Landsat's Global View of Ice Velocity
Ice from glaciers constantly flows into the ocean, but the speed the ice moves at changes. Landsat 8 provides near-real-time mapping of ice speed in nearly all the world’s frozen regions. Information like ice speed helps scientists study our home planet and its vulnerability to rising seas.
Heimdal Glacier in southeastern Greenland shows a regular speed up and slow down with the seasons. Peak speeds are around May/June, and low speeds occur in September/October.
This velocity data is a result of new analysis of imagery from the Operational Land Imager on the NASA/USGS Landsat 8 satellite, part of the Global Landsat Ice Velocity Extraction (GoLIVE) project.
Music credit: Tiny Worlds by Christian Telford [ASCAP], David Travis Edwards [ASCAP], Matthew St Laurent [ASCAP], Robert Anthony Navarro [ASCAP]
Complete transcript available.
Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.
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Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
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Animator
- Cindy Starr (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
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Writer
- Kate Ramsayer (Telophase)
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Scientists
- Alex S. Gardner (NASA/JPL CalTech)
- Mark Fahnestock (Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks)
- Ted Scambos (NSIDC)
- Twila Moon (University of Bristol)
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Producers
- Kathryn Mersmann (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
- Matthew Radcliff (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Related Pages
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ID: 12476 Produced Video
At Glacial Speed
Read moreA NASA satellite tracks glaciers' slow but steady journey to the sea. || Seasonal_IceFlows_with_hold_BG.1299_1024x576.jpg (1024x576) [210.2 KB] || Seasonal_IceFlows_with_hold_BG.1299_1024x576_print.jpg (1024x576) [209.7 KB] || Seasonal_IceFlows_with_hold_BG.1299_1024x576_thm.png (80x40) [8.9 KB] || Seasonal_IceFlows_with_hold_BG.1299.tif (3840x2160) [10.8 MB] ||
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ID: 4528 Visualization
Seasonal Speed Variation on Heimdal Glacier
Read moreThe NASA/USGS Landsat 8 mission has allowed new views of the Earth’s glaciers. By tracking displacement of local surface features through the seasons on outlet glaciers from the large ice sheets, researchers from the University of Alaska, the University of Bristol, and the University of Colorado have been able to show that each glacier around Greenland has a unique pattern of flow variation through the seasons. Seasonal variations, seen in this animation on the lower 25 kilometers of Heimdal Glacier in southeast Greenland, are caused by a combination of processes. For Heimdal, the largest forcing for flow variation is likely the input of increasing amounts of surface melt water through the Spring and Summer, but there is also an interplay between calving of ice from the end of the glacier, flow acceleration as shown in the animation, and thinning of the ice due to the extra stretching from the faster flow. By measuring these changes in flow on seasonal timescales, scientists can develop a better understanding of what controls the flow of these glaciers where they meet the ocean. This understanding will improve our ability to anticipate flow responses of these systems in a warming climate. ||
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