Discovering a 207-year-old whaling ship, advancing air-quality forecasts, improving storm surge and wind forecasts, and deploying the first-ever drone-based tagging of endangered whales. These are a few of NOAA’s many notable scientific accomplishments from the past year that are featured in the 2022 NOAA Science Report, which emphasizes a wide range of impacts that NOAA science advancements have on the lives of Americans.
The newly released report includes more than 60 stories about NOAA’s 2022 research and development accomplishments across NOAA’s mission. Here are some key examples.
NOAA uncovers American History in the Gulf of Mexico through telepresence
On February 25, 2022, NOAA Ocean Exploration, partners from SEARCH Inc., and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management discovered the remains of a 207-year-old whaling ship at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Discovery of the remains of brig Industry, the 64-foot long, two-masted wooden ship, has opened a window into a little-known chapter of American history when free descendants of enslaved Africans and Native Americans served as essential crew for the whaling industry. The discovery also demonstrated NOAA’s increasing ability to use telepresence to explore the mysteries of the ocean. Using satellite communication, partner scientists on shore hundreds of miles from the Gulf helped the team on NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer pilot a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to explore the seafloor at a suspected location to discover the ship that had been lost for two centuries.
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This GOES-18 GeoColor satellite image shows valley fog fading as smoke persists along the Pacific Northwest coast on Oct. 17, 2022. As cooler temperatures descended across parts of North America, NOAA satellites observed fires erupting in the Pacific Northwest. (Photo Credit: NOAA NESDIS)