AVS 62nd International Symposium & Exhibition
    IPF on Mesoscale Science and Technology of Materials and Metamaterials Tuesday Sessions
       Session IPF+MS-TuA

Invited Paper IPF+MS-TuA7
Frontiers of Ocean Sensing

Tuesday, October 20, 2015, 4:20 pm, Room 210F

Session: Frontiers in Physics
Presenter: Susan K. Avery, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Correspondent: Click to Email
The ocean accounts for more than two-thirds of Earth's surface and is our planet’s largest biome, yet remains largely unexplored. Because seawater is opaque to most wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, all but a few centimeters of the upper ocean are invisible to satellites. As a result, only about 5 to 15 percent of the seafloor is mapped in any detail and much of the water column has not been explored. Many of the transient phenomena that occur on, in, or above the ocean—and across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales—have been extremely difficult to capture, and even more difficult to monitor over long periods. New technologies and new adaptations of existing technologies, however, are opening the ocean in all its complexity to researchers at sea and on shore. Our challenge now is to take advantage of these innovations in sensing and observing, not only to fully grasp the role that the ocean plays in making Earth habitable, but also how it fits into planetary and societal changes that are taking place before our very eyes.