Circulation of Ocean Currents Around the Western Antarctic Ice Shelves
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- Visualizations by:
- Trent L. Schindler
- View full credits
This animation shows the circulation of ocean currents around the western Antarctic ice shelves. The shelves are indicated by the rainbow color; red is thicker (>550m), while blue is thinner (<200m). The ocean flow runs from the surface to 900 m, colored white at the surface and fading to light blue at depth, and is based on the ECCO2 model over a representative two-month period. Bathymetry, topography, and ice thickness were derived from the RTopo-1 dataset of Timmermann, et al. (http://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.741917). Ground color is from MODIS/Blue Marble.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
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Animators
- Trent L. Schindler (USRA) [Lead]
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
- Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC)
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Producer
- Patrick Lynch (NASA/GSFC)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Datasets used in this visualization
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Terra Blue Marble
ID: 492Credit: The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).
See all pages that use this dataset -
ECCO2 (ECCO2 High Resolution Ocean and Sea Ice Model)
ID: 707 -
RTopo-1
ID: 737
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.
Related Pages
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ID: 10970 Produced Video
Currents Of Change
Read moreWarm ocean currents circulating off the coast of Antarctica are indirectly contributing to rising global sea levels. As these twisting flows meander around the continent's frozen edges and beneath the underside of floating ice shelves, they're slowly melting the ice from below. Using surface elevation measurements collected during NASA's ICESat mission, scientists have found that this melting is driving most of Antarctica's recent ice losses—particularly in West Antarctica, where inland glaciers that feed into the ice shelves are draining ice into the ocean at an accelerated rate. The visualization below shows the interaction of modeled ocean currents and Antarctic ice shelves, where red areas represent ice thicker than about 1,800 feet and blue areas represent ice thinner than about 650 feet. Notice how the ice shelves generally become thinner—a rainbow of colors indicates intermediate thicknesses—as they extend farther from land. ||
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