Earth ID: 2100

Light Iceland Glacier Recession 1973 to 2000

Visualizations by Lori Perkins Released on April 9, 2001

This animation shows glacier recesion at the Breidamerkurjokull glacier in Iceland. The data from 1973 is taken from Landsat 1 and the 2000 data is from Landsat 7. The Breidamerkurjokull glacier in Iceland has been measured by Landsat to be receding since 1973. The glacierologists in Iceland and here at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have measured the recession throughout the entire glacier and found different rates of recession in different areas. In general, the glacier seems to be receding at about 2% annually.

It is extremely controversial whether or not this recession is caused by global warming.

Visualization Credits

Lori Perkins (NASA/GSFC): Lead Animator
Dorothy Hall (NASA/GSFC): Scientist

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

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Mission:
Landsat

Data Used:

Landsat-1/MSS

1973/09

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Landsat-7/ETM+

2000/09

http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/about/wrs.html

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This item is part of this series:
Iceland

Keywords:
SVS >> Breidamerkurjokull
DLESE >> Climatology
DLESE >> Cryology
DLESE >> Physical geography
SVS >> Recession
GCMD >> Location >> Iceland
SVS >> Glaciers
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