All events take place in the Press Briefing Room, New Orleans Convention Center riverside room R03, and run 45 minutes.
Press briefings will be live-streamed via Zoom Webinar for registered press and recordings will be made public on AGU’s YouTube page after the events. Media availability events bring reporters and scientists to the table to discuss research in a more informal, ask-me-anything style. A Zoom meeting link for media availabilities can be provided to off-site reporters on request by registering for the event using the links below.
Members of the media should complete press registration for the conference to attend press events, online or in person. More information about press activities at the 2025 Annual Meeting, including press registration, press releases and the on-site press room, is available in the AGU25 Online Press Center.
All events listed in Central Standard Time.
Schedule at a glance
Click titles or scroll down for event descriptions.
Monday, 15 December
12:00 – 1:00 PM Lunch served in the press room
1:00 PM media availability
The Race to Resilience: Mapping the Future of the Highly Endangered Mississippi River Birdsfoot Delta. Mississippi River Delta Transition Initiative
Request live-stream (registration required)
2:00 PM media availability
Artificial Intelligence for Earth and Ocean Science. Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego
Request live-stream (registration required)
3:00 PM briefing
From Pixels to Earth Action: Operationalizing Geospatial AI Foundation Models. Universities Space Research Association
Join live-stream
Tuesday, 16 December
9:00 AM briefing
The Sun to Interstellar Space: Six New Missions Piecing Together the Space Weather Puzzle. NASA
Join live-stream
11:00 AM briefing
2025 Arctic Report Card – Tracking Arctic change for 20 years. NOAA
Join live-stream
11:30 AM -1:00 PM Lunch served in the press room
12:00 PM briefing
Singer-Songwriter Jewel blends ocean science and sound in data-inspired soundscape. NASA
Join live-stream
1:00 PM media availability
IMAP mission : Capturing Space Weather Info Before Reaching Final Destination, First Light Data and What This Means For Earth. University of New Hampshire Request live-stream (registration required)
2:00 PM media availability
Science: Navigating the Arctic’s Changing Future. UIC Science LLC and University of Alaska Fairbanks
Request live-stream (registration required)
3:00 PM media availability
Atmospheric River Research Flights Go Global. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego
Request live-stream (registration required)
4:00 PM briefing
State of the US scientific enterprise. AGU
Join live-stream
Wednesday, 17 December
9:00 AM briefing
Half a Decade of Mars Exploration: NASA’s Perseverance Rover. JPL
Join live-stream
11:00 AM briefing
The Moon and Mars: How new science results are enabling future space exploration. Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, CU Boulder
Join live-stream
1:00 PM briefing
Costal sea levels rise is accelerating globally. AGU
Join live-stream
3:00 PM media availability
Time’s Second Arrow Evolution, Order, and a New Law of Nature. Carnegie Science
Request live-stream (registration required)
Thursday, 18 December
9:00 AM media availability
New Study Calculates Economic Consequences of Degradation of Oceans. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego
Request live-stream (registration required)
10:00 AM media availability
Touch ancient Antarctic ice and learn more about COLDEX, its recent discovery of 6-million-year-old ice and its current fieldwork in Antarctica. Oregon State University
Request live-stream (registration required)
1:00 PM media availability
Global Atmospheric Impacts of the 2022 Hunga Volcano Eruption. World Climate Research Programme
Request live-stream (registration required)
4:00 PM briefing
Nereid Under Ice: Pushing the boundaries of ocean exploration and discovery. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Join live-stream
AGU25 Press Events – detailed listing
Monday, 15 December
The Race to Resilience: Mapping the Future of the Highly Endangered Mississippi River Birdsfoot Delta
Mississippi River Delta Transition Initiative
The Mississippi River’s Birdsfoot Delta is home to vital fisheries, a globally important trade corridor, and historic communities. It is also one of North America’s most endangered landscapes, threatened by extreme weather, coastal land loss, reduced river sediment and other issues. The degradation of this critical ecosystem and economic driver could have cascading effects extending to New Orleans, the Gulf Coast and nation, and internationally.
The Mississippi River Delta Transition Initiative, or MissDelta, is confronting these challenges head-on, using collaborative science to advance coastal resilience. With funding by the National Academies’ Gulf Research Program, our fourteen partner institutions utilize advanced computer modeling, extensive field research and community collaboration as we seek to help residents, industry and agencies prepare for the future. At AGU 2025, media can hear from both experienced and early career scientists as they share cutting-edge research from this living laboratory.
Panel:
- Sam Bentley, Louisiana State University
- Claire Kemick, Tulane University
- Faith Walton, Louisiana State University
- Andria Miller, Jackson State University
Related presentations:
Contact: Bobbi Parry, Mississippi River Delta Transition Initiative, [email protected]
Artificial Intelligence for Earth and Ocean Science
Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego
Scientists at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography are working to advance cutting-edge scientific research and artificial intelligence use across earth and ocean science. A new initiative from the Climate Analytics Lab at Scripps called the GAIA Initiative aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence to transform how we understand the planet. The aims of the program are to uncover patterns and relationships in Earth system data that traditional methods cannot detect; to improve forecasts for climate resilience, disaster preparedness, and environmental management; and to prepare the next generation of researchers with modern data-centric skills for Earth system science.
This media availability will showcase the convergence of Earth science with data science and artificial intelligence from two leading experts using machine learning and artificial intelligence for earth science applications. Duncan Watson-Parris leads the GAIA Initiative and applies machine learning to climate modeling and to understand the nuances of clouds on a global scale and Alice-Agnes Gabriel, who uses digital twins to combine supercomputing, near real-time data assimilation, multi-scale physics-based modeling, and machine learning to offer new capabilities for understanding and forecasting complex solid earth hazards including earthquakes and tsunami.
Panel:
- Duncan Watson-Parris: Atmospheric physicist and head of the Climate Analytics Lab at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
- Alice-Agnes Gabriel: Computational Seismologist at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Related presentations:
Contact: Lauren Fimbres Wood, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, [email protected]
From Pixels to Earth Action: Operationalizing Geospatial AI Foundation Models
Universities Space Research Association
Our scientists will focus on recent efforts to operationalize geospatial AI foundation models for Earth Action, including the Prithvi-EO-2 foundation model which received the 2025 AGU Open Science Recognition Prize and Meta’s SAM2 foundation model for image segmentation that USRA is using in combination with remote sensing data for USGS use cases.
Prithvi’s development, led by NASA with collaborators from the geospatial AI community including USRA, focuses on high-resolution, multisensor satellite data. It is optimized for sustainability and climate applications—such as wildfire risk assessments, flood mapping, ecosystem monitoring, and climate adaptation planning. Its open-source nature is accelerating international research on environmental change.
SAM 2 (Segment Anything Model 2) is Meta’s next-generation model for universal image segmentation. USRA is operationalizing use of this model with a fine-tuned version for segmenting water in satellite and airborne remote sensing imagery for USGS use cases.
Panel:
- Dr. David Bell, Director of Universities Space Research Association’s Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science (RIACS)
- Ms. Disha Sindham , Researcher, Data Science, Universities Space Research Association at NASA Ames
- Dr. Sujit Roy, Principal Research Scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville
Related presentations:
Contact: Dr. Suraiya Farukhi, Universities Space Research Association, [email protected], 443-812-6945
Tuesday, 16 December
The Sun to Interstellar Space: Six New Missions Piecing Together the Space Weather Puzzle
NASA
As auroras danced across the American sky in November, mission teams at Cape Canaveral were preparing to launch ESCAPADE – two spacecraft destined to study space weather at Mars, and the last of six NASA missions launching in 2025 to study heliophysics.
These missions are now preparing to fill in new pieces of the puzzle in understanding the vast, interconnected system of particles, magnetic fields, and plasma that starts at the Sun and shapes space weather out to the edges of our solar system. The new missions that joined NASA’s heliophysics fleet this year are EZIE, PUNCH, TRACERS, IMAP, Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and ESCAPADE.
Join experts to see early data from the missions and learn how each mission’s unique perspective will help researchers unravel the space weather that can threaten our satellites, communications systems, GPS, and astronauts.
Panel:
- Joe Westlake, Heliophysics Division Director, NASA Headquarters
- Craig DeForest, PUNCH Principal Investigator, Southwest Research Institute
- David McComas, IMAP Principal Investigator, Princeton University
- Rob Lillis, ESCAPADE Principal Investigator, University of California, Berkeley
- Lara Waldrop, Carruthers Geocorona Observatory Principal Investigator, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Related presentations:
- SH14B-03 ESCAPADE’s New Mission: Two-Point Space Weather Measurements at Earth, Mars, and in-Between
Contact: Abbey Interrante, NASA, [email protected]
2025 Arctic Report Card – Tracking Arctic change for 20 years
NOAA
The 2025 Arctic Report Card marks the 20th year of the annual report that synthesizes sustained Arctic observations each year into a clear, peer-reviewed account of the evolution and complexity of the Arctic region. The Report Card will feature updates, including several new records, on this year’s air temperature, sea ice extent, ocean temperature, plankton blooms, snow cover, tundra/ forest greenness, Greenland ice sheet and precipitation.
New chapters focus on emerging issues including the Atlantification of the Arctic Ocean, impacts of melting permafrost on the phenomenon of “rusting rivers” throughout Alaska, impacts of warming on glaciers and ice caps, the response of midwater and bottom-dwelling fish and other marine species to changing Bering and Chukchi Sea conditions, and the work of the Indigenous Sentinels Network, a community-based environmental monitoring project based on St. Paul Island, Alaska.
The report card is produced by 112 authors from 13 different countries, reflecting broad international expertise and collaboration. The card is an internationally recognized primary source of timely information for the media, students, scientists, Arctic communities and other decision-makers.
Panel:
- Steven Thur, PhD, NOAA Assistant Administrator, Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and Acting NOAA Chief Scientist (https://www.noaa.gov/our-people/leadership/steve-thur-phd)
- Matthew Druckenmiller, PhD, National Snow and Ice Data Center (https://nsidc.org/about/about-nsidc/what-we-do/our-people/matthew_druckenmiller)
- Hannah-Marie Ladd, Director, Indigenous Sentinels Network, Aleut Community of Saint Paul Island (https://www.sentinelsnetwork.com/about-us)
- Gabriel Wolken, PhD, International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks (https://dggs.alaska.gov/pubs/staff/gjwolken)
- Abagael Pruitt, PhD, UC Davis (https://poulinlab.ucdavis.edu/people/abagael-pruitt)
- Gerald “JJ” Frost, PhD, ABR Inc. (https://www.abrinc.com/about/staff/gerald-v-frost-phd)
Related presentations:
Contact: Monica Allen, NOAA, [email protected]; Theo Stein, NOAA, [email protected]
Singer-Songwriter Jewel blends ocean science and sound in data-inspired soundscape
NASA
Multi-platinum singer-songwriter and visual artist Jewel unveils her groundbreaking soundscape drawing on ocean health metrics. Gathering data on oceanic health metrics including temperature variations, migratory animal patterns, wave activity, and salinity, Jewel has generated a unique 12-minute soundscape that will “sing on behalf of Earth’s oceans,” sharing both historic and real time fluctuations in the data being collected.
Jewel worked closely with teams from NASA, NOAA, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to the original composition, Jewel has fashioned the Heart of the Ocean, an eight-foot-tall resin and steel sculpture animated by 60,000 dancing LED lights. Designed to embody the dynamic relationship between human activity and the sea, the data-fed soundtrack plays out from this original piece of art.
Panel:
- Greg Niemeyer, Professor of Media Innovation, Department of Art Practice at UC Berkley
- Kevin Murphy, NASA Chief Science Data Officer
- Chelle Gentemann, Open Science Program Scientist, NASA Office of the Chief Science Data Officer on Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) assignment from the International Computer Science Institute
Contact: Josh Weinberg, AGU, [email protected]
IMAP Mission: Capturing Space Weather Info Before Reaching Final Destination, First Light Data and What This Means For Earth
University of New Hampshire
NASA’s IMAP mission — the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe — will work to understand the sun’s role in space weather and space climate. IMAP will map the heliosphere — a bubble surrounding and protecting our solar system and making Earth inhabitable — which regulates galactic cosmic rays which can impact everything from the safety of astronauts during space travel to power grids, GPS and communication networks here on Earth.
Mission and instrument leads from the University of New Hampshire, NASA and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory for the IMAP mission are excited to share “first light” — when scientific data from instruments begin to stream in, in this case from an area before its targeted location nearly a million miles from Earth toward the sun. They will also reveal how IMAP has already been able to capture a space weather event on its way to its final destination and what this means.
They will be available to provide behind-the-scenes details of the mission and what IMAP will investigate in the years to come: the solar wind — a continuous stream of particles emitted by the sun — all the way from its origins to the farthest reaches of our solar system; the mysterious acceleration of those particles; and the outermost boundary of the heliosphere, the cosmic shield that protects our solar system from harmful cosmic radiation.
For more information: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/imap/
Panel:
- Nathan Schwadron, physics professor at the University of New Hampshire, co-deputy principal investigator for IMAP mission and instrument lead for IMAP-Lo
- Eric Christian, senior research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and co-deputy principal investigator for IMAP mission
- Matina Gkioulidou, heliophysicist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and project scientist and co-investigator of the IMAP mission
Related presentations:
Contact: Robbin Ray, University of New Hampshire, [email protected]
Science: Navigating the Arctic’s Changing Future
UIC Science LLC and University of Alaska Fairbanks
From climate to national security, the Arctic is increasingly at the center of international dialogue. Join Alaska’s research leaders for a roundtable press availability focused on how scientific research and innovation will play a pivotal role in what’s next in the Arctic, and how scientists can learn from and work within the region’s unique communities, cultures and conditions. The experts on this panel from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and UIC Science can offer perspectives on concepts from the global future of Arctic science to the influence of geopolitics on research to the logistical and technical capacity required to sustain long-term observational networks and field experiments in the Arctic.
Panel:
- Laura Conner, UAF vice chancellor for research
- Larry Hinzman, UArctic vice president – International Polar Year; lead, University of Alaska Arctic Leadership Initiative
- Bob McCoy, director of the UAF Geophysical Institute
- Nicole Misarti, director of the Institute of Northern Engineering
- Terri Mitchell, General Manager of UIC Science
- Bradley Moran, dean of the UAF College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, which operates the R/V Sikuliaq
- Serina Wesen, Outreach & Engagement Manager, UIC Science
Related presentations:
- SY42B: Centered in Place: Connecting with Rural Communities in Alaskan Research and Outreach I GeoBurst (Serina Wesen, UIC Science; Lloyd Pikok, UIC Science; Neesha Stellrecht, UIC ARL)
Contacts: Marine Gillespie, UIC Science LLC, [email protected]; Marmian Grimes (in Fairbanks), University of Alaska Fairbanks [email protected]; Becky Lindsey (at AGU25), University of Alaska Fairbanks, [email protected]
Atmospheric River Research Flights Go Global
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego
New for this winter, Atmospheric River research flights are going global. For the last 10 years, the Atmospheric River Reconnaissance program has partnered with the U.S. Air Force and NOAA “Hurricane Hunters” to fly planes over the Pacific Ocean to conduct targeted data collection in atmospheric rivers to improve forecasts for storms approaching the U.S. west coast.
This winter, in coordination with field campaigns run by NASA, Environment and Climate Change Canada, an international partnership, and the Office of Naval Research, the flights expand to the Atlantic Ocean with flights coordinated off the East Coast of the United States and Canada, and from Europe. This expansion is called the Global Atmospheric River and Reconnaissance Program (GARRP). This global program hopes to transform forecasts of extreme weather events and extend reliable predictions beyond the current one-week limit.
The program will continue to be led by the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E) at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The global program flights will begin in January 2026. This media briefing will aim to inform media on the updates to the program.
Panel:
- Marty Ralph, Research Meteorologist and Founding Director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and leader of AR Recon
- Vijay Tallapragada, Senior scientist at NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center and co-leader of AR Recon
- Anna Wilson, Assistant Director of Atmospheric River Reconnaissance at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Operational lead for AR Recon
Related presentations:
Contact: Lauren Fimbres Wood, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, [email protected]
State of the US scientific enterprise
AGU
AGU leadership will discuss the state of the scientific enterprise amid the U.S. Federal Administration’s ongoing efforts to disrupt federal science. The session will address the Administration’s refusal to release congressionally mandated science funding; its firing of federal scientists and weakening of federal science agencies; and its halting of key climate assessments and U.S. participation in international climate engagement. AGU leaders will also outline how AGU is supporting scientists, defending scientific integrity, and working to safeguard the nation’s research capacity during this period of instability.
Panel:
- Brandon Jones, President, AGU
- Janice Lachance, Executive Director and CEO, AGU
Contact: Josh Weinberg, AGU, [email protected]
Wednesday, 17 December
Half a Decade of Mars Exploration: NASA’s Perseverance Rover
JPL
NASA’s Perseverance rover is coming up on the five-year mark for Red Planet exploration and will soon eclipse Opportunity’s record for the longest distance driven by a roving vehicle. The briefing will chronicle both new engineering and science results. Steve Lee will provide an update on the rover’s status and future plans. Steve will also chronicle a paper published that week in IEEE Transactions on Field Robotics on Perseverance ENAV and how the rover team’s continued refinement of its ENAV could benefit future Moon and Mars missions. M2020 scientist Ken Williford will cover the results from a paper published the week of AGU in Science, titled “Carbonated ultramafic igneous rocks in Jezero crater, Mars” (which documents geologic discoveries in Jezero Crater’s Margin Unit). Finally, Mars 2020 scientist Briony Horgan will review science discoveries on the crater rim so far—she’s giving a talk on that subject at AGU. She will also cover the science team’s plans for the rover’s next geologic area of interest—Lac de Charmes (where the rover is expected to roll up to the week of AGU).
Panel:
- Steve Lee, M2020 deputy project manager, JPL
- Ken Williford, M2020 scientist, Blue Marble Space Institute
- Briony Horgan, M2020 scientist, Purdue
Contact: DC Agle, JPL, [email protected]
The Moon and Mars: How new science results are enabling future space exploration
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, CU Boulder
Since Mariner 4’s first flyby of Mars 60 years ago, humanity has taken huge strides in understanding the Red Planet. As attention turns to future missions, it’s critical to use current assets to understand and overcome the novel challenges we’ll face to establish longer-term habitation on the Moon and land humans on Mars. These range from protecting astronauts from potentially harmful solar flares to the removal of dust from vital equipment to securing in situ resources.
This media event will highlight key science results to understand potential challenges—and proactively consider solutions. These include:
- Understanding dust lofting and transport on small, airless bodies like the Moon to develop dust-removal solutions
- Understanding the abundance and distribution of water and minerals on the Moon to enable longer-term human presence and exploration
- Recent efforts to miniaturize magnetometers to conduct local surveys to understand how crustal fields protect the Martian surface from radiation
- Developing new decision-making tools to support human exploration to implement Mars space weather forecasting capabilities
Panel:
- Dr. Shannon Curry, Associate Professor, Astrophysical & Planetary Sciences, CU Boulder
- Dr. Gina DiBraccio, Director (Acting), Solar System Exploration Division, and Deputy Director, Heliophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- Dr. Bethany Ehlmann, Director, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, CU Boulder
- Dr. Jared Espley, Planetary Magnetospheres Lab Chief, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- Dr. Xu Wang, Research Scientist, IMPACT Lab, CU Boulder
Contact: Willow Reed, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, CU Boulder, [email protected]
Sea level rise is accelerating worldwide
AGU
A July DOE report controversially asserted sea level rise is not accelerating on U.S. coasts. In response, a new paper to be published Wednesday in AGU Advances finds the rate of sea level rise has doubled in the last century. In many locations on Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf Coast, waters levels regularly exceed official high tide elevations. Panelists will discuss these findings, evidence that rising sea levels worldwide result from human-caused climate change and regional conditions influencing sea levels on the Gulf coast. The panel will also dig into public perceptions of the science of sea level and how people understand data, scale, rates of change and the new normal.
Panel
- Roger Creel, Texas A&M University
- Daniel Gilford, Climate Central
- Christopher Piecuch, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
- Alison Rellinger, Mississippi State University
Related sessions:
Contact: Liza Lester, AGU, [email protected]
Time’s Second Arrow: Evolution, Order, and a New Law of Nature
Carnegie Science
In 2023, Robert Hazen and Michael Wong hypothesized a “missing” natural law recognizing evolution as a common feature of the natural world. They have expanded this approach in a new book, “Time’s Second Arrow,” out early next year, explaining how a range of systems from atoms to minerals and planets to stars develop increasing complexity over time.
Hazen and Wong will preview their book and discuss how it builds on their previous work, including an exploration of the balance between the tendency for disorder governed by the second law of thermodynamics and the development of complexity predicted by their law of increasing functional information.
Additionally, they will talk about what this proposed new law could reveal about the emergence of life on Earth and the search for life elsewhere. According to Hazen and Wong, the universe is at an inflection point in the rise of complexity, prompting questions about meaning and purpose that exist at the nexus of science and philosophy.
Panel:
- Robert Hazen, Carnegie Senior Staff Scientist, 2019 AGU Fellow
- Michael Wong, Research Scientist
Contact: Natasha Metzler, Carnegie Science, [email protected]
Thursday, 18 December
New Study Calculates Economic Consequences of Degradation of Oceans
Scripps Institution Of Oceanography, UC San Diego
A metric increasingly used by policymakers to quantify the economic harm caused by climate change is known as the social cost of carbon, the measure of the global economic impact from increasing carbon dioxide emissions. Until now, the ocean was largely overlooked in the accounting even though the degradation of coral reef ecosystems, economic losses from fisheries impacts, and damage to coastal infrastructure are well documented.
For the first time, a new study in Nature Climate Change from researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego integrates the ocean into the social cost of carbon and finds the cost to society nearly doubles when calculating ocean impacts from climate change.
In this media availability, study author Kate Ricke can review the methodology for these calculations, and how she hopes the “blue social cost of carbon” value will be a tool used in cost-benefit analysis for decisionmakers.
Speaker:
- Katharine Ricke, climate scientist at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and School of Global Policy and Strategy.
Related presentations:
Contact: Lauren Fimbres Wood, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, [email protected]
Touch ancient Antarctic ice and learn more about COLDEX, its recent discovery of 6-million-year-old ice and its current fieldwork in Antarctica
Oregon State University
Scientists with the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Oldest Ice Exploration, or COLDEX, a collaboration of 15 U.S. research institutions led by Oregon State University, will give media an opportunity to see and touch Antarctic ice, learn why scientists study ancient ice and discuss recent findings and the current Antarctic field season.
The researchers recently announced the discovery of the oldest directly dated ice and air on the planet. The 6-million-year-old ice, collected by COLDEX team members in the Allan Hills area of East Antarctica, provides an unprecedented window into Earth’s past climate. This ice is from a period in Earth’s history where abundant geological evidence indicates much warmer temperatures and higher sea levels compared to today.
Panel:
- Ed Brook, COLDEX Director and professor of paleoclimatology at Oregon State University
- Duncan Young, COLDEX executive committee, research scientist, University of Texas, Austin
- Peter Neff, COLDEX co-director for knowledge transfer, assistant professor, University of Minnesota
Related presentations:
Contact: Michelle Klampe, Oregon State University, [email protected]
Global Atmospheric Impacts of the 2022 Hunga Volcano Eruption
World Climate Research Programme
The “Hunga Volcanic Eruption Atmospheric Impacts Report, a landmark international scientific assessment,” has been released today under the Atmospheric Processes and their Role in Climate (APARC) project of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP).
The report provides a comprehensive analysis of the atmospheric effects of the 15 January 2022 eruption of the Hunga volcano, the most explosive event of the satellite era. Combining unprecedented satellite, balloon, and ground-based observations with global modeling studies, the report documents the eruption’s far-reaching effects on the stratosphere, climate, and ozone. Join the report co-chairs and contributors for a discussion of the major findings.
Panel: TBD
Contact: Carlos Montoya, World Climate Research Programme, [email protected]
Nereid Under Ice: Pushing the boundaries of ocean exploration and discovery
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Two of the hardest places on Earth to reach are the deep seafloor beneath Arctic ice and the turbulent waters at the front of melting glaciers. Exploration of each reveals something about our planet, and both are now more accessible thanks to technology pioneered in the hybrid remotely operated vehicle Nereid Under Ice (NUI), featured in two sessions at the Fall AGU meeting.
Understanding the processes at the calving fronts and grounding lines of glaciers is essential for improving forecasts of global sea level rise. In summer 2024, researchers led by Ginny Catania (University of Texas at Austin) used NUI to explore the ice-ocean interface of Kangerlussuup Sermersua, West Greenland. Mapping the submerged glacier face and nearby seafloor while measuring flow, temperature, and salinity, they found that subglacial discharge occurs through a distributed network of openings—not just a few large plumes. These findings reveal complex interactions that influence glacier retreat and its contribution to rising seas.
In summer 2023, a team led by Chris German (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) deployed NUI in the Arctic Ocean to study the Aurora hydrothermal field. They discovered hydrogen-rich vent fluids that may sustain unique microbial life. Samples collected by NUI from black smoker vents while its support ship drifted with the sea ice provided clues to processes that could also exist on icy moons like Enceladus.
These breakthroughs were possible only through NUI’s unique design, developed at WHOI. The vehicle operates as both an autonomous robot, mapping to depths of 5,000 meters, and a remotely operated vehicle controlled through a hair-thin fiber optic cable. This versatility allows safe, extended exploration near glaciers or under drifting ice. NUI’s development and missions have been supported by NASA, the Keck Foundation, NSF, NOAA, the Office of Naval Research, and WHOI.
Panel:
- Chris German, Senior Scientist, WHOI
- Ginny Catania, Professor of Earth & Planetary Sciences, UT Austin
- Mike Jakuba, Senior Engineer, WHOI
Related presentations:
- From the expedition led by Ginny Catania:
- Mike is listed as a co-author on several of the above sessions. He will also be at AGU as part of the following:
Contact: Suzanne Pelisson, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, [email protected]