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)