Lakes On A Glacier
- Edited by:
- Matthew Radcliff
- Scientific consulting by:
- Allen Pope
- Produced by:
- Matthew Radcliff
- View full credits
A view of Greenland's ice sheet from the NASA/USGS Landsat 8 satellite, narrated by Dr. Allen Pope. The data enables Dr. Pope to measure the depth of the lakes that form on the surface every summer as the snow and ice melts. The data in this image are from July 12, 2014, and shows the area just south of the Jakobshavn Glacier.
For complete transcript, click here.
Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.
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.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Editor
- Matthew Radcliff (KBRwyle) [Lead]
Scientists
- Allen Pope (NSIDC) [Lead]
- James R. Irons (NASA/GSFC)
Producer
- Matthew Radcliff (KBRwyle) [Lead]
Narrator
- Allen Pope (NSIDC)
Papers
This visualization is based on the following papers:Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Tapes
This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:- None
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