Earth ID: 3534

Global Glacier Locations designed for Science On a Sphere (SOS) and WMS

Visualizations by Cindy Starr Released on August 13, 2008

This animation shows the locations of glaciers worldwide as semi-transparent markers that shrink over a time. Location data for the glaciers was collected from a wide variety of databases including the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) Glacier Database, the World Glacier Inventory, the West Greenland Glacier Inventory, the Antarctic Names Database, the Atlas of Canada and the Antarctic Digital database. In total, over 174,000 glaciers were identified. This set of glaciers was thinned spatially to retain only glaciers that were at least 1/4 degree away from other glacier locations in order to remove points that appeared coincident given the size of the location markers and the resolution of the images generated.

Here, markers represent random locations where glaciers are found. Markers are stretched as required in latitude so that all markers appear circular when projected on the sphere. The markers begin as large and semi-transparent buttons, and change color, size and opacity over a period of 12 frames.

Visualization Credits

Cindy Starr (Global Science and Technology, Inc.): Lead Visualizer
Victoria Weeks (HTSI): Video Editor
Michael Starobin (HTSI): Producer

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
National Snow and Ice Data Center
World Data Center for Glaciology
World Glacier Monitoring Service
North American Atlas
Natural Resources Canada
The U.S. Geological Survey
The Antarctic Digital Database (copyright © 1993-2006 Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research)

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3534

Data Used:

Antarctic Digital Database, The also referred to as: The Antarctic Digital Database (ADD)

Database

http://www.add.scar.org:8080/add

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Atlas of Canada, The also referred to as: The Atlas of Canada

Atlas - Canada

http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/index.html

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Antarctic Names Database

Database - USGS

http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/f?p=gnispq%3A1%3A2836308850150995%3A%3ANO%3A%3AP1_SHOW_ANTAR,P1_SHOW_ADV,P1_SHOW_FIPS55%3AY

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Glacier Inventory of West Greenland also referred to as: West Greenland Glacier Inventory

Data Compilation - NSIDC

http://nsidc.org/data/g01375.html

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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.

This item is part of these series:
Science On a Sphere
SOS Production - FROZEN

Keywords:
DLESE >> Cryology
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Cryosphere
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Cryosphere >> Glaciers/Ice Sheets >> Glaciers
SVS >> Science On a Sphere
NASA Science >> Earth

GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation: Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0