A new school dedicated to the study of the ocean and its ecosystems, and it is based in the desert?

In late May 2022, a team of scientists from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA, U.S.), the University of Washington (UW, U.S.), the University of York (York, U.K.), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, U.S.), traveled to Bermuda to begin the installation of a new 30-foot (10 meter) sampling tower with an accompanying suite of state-of-the-art research instruments at the Tudor Hill Marine Atmospheric Observatory (THMAO). The location of this BIOS-operated facility in the middle of Bermuda, itself in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, provides a valuable research opportunity for scientists that study the long-range transport of materials across entire ocean basins.

The Bermuda Program, part of BIOS’s Ocean Academy suite of local education programs, has been providing internship opportunities to Bermudian students, aged 18 and older, since 1976. In that time, more than 250 summer internship placements have been provided to young Bermudians. The program pairs students with BIOS faculty and scientific staff, who serve as mentors for participants while they conduct research projects in the fields of marine and atmospheric science.

Melissa Hicks is a professor at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York where she teaches introductory courses in geology and oceanography, including a study abroad program in marine ecology of the Bahamas. For the last two years, she’s also been interested in finding ways of incorporating real-world ocean science data into her curriculum.

BIOS’s Ocean Academy helped coordinate a unique learning opportunity for local schools when a NASA science mission moved its flight operations from the U.S. to Bermuda for three weeks beginning earlier this month.

More than a year after hurricane-strength winds toppled BIOS’s 75-foot (23-meter) atmospheric science research tower, a new tower was erected on Tudor Hill, just in time for Christmas.

Climatologist Hans Christian Steen-Larsen joined BIOS in March as an adjunct scientist, to continue and expand his innovative research at the Tudor Hill Marine Atmospheric Observatory. Currently a researcher at the Center for Ice and Climate at the University of Copenhagen, Steen-Larsen has traversed the globe gathering data to reconstruct past climates and to improve current climate models.  At BIOS, he uses clues embedded in water molecules to better understand the climactic processes that drive evaporation from the ocean.

The research vessel Atlantic Explorer sailed from BIOS in June sporting a new instrument package on its mast and bow designed to measure climate-relevant, constantly shifting gases, moisture, and heat between the ocean and the atmosphere.

Nestled between the 75 vertical miles (120 kilometers) of Earth’s atmosphere and the deepest point of the ocean is a strip of air called the planetary boundary layer. This region, located in the lower troposphere (the lowest portion of the atmosphere, up to six miles, or 10 kilometers, in altitude), is where friction from the earth’s surface influences temperature, moisture, and wind.

The 2019 Aquatic Sciences Meeting of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) took place February 24 to March 1 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This biennial scientific conference brings together scientists, students, and policy-makers from around the world to present research on a variety of themes relating to aquatic sciences, including remote sensing, aquatic biodiversity, climate change, carbon cycling, and transitioning scientific research into meaningful applications.