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Earth’s cryosphere is vital for everyone. Here’s how NASA keeps track of its changes.
Everything on our planet — the land, the water, the air, people — is connected by the various chemical, physical and biological processes that make up what we call the Earth system. One of the key components of that huge…
NASA’s Operation IceBridge Completes Eleven Years of Polar Surveys
For eleven years from 2009 through 2019, the planes of NASA’s Operation IceBridge flew above the Arctic, Antarctic and Alaska, gathering data on the height, depth, thickness, flow and change of sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets. Designed to collect…
Laser Precision: NASA Flights, Satellite Align Over Sea Ice
The skies were clear, the winds were low, and the lasers aligned. In April, instruments aboard NASA’s Operation IceBridge airborne campaign and the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2 succeeded in measuring the same Arctic sea ice at the same…
NASA Begins Final Year of Airborne Polar Ice Mission
This is the last year for Operation IceBridge, NASA’s most comprehensive airborne survey of ice change. Since the launch of its first Arctic campaign in spring 2009, IceBridge has enabled discoveries ranging from water aquifers hidden within snow in southeast…
NASA Finds Possible Second Impact Crater Under Greenland Ice
A NASA glaciologist has discovered a possible second impact crater buried under more than a mile of ice in northwest Greenland. This follows the finding, announced in November 2018, of a 19-mile-wide crater beneath Hiawatha Glacier – the first meteorite…
ICESat-2 reveals profile of ice sheets, sea ice, forests
Less than three months into its mission, NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2, is already exceeding scientists’ expectations.
Operation IceBridge, ICESat-2 Join Forces To Survey Antarctica
NASA’s decade-long airborne survey of polar ice, Operation IceBridge, is once again probing Antarctica. But this year is different: it is the first time that the IceBridge team and instruments survey the frozen continent while NASA’s newest satellite mission, the…
Sea Ice Extent Sinks to Record Lows at Both Poles
Arctic sea ice appears to have reached on March 7 a record low wintertime maximum extent, according to scientists at NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado. And on the opposite side of…
NASA’s ICESat-2 to Provide More Depth to Sea Ice Forecasts
In March, the Arctic sea ice pack is supposed to reach its greatest extent — but this year it’s far below average, off by an area about the size of Texas and New Mexico combined. Satellite observations currently reveal how…
NASA’s P-3 Begins 2017 with IceBridge Support
NASA’s P-3 departed from Wallops Flight Facility, Va., at 6:15 a.m., March 7, 2017, traveling to Thule Air Base in Greenland to support ice survey studies as part of the Operation IceBridge mission. The spring IceBridge campaign will take the…