A drifting float like those used in the challenge Courtesy of Sofar Ocean
A satellite engineer with no background in oceanography has won an international competition to predict where a message in a bottle will drift to on the open sea.
Chris Wasson, who is based in southern California, beat 31 teams to scoop the $25,000 top prize in the Forecasting Floats in Turbulence Challenge, organised by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
I don’t have any real background in oceanography or weather system forecasting, but the problem was stated as more data- and algorithms-oriented, says Wasson. So I registered thinking I’d…
