Earth  ID: 3138

QuikSCAT Antarctic Sea Ice (WMS)

Visualizations by Alex Kekesi Released on March 28, 2005
The sea ice around Antarctica grows dramatically from late February, when large parts of the coast are ice-free, to October, when the amount of sea ice effectively doubles the size of the continent. The SeaWinds Scatterometer instrument on the QuikSCAT satellite captures this dramatic ebb and flow and shows the sea ice as dynamic and always moving, even in areas that are ice-bound. This animation shows the sea ice around Antarctica from SeaWinds during 2004. SeaWinds can see individual icebergs if they are large enough, and a large iceberg can be seen for most of the year south of South America as it moves from the Antarctic Peninsula to the South Sandwich Islands. Also visible are the very convoluted and dynamic border between the sea ice and the open sea and holes in the sea ice created by the movement around fixed land features such as islands.
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Sea ice around Antarctica during 2004 as seen by the SeaWinds instrument on QuikSCAT

This product is available through our Web Map Service.

Visualization Credits

Alex Kekesi (Global Science and Technology, Inc.): Lead Animator
Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC): Animator
David Long (BYU): Scientist
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

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https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3138

Mission:
QuikSCAT

Data Used:
QuikSCAT/SeaWinds
2004/01/01-2004/12/31
SeaWinds is a scanning dual pencil-beam Ku-band scatterometer.
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This item is part of this series:
WMS

Keywords:
DLESE >> Cryology
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Cryosphere >> Glaciers/Ice Sheets >> Icebergs
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Cryosphere >> Sea Ice >> Icebergs
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Cryosphere >> Sea Ice >> Sea Ice Motion
SVS >> Hyperwall
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