Antarctica’s Moving Ice Shown in New NASA ‘Game Changer’ Map - Digital Journal News

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Washington - In a “game changer” for glaciology, NASA-funded researchers have compiled a map of ice as it moves from Antarctica’s inner regions to the continent’s coast, the first complete map to show direction and speed as the ice moves.

The animated map shows how, as the ice flows thousands of miles from Antarctica’s interior to the ocean, it gains speed. Researchers say the new tool is critical for tracking upcoming sea-level increases related to global warming. Eric Rgnot, lead author of a new paper published Thursday in Science Express, said: “This is like seeing a map of all the oceans' currents for the first time. It's a game changer for glaciology,” in a NASA press release. Rignot, with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, and the University of California Irvine, added: “We are seeing amazing flows from the heart of the continent that had never been described before.” Among discoveries by the researchers as they worked on the map project, they found a new east-west running ridge which splits the 5.4 million square mile continent, as well as unnamed ice formations moving up to 800 feet each year over vast regions of Antarctica’s plains as they head toward the Antarctic Ocean. The scientists used data from Canadian, European and Japanese satellites to reduce or eliminate solar glare, cloud cover and land features hiding the glaciers. According to Wired Science, 3,000 separate orbital tracks provided from these polar-orbiting satellites provided billions of data points of vital information. Using NASA technology, the team was then able to produce the map showing shapes and velocities of glacial formations. “The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on,” said Thomas Wagner, cryospheric program scientist in Washington for NASA, in the release. “That's critical knowledge for predicting future sea level rise. It means that if we lose ice at the coasts from the warming ocean, we open the tap to massive amounts of ice in the interior.” 

 

 

Source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/310599

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