Science begins with observation. Millions of years of evolution have given us incredible senses to analyze our planet.  We look, listen, touch, smell, and, in certain non-poisonous situations, taste the world around us and use that data to inform our perceptions of the world. To better understand our planet, geoscientists turn to strange and wonderful methods to improve our sensory perception.  These approaches are creative, often crazy-sounding, and at times seemingly the stuff of imagination. I present four short stories about how Earth scientists see water buried hundreds of feet underground from hundreds of miles above, listen to screaming volcanoes, visualize mathematics in breathtaking beauty, and gaze upon our planet from 750 million miles away.  So perk up your senses and open your imagination… it’s time to explore.

From my time as an undergrad at the University of California at Berkeley to my time as a graduate student at Stanford University, I doodled in class. When the professor would say something amusing, I would turn it into a cartoon. I’d personify the rock or tectonic process – I’m a geologist after all – and create a character that stuck in my memory. So when I was asked by Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences to communicate complex climate science this summer, naturally I turned to cartoons.