Even casual observers of environmental science understand the fundamental interconnection between atmospheric conditions and the well-being of marine ecosystems. What happens in the atmosphere inevitably finds its way into the ocean and, vice versa, the outcomes of deep ocean processes eventually bubble up to the surface and into the air above. Yet, the authors of a recently published paper point out, one would be hard-pressed to find these connections between the air and ocean represented adequately – if at all – in international environmental policies and regulations.

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.

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.

New grants from the National Science Foundation will extend and improve two long-term climate observation programs led by BIOS scientists.

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.

Within the contours of oceanographic data are the stories of great ocean currents, tiny plankton, and life-sustaining nutrients at the surface of the sea.  University students learn to study ocean properties through plots and graphs of these data, but rarely do they get hands-on experience with the instruments that generated them. A new BIOS summer course aims to change that by introducing students to the methods and technologies that have become the bread and butter of modern oceanography.

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.