Earth  ID: 11973

Lakes On A Glacier

How deep is that icy blue water on Greenland's ice sheet? Dr. Allen Pope, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, is using data from the NASA/USGS Landsat 8 satellite to find out. In this video, Dr. Pope shares what he sees when he looks at a Landsat image of the Greenland ice sheet just south of the Jakobshavn Glacier.

Because the lakes are darker than the ice around them, they absorb more energy from the sun. A little bit of melt concentrates in one place, and then melts more, establishing a feedback mechanism accelerating the growth of the lake. When the lakes get big enough they can force open fractures that then drill all the way down to the bed of the glacier, transporting this water to the base where it can temporarily speed up the flow of the ice.

Learn more about Dr. Pope's study here: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=86564

NASA and the U.S. Department of the Interior through the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) jointly manage the Landsat program, and the USGS preserves a 40-plus-year archive of Landsat images that is freely available over the Internet.
 

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Credits

Matthew R. Radcliff (USRA):
Lead Editor
Lead Producer

Allen Pope (NSIDC):
Lead Scientist
Narrator

James R. Irons (NASA/GSFC):
Scientist

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Science Paper:
http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/9/3257/2015/tcd-9-3257-2015.html

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11973

Missions:
Landsat
LDCM: Landsat Data Continuity Mission

This item is part of these series:
Narrated Movies
Landsat

Goddard TV Tape:
G2015-056 -- Lakes On A Glacier

Keywords:
SVS >> HDTV
SVS >> Ice Sheets
SVS >> Landsat
SVS >> Melting
GCMD >> Location >> Greenland
SVS >> Jakobshavn
SVS >> LDCM
NASA Science >> Earth

GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation: Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0