Narrator: Antarctica is covered by the largest piece of ice on Earth.
How that ice moves and changes affects
the entire planet. A NASA airborne mission
called Operation IceBridge is now completing its eighth consecutive year
of measuring the changes in Antarctic ice. The science team uses
the most comprehensive suite of instruments ever flown on long range flights,
including lasers, radars, an infrared sensor,
digital photography, and a gravimeter.
The mission was born out of a need to bridge the gap in observations between
NASA’s ICESat satellite, which ended its mission in 2009, and
ICESat-2, scheduled for launch in 2018. This year
IceBridge was able to fly two missions around the 88th parallel,
to provide measurements at the southernmost edge of ICESat-2’s planned orbits.
Many of IceBridge’s 24 science flights this
year were focused on mapping the sea floor, where the Antarctic Ice Sheet
meets ocean waters, so that scientists can better predict how fast
the margins of the ice might melt. The mission also flew
extensively over Antarctic sea ice, measuring extent and thickness
of the frozen seawater. The team found coverage to be sparse
in the Bellingshausen Sea — and as we know from satellite observations
, sea ice coverage around the continent is currently at a record low
for this time of year.Several missions around the Antarctic Peninsula
also provided a wealth of data and some beautiful images.
Of special interest was a flight over a growing crack in the Larsen C
ice shelf. Once this crack is fully formed, it will produce
an iceberg roughly the size of the state of Delaware.
All of this year’s flights were based out of Punta Areas, Chile,
but next year, IceBridge plans to fly out of McMurdo Station
in Antarctica in order to hit a new range of important science targets
and continue to shed light on how melting polar ice is contributing
is contributing to sea level rise.
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