Kevin R. Wood
Kevin Wood uses historical weather and sea ice information from ship logbooks to learn about environmental conditions in the Arctic in centuries past. Before joining the NOAA-University of Washington’s Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean & Ecosystem Studies in 2004, he sailed the world's oceans for 25 years as a merchant marine officer. His interest in the historical climatology of the polar regions stems from his experience teaching on sail-training ships much like those used by 19th century explorers, and from working on research vessels in the ice-covered seas of the Arctic and Antarctic. By reconstructing environmental clues from the past, he is extending our baseline knowledge of the climate of the Arctic. In addition to his work in historical climatology he also leads the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory’s Arctic Heat Open Science Experiment, which develops innovative aircraft-deployed autonomous sensors for polar exploration and for the advancement of sea-ice and ecosystem monitoring and forecasting in a rapidly changing Arctic.
