Earth ID: 3875

West Antarctic Glacier Ice Flows and Elevation Change

Visualizations by Cindy Starr Released on November 2, 2011

This animation shows glacier changes detected by ATM, ICESat and ice bridge data in the highly dynamic Amundsen Embayment of West Antarctica. We know that ice speeds in this area have increased dramatically from the late 1990s to the present as the ice shelves in this area have thinned and the bottom of the ice has lost contact with the bed beneath. As the ice has accelerated, ice upstream of the coast must be stretched more vigorously, causing it to thin. NASA-sponsored aircraft missions first measured the ice surface height in this region in 2002, followed by ICESat data between 2002 and 2009. Ice Bridge aircraft have measured further surface heights in 2009 and 2010, and these measurements continue today. Integrating these altimetry sources allows us to estimate surface height changes throughout the drainage regions of the most important glaciers in the region. We see large elevation changes at the coast on Thwaites glacier, at the center of the images, and large and accelerating elevation changes extending inland from the coast on Pine Island and Smith glaciers, to the left and right of the images, respectively. The changes on Pine Island and Smith glaciers mark these as potential continuing sources of ice to the sea, and they have been surveyed in 2011 by Ice Bridge aircraft and targeted for repeat measurements in coming years.

Visualization Credits

Cindy Starr (Global Science and Technology, Inc.): Lead Visualizer
Jefferson Beck (USRA): Producer
Benjamin E. Smith (University of Washington Applied Physics Lab Polar Science Center): Scientist
James W. Williams (GST): Project Support
Shiloh Heurich (GST): Project Support

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3875

Missions:
Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat)
Landsat

Data Used:

ERS-1 and ERS-2/SAR/Differential Interferometry

European Space Agency - 2008

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Pre-IceBridge/LVIS/L2 Geolocated Ground Elevation and Return Energy Quartiles also referred to as: BLVIS2

NASA - 2009, updated 2010

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Pre-IceBridge/ATM/L2 Icessn Elevation, Slope, and Roughness

NASA - Nov. to Dec. 2002 and Nov. to Dec. 2004

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ICESat/GLAS/L2 Global Land Surface Altimetry Data also referred to as: GLA14

NASA - Feb. 2003 to Nov. 2008

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Advanced Land Observation System (ALOS)/Phased-Array Synthetic-Aperture Radar (PALSAR)/L-band frequency (1.27 GHz) radar

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency - 1994 to 1996

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Landsat-7/ETM+/Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica also referred to as: LIMA

Mosaic - NASA/GSFC, British Antarctic Survey, USGS EROS Data Center - Dec. 2002 to Feb. 2003

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.

http://lima.nasa.gov/

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