Flying Over a Frozen Continent: Big Pic
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Oct. 23, 2011 -- The view from the window of NASA's DC-8 looks down on the sweeping expanse of ice and snow of Marie Byrd Land in West Antarctica as part of the ongoing 2011 Operation IceBridge survey of the southern continent's ice cover.
Now in its third year, Operation IceBridge is a six-year-long mission to study the dynamics of the Antarctic and Arctic ice sheets. It's the largest aerial survey of the polar ice ever, and will yield valuable data on the state of Earth's vast reservoirs of frozen water, the landscape beneath and how they are being affected by rapidly changing climate.
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Researchers fly over Greenland during the months of March through May, and over Antarctica in October and November. The DC-8 flies over these remote locations at an altitude of about 1,500 feet with little to no weather data other than its own instruments.
98 percent of Antarctica is covered with ice. Information obtained by Operation IceBridge will be combined with data from satellites to create the most accurate models possible of Antarctic ice loss and how it relates to future sea level rise.
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"With IceBridge, our aim is to understand what the world's major ice sheets could contribute to sea-level rise," says Michael Studinger, IceBridge project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "To understand that you have to record how ice sheets and glaciers are changing over time."
Watch a video here of the 2011 mission preview.
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-- by Jason Major.
Image credit: NASA/Michael Studinger
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