It meant getting to go for runs that were not on a treadmill. It meant getting to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, which was the first thing I did when I got off the ship. Eventually, it meant seeing my friends and family again. While I was on the boat, a lot of things happened back home and when I got to Salt Lake, I got to hear all about them. Some of the things I missed were bad, like a friend getting in a ski accident. Some of the things I missed were great, like my older sibling getting into graduate school. It was exciting to get back to all of that!
Now that we are back on land, we start the process of collecting all of the data and samples from the voyage. My advisor often tells me that so much of scientific writing is telling a story that connects the things we see in the world and what we see in the data. For example, on the ship, we were taking pictures of snowflakes and watching precipitation events happen. Now, we look back at the times that it was precipitating to see what the data shows us about the event. When you are standing on the ship in a snowstorm looking at the clouds, you can’t see things like how high the cloud base is or how much water is in the atmosphere above you. However, we can see those things when we look back at the remote sensing data we collected!
Now, it is our job to process and release the data to the public so the results and findings can be used by other researchers. We will work on publications using the data collected on the voyage, and after a while, we will see publications from other research groups using the data too.
