Ice.
You might know that ice plays significant part in climate change.
But what about how scientists study it?
The first satellite solely dedicated to collecting information on the world’s ice
was the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite, better known
as ICESat. But back in 2009,
ICESat was decommissioned, and ICESat-2 didn’t launch until nearly
a decade later in 2018. So how did we study ice in the meantime?
Enter Operation IceBridge.
NASA’s Operation IceBridge was created to quite literally bridge
the gap in data collection between satellites, and it’s the largest
airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever.
After 11 years of providing invaluable yearly measurements from both poles,
surveying glaciers, ice sheets, and sea ice, most of IceBridge came to
a close. However, one small part of the mission
still continues in 2020 -- Operation IceBridge
Alaska. A team of scientists from the University
of Alaska Fairbanks studies and records the annual changes in Alaska’s
ice thickness. They do so through a remarkable aircraft.
specially retrofitted for science. By shooting a laser
out of the bottom of the plane that hits the glacier’s surface and bounces back up,
scientists can measure the surface elevation. And using ice-penetrating
radar, they can measure the bedrock below the glacier, and come up with
an estimate of ice thickness. But the field missions in Alaska
face especially challenging circumstances. In order
to measure glaciers within data collection lines, the plane must be flown
very low while navigating around extremely tricky mountain ranges,
making for some of the most adventurous mission flying around.
Even the glaciers themselves have proven to be a challenge to scientists.
Most glaciers in Alaska are temperate, meaning
they’re at their melting point from surface to base, and contain large pockets
of water within the ice. Those pools of water muddle the
radar signals, making it difficult to collect consistent measurements of
thickness. And these measurements recorded are vital.
Alaskan glaciers make up only a small percentage of the world’s ice,
but they contribute a disproportionately large amount to sea level rise.
The research and data collection done
under Operation IceBridge helps give scientists a closer look at the
connections between mountain glaciers and global climate change.
EXPLORE EARTH
NASA