prepare to extract cores of sediments that…
Read MoreVirgin Islands Research
Laura Weber, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program, teaches middle and high school students of the U.S. Virgin Islands about the role of microorganisms in the health and…
Read MoreRoots of the Sea
MIT-WHOI Joint Program Ph.D. student Cynthia Becker paddles her kayak into the mangroves of St. John, US Virgin Islands to collect water samples and study the microorganisms residing in mangrove…
Read MoreHeading North
MIT-WHOI Joint Program student Joleen Heiderich and WHOI engineer Patrick Deane deploy a Spray glider from a small boat off the coast of Miami. The robotic vehicle is the workhorse…
Read MoreGliding Beneath Florence
WHOI oceanographer Robert Todd launched a Spray glider like this toward the path of Hurricane Florence to measure the amount of heat stored in the ocean. Hurricanes are fueled by warm…
Read MoreMeasuring Fuel for a Hurricane
WHOI scientists, along with colleagues from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, deploy a meteorological buoy off the research vessel Neil Armstrong near Cape Hatteras in April, 2017. The buoy…
Read MoreRemember the ALAMOs
A U.S. Air Force “Hurricane Hunter” prepares to drop an ALAMO (Air-Launched Autonomous Micro-Observer) float into the ocean in front of a hurricane. WHOI oceanographer Steve Jayne routinely joins the…
Read MoreForecasting Hurricane Intensity
To forecast hurricane intensities more accurately, scientists need to know a critical piece of information: how much heat is stored in the in upper 1,000 meters of the ocean. Hurricanes gather…
Read MoreA Visit from the CNO
Admiral John Richardson, the U.S. Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations, visited WHOI in September, 2016, and received a number of briefings on research, technology, and assets sponsored by the Navy,…
Read MoreImproving Hurricane Prediction
A view of Silver Beach in North Falmouth, Mass., after the hurricane of 1938 is a reminder of the damage hurricanes can cause. Jeff Donnelly and colleagues in the WHOI…
Read MoreGhost Forest Busters
WHOI graduate and guest students collect cross sections from ancient Atlantic white cedar tree stumps in Hundred Acre Cove in Rhode Island. Atlantic white cedars are particularly sensitive to temperature…
Read MoreMeasuring Wave Energy
MIT-WHOI Joint Program graduate students Lizzie Wallace (left) and Rose Palermo prepare to deploy tiltmeters to measure the current produced by waves in Whale Bay, Bermuda, as part of a…
Read MoreA-coring We Will Go
Long metal tubes protrude from the bow and stern of a research boat headed toward a blue hole off Long Island in the Bahamas. Scientists lower the tubes to the…
Read MorePrepare for Turbulence
A radar view from the cockpit of a U.S. Air Force “Hurricane Hunter” (small white airplane icon) shows the eye of Hurricane Irma as the plane flies into the storm…
Read MoreGroup Effort
Members of the Coastal Systems Group led by Jeff Donnelly (far right) took to the high seas of Salt Pond in Falmouth, Mass., this summer to collect sediment cores from…
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