faculty of Oceanography at Texas A&M University, father of two, loves ocean and space, studies the oceans using satellites, former JPLer, views are my own
College Station, TX
Joined January 2010
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Earth’s outer shell is broken into tectonic plates that move slowly on the mantle. Most earthquakes happen at plate boundaries: crust is forced past, under, or into other crust, stress builds, and rock fails as a fault slips.
The Ring of Fire is plate boundaries around the Pacific. Where plates subduct, slide, or collide, earthquakes and volcanoes occur along the same arcs. The Pacific plate and its neighbors meet there, mainly by subduction (one plate diving under another), with transform (sideways slip) and collision as well.
This 20-second film maps USGS M≥5 earthquakes from 1900 to now, one year at a time, on a Pacific-centered Boggs eumorphic map with NOAA ETOPO land and seafloor. This cut has a quieter rumble under the map.
Data: USGS ComCat · NOAA ETOPO
© Jinbo Wang · Non-commercial use only
@jinbowang
Played with agent + Blender to prepare materials for my undergrad intro to oceanography class.
The seafloor in this view sits about 3,700 m down below the sea surface. The dark arc is the mouth of the Mariana Trench. From there it falls another 7,300 m to Challenger Deep at 10,935 m.
Pressure at the bottom is about 1,100 times the air around you — roughly 16,000 psi. A space capsule only has to hold 1 atmosphere in against vacuum. A trench sub has to hold 1,100 atmospheres out. If the hull fails in space, it leaks. If it fails here, it implodes.
Very few people have been. Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh got there first in Trieste in 1960! The next was James Cameron, solo in 2012. Only in the last few years have others followed, in Limiting Factor and China’s Fendouzhe.
This makes walking on the Moon like going to the parks. The trench is closer than orbit. It is much harder to visit.
A catch: there is life down 11km below the sea surface.
When are you @SpaceX going to build subs?
The earth and ocean are far more fascinating than what we thought we knew.
In 2016, we caught “smoking” imagery of Daikoku Seamount during the Deepwater Exploration of the Marianas expedition that suggested recent volcanic activity. We also saw flatfish, tubeworms, and crabs making the most of this extreme environment.
More: oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/educa…
Jinbo Wang retweeted
In 2016, we caught “smoking” imagery of Daikoku Seamount during the Deepwater Exploration of the Marianas expedition that suggested recent volcanic activity. We also saw flatfish, tubeworms, and crabs making the most of this extreme environment.
More: oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/educa…
Lots of insights here.
15 predictions for Earth observation in 2026:
1. Earth observation will be used more routinely as a geopolitical lever
2. The tension between integrated EO architecture and national sovereign EO capabilities will intensify in Europe
3. China will take on a bigger role in the global EO sector as both a capacity-building partner and an institutional data provider
4. @NASAAdmin Jared Isaacman will push efficiency-focused reforms at NASA's Earth Science division, but whether this shakes the foundations of civilian EO or modernizes it remains uncertain
5. Earth science worldwide will become more marginalized as civilian EO is absorbed into dual-use architectures
6. EO constellation economics will remain under pressure as SpaceX's dominance tightens, with hopes pinned on Starship and Neutron to eventually break the bottleneck
7. At least one EO satellite company will fold or be acquired under distress in 2026, while at least two EO companies will go public
8. Consolidation will accelerate in 2026, both horizontally across the value chain and vertically, particularly by defense primes
9. Sovereign procurement will shift from acquiring standalone capabilities to integrated, turnkey-based EO solutions
10. NOAA and EUMETSAT will expand commercial weather data acquisition, as global open data exchange frameworks feel the strain
11. Geospatial foundation models and embeddings will bring more users to EO than ever before, but operational adoption will be hard
12. The tension between faster optical downlinks and on-orbit processing via space-based data centers will force EO operators to make architectural bets
13. Critical infrastructure monitoring and insurance will become the verticals with highest revenue traction for EO
14. EO-based climate solutions will remain on the backburner, as the focus shifts to translating them into economic value, not climate compliance
15. As EO's center of gravity shifts to dual-use, frustrated talent will scatter – some to adjacent domains, some to applied science, others out of the sector entirely
🚀 New Paper Alert 🛰️
The SWOT satellite—designed primarily to observe small-scale (tens of kilometers) sea-surface height variability with millimeter-level precision—continues to exceed expectations. Thanks to its exceptional Ka-band Radar Interferometer, SWOT’s by-product measurements of significant wave height (SWH) are demonstrating remarkable accuracy.
In this new study, Alli’s rigorous and comprehensive analysis provides clear, independent validation of SWOT-derived SWH using GNSS-equipped moored buoys. The results confirm the mission’s capability to deliver high-fidelity wave measurements alongside its core SSH products. Kudos to both the SWOT team and JPL GPS team led by Bruce Haines.
These findings open new pathways for quantitative investigations of air–sea interactions, wave–eddy coupling, and small-scale ocean dynamics using SWOT. Even more exciting science is on the horizon.
Stay tuned for what comes next.
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.…
🔔New paper alert. Sub‐100 km Ocean Processes Revealed by Structure Functions of SWOT Sea Surface Height and In Situ Observing Network - Kachelein - 2025 - Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans - Wiley Online Library agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.…
Small-scale (less than 100 km) ocean processes have been observed via satellite remote sensing, focused regional in situ measurements, and high-resolution imagery. But their dynamics have not been resolved globally at ultra-fine spatial resolution—until the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, which measures sea surface height (SSH). It was still largely unknown what SWOT will measure over this short spatial scales and what dynamical processes will show in SSH, i.e., ocean eddies v.s. internal gravity waves. Shallow k^-2 wavenumber spectra were found almost universally over the global ocean. Is it simply the result of internal gravity waves—the easy culprit?
Using an advanced in situ observing network, we investigated the SSH signal observed by SWOT. Luke did outstanding work showing that the k^-2 spectral slope in SWOT SSH is largely due to instrumental noise, with additional contributions from internal gravity waves. This is the first quantitative confirmation using independent in-situ data.
That said, we still don’t know exactly how much submesoscale dynamics contribute to the sub-100 km SSH wavenumber spectrum, or how best to use these spectra to study submesoscale turbulence and wave–eddy interactions. More studies are needed—stay tuned.
Sky was cleared at the last moment. It was a spectacular launch. Hearing the sonic boom from falcon 9 is like hearing a loud announcement of next decades of sea level science.
Jinbo Wang retweeted
Why is Sentinel-6B built to measure the height of the ocean?
Because that measurement can affect our daily life – from improving weather forecasts to helping protect coastal infrastructure like military installations. This data also keeps ships safe at sea, like the ones carrying our packages!
(1/3) Launched in Dec 2023 after 20 years of development, the SWOT mission is revolutionizing our understanding of small-scale ocean dynamics. This article offers a glimpse into its potential, while hinting at the exciting opportunities and challenges ahead. nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
(2/3) As an ocean scientist on the SWOT mission for 9+ years (2015–2025), I saw its challenges and triumphs up close. Breakthrough engineering and science demand decades of dedication. Sustained investment is vital for future ocean discoveries.
SWOT’s been at work for over two years now. New science is sprouting like spring bamboo shoots.
We have better maps of the Moon’s surface than we do of the bottom of the ocean.
But the SWOT satellite, designed to measure surface water and ocean topography, recently published one of the most detailed maps yet of the seafloor. go.nasa.gov/3DOUT2I
Jinbo Wang retweeted
this is a long read, but i had some time to think over dinner and wanted to share a few thoughts and provide a plan forward:
0. i’ve had a lot of very memorable days on the internet over the past 30 years, but this one tops them all. my wife yi and i are unbelievably grateful to the SOL community. as a reminder - 100% of every penny we've made from this, across every kitkat/memecoin, including LP fees will be going directly to rare disease research (minus any tax obligations).
i will work on a way to verify this commitment transparently with the community in the form of donation receipts. thankfully the chain is already publicly auditable.
1. a lot people seem very upset that early traders made a lot of money off of $MIRA. i don't get this at all. they made a good investment early, and got rewarded for it. good on them.
when we originally started our gofundme, we were hoping to contribute maybe $2-300K or so beyond what we donated early this year to hankinson lab for christmas.
now, even if we don't sell a single token more, we're going to send them at least $1M this christmas. that's INCREDIBLE - and it makes such a huge difference. the reality is if those early people didn't make these moves, the lab would be worse off. providing more funding for research is the only thing that matters to me here, full stop.
how much degens make or lose money in the pvp trenches of pump is not something that is any of my business. if you made a lot of money, i'm genuinely happy for you - but please consider donating some of your profits to hankinson lab., if you lost a lot of money, i’m very sorry - but magic internet money is magic internet money.
2. at least a few crazies in mentions think that i was somehow on the “inside” and this entire thing has been some kind of conspiracy - if you're one of them, i just don’t know what to tell you.
i have a day job and it is not degening magic internet money. i run a company funded by a16z called runway.com, and we work on non-crypto finance software for cfos. nowdays, by night i do deep research into craniopharyngiomas and related brain tumors. i literally didn’t have a personal SOL address until yesterday.
crypto wasn’t even a payment option outside of gofundme until folks asked me for one, and when i gave them one it was my ENS. the idea that i would have the time and even know how to do something like this is wildly unbelievable.
3. i am not elon - between running a growing startup, dealing with my daughter’s medical condition, and other obligations, i simply don’t have the bandwidth to manage a crypto anything. so my constraints on a path forward are:
1) to maximize support to rare disease research by providing predictability / trust
2) to do so in the most transparent way possible that helps me sleep well at night
3) to do it in a way that doesn’t take very much of my time to manage.
so here’s the plan: starting in about 12 hours, i will be liquidating $1,000 worth of $MIRA every 10 minutes, perpetually. no more and no less than that. if i change this schedule, i commit to announcing it 24 hours in advance.
if you want to rug it to $0, go for it - at the end of the day we set out to raise $200K and we will end up with at least $1M towards rare disease research.
no matter what, this has been a win for the world. but if it moons, then hankinson lab will get the SOL’s community support for much longer, and that really makes a big difference.
so that’s it! hope that's all pretty simple and reasonable.
yi, mira and i are so unbelievably grateful to you all - each and every one of you. christmas magic was made real this year thanks to all of you. forever grateful.
Jinbo Wang retweeted
In a new Data-in-Action story from NASA #PODAAC, “Deep Learning Improves Global Satellite Observations of Ocean Eddy Dynamics”, read how #machinelearning has been applied to create a new higher resolution dataset for examining ocean mesoscale eddies.
go.nasa.gov/4fvTCds
ALT Sea Surface Height Anomaly (SSHA) from -30 cm (blue) to 30 cm (red) over the global ocean, arrows on top represent the ocean currents. The circular shapes of those anomalies are mesoscale eddies. The panels present a side-by-side comparison between the NeurOST method and the conventional method widely used. First, the SSHA, then the derived ocean current speed and finally the vorticity are shown to illustrate NeurOST’s capability to retrieve fine details of the ocean eddies
Next generation altimetry product: podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/DataActi… Deep Learning Improves Global Satellite Observations of Ocean Eddy Dynamics youtu.be/jlT2gdn4KLM?si=iGNc… @NASAEarthData @NASAOcean
Jinbo Wang retweeted
We are looking to hire a postdoctoral scholar at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory to work on submesoscale and mesoscale ocean turbulence using observations and machine learning: academic.careers.columbia.ed…