Antarctic Ocean Flows: an excerpt from Atlas of a Changing Earth (Dome Master format)
- Visualizations by:
- Cindy Starr
- View full credits
As we approach the Pine Island Glacier, we dip below the surface of the bay and see the stratification of the temperature in the ocean flows, with the coldest water shown in blue near the surface and the warmer water shown in red at lower depths. We move forward under the floating ice of the Pine Island Glacier and see how the warmer ocean flows are circulating under the glacier's floating tongue, eroding the ice from beneath.
The topography in this visualization has been exaggerated by 4x above sea level and 15x below sea level in order to more clearly observe the change in ocean temperature at various depths.
This version is provided in Dome Master format meant for projection onto a planetarium dome. A version of this visualization designed to play on a flat screen is available here.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Data visualizers
- Ernie Wright (USRA)
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
- Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC)
Visualizer
- Cindy Starr (GST) [Lead]
Director
- Thomas Lucas (Thomas Lucas Productions)
Project support
- Leann Johnson (GST)
Technical support
- Ian Jones (ADNET)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET)
Datasets used in this visualization
BedMachine Antarctica V1
A self-consistent dataset of the Antarctic Ice Sheet based on the conservation of mass
Credit: Morlighem, M., Rignot, E., Binder, T. et al. Deep glacial troughs and stabilizing ridges unveiled beneath the margins of the Antarctic ice sheet. Nature Geoscience 13, 132–137 (2020)
See more visualizations using this data setECCO3 High Resolution Ocean and Sea Ice Model
Landsat-7 LIMA (A.K.A. Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica) (Collected with the ETM+ sensor)
Mosaicing to avoid clouds produced a high quality, nearly cloud-free benchmark data set of Antarctica for the International Polar Year from images collected primarily during 1999-2003.
Dataset can be found at: http://lima.nasa.gov/
See more visualizations using this data setLandsat 8 Mosaic of Amundsen Sea Embayment, Antarctica (Collected with the OLI sensor)
An image mosaic comprised of 20 LandSat 8 tiles on the Amundsen Sea Embayment, Antarctica
Credit: Landsat 8 mission
See more visualizations using this data setREMA (A.K.A. Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica - 100m)
High resolution, time-stamped Digital Surface Model (DSM) of Antarctica at 100-meter spatial resolution
Credit: DEMs provided by the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center and the Polar Geospatial. Computer time provided through a Blue Waters Innovation Initiative. DEMs produced using data from DigitalGlobe, Inc.
See more visualizations using this data setNote: 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.