Dying for data: the ill-fated USS Jeannette and the pursuit

In July 1879, the USS Jeannette left port in San Francisco en route to the North Pole. What lay at the top of the world was still shrouded in mystery. Was it a warm inland sea, a sheet of ice, or open ocean? The crew set out to find out. The majority of the crew of the USS Jeannette perished during the journey, but their memory lives on through the invaluable scientific information that they laboriously collected and returned to civilization. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NOAA@NSIDC) program still stores some of these data today that are related to sea ice thickness, making them available to the public more than a century after that ill-fated voyage.

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