Cryospheric Research Roundup

March – April 2012

IceBridge's 2012 Arctic Campaign

March 13 marked the beginning of Operation IceBridge's 2012 Arctic Campaign, which will last until May 25. On board of a modified P-3B plane, the IceBridge team has been conducting almost-daily missions out of Thule and Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, to measure changes in sea and land ice.

The mission has benefitted from a streak of good weather: by May 7, the IceBridge team had completed 36 science missions and flown the equivalent of traveling three times around the Earth... and they still had two more weeks to go!

MABEL Completes Its Deployment in Iceland and Greenland

The Multiple Altimeter Beam Experimental Lidar (MABEL) Arctic deployment was a success, completing all of its planned science flights from its base in Keflavik, Iceland. MABEL is a simulator for an instrument that will be on board of NASA's IceSat-2 satellite, scheduled for launch in 2016.

Nested in the nosecone of an ER-2 plane, MABEL collected data throughout 14 flight tracks over Greenland and surrounding sea ice areas. MABEL flew several IceBridge flight lines, which will allow scientists to compare the data from the two missions.

MABEL's team members, including Cryospheric Laboratory members Kelly Brunt and Tom Neumann, also participated in a number of public outreach activities, including briefings with Iceland's president and the U.S. ambassador in Reykjavik.

New Q&A Series With Our Researchers

Glaciologist Kimberly Casey was the first lab member to be featured in a new series of interviews aimed at exploring our scientists' research goals and backgrounds. Check Kimberly's Q&A to learn how she traveled to Nepal, Svalbard and other remote corners of the Earth to investigate if satellite data can be used to map different types of glacier dust and debris. Keep tuned for new interviews!

Watch "Cold Facts: Snow Accumulation Research in West Antarctica"

Lora Koenig, a physical scientist with Goddard's cryospheric sciences laboratory, spoke about mass changes occurring over the West Antarctic Ice Sheet on the March 9 Goddard Scientific Colloquium. A video of the talk, which covered Lora's team's recent snowmobile traverse in Western Antarctica to drill ice cores and collect radar data, is publicly available here.

 

January - February 2012

MABEL Engineering Flights

The Multiple Altimeter Beam Experimental Lidar (MABEL) team conducted a series of engineering flights from NASA's Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility (Palmdale, CA), on 22-24 Feb., in preparation for the instrument's month-long deployment in Greenland in April.
MABEL data will provide the foundation for future Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) science. The instrument is tucked in the nosecone of an ER-2 aircraft, which also carries on its right wing a Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL), a device that measures cloud cover density. New to this deployment is the addition of a Digital Camera System placed behind the pilot. The camera will help researchers assess MABEL data in future deployments to the Arctic.

Pennsylvania Teacher to Fly with IceBridge

Tim Spuck, a high school teacher from Oil City, Penn., was selected through the National Science Foundation's PolarTREC program to work with IceBridge scientists and participate next April in survey flights during the 2012 Arctic campaign. He will be joined by two educators from Greenland and two from Denmark in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. Spuck will write about his experience on the PolarTREC blog

Tom Neumann's Lecture on NASA's Polar Science

Cryospheric scientist Tom Neumann gave a public talk at Goddard's Visitor Center on March 8. About two dozen people attended the presentation, titled "Penguins, Polar Bears, and Laser Beams from Space: NASA Science at the Poles". The lecture gave an overview of the polar research carried by the Cryospheric Sciences Lab members, including the upcoming satellite mission ICESat-2.

November – December 2011

Measuring snow accumulation in Antarctica

December marked the second year of field work for the Satellite Era Accumulation Traverse (SEAT), a project led by glaciologist Lora Koenig and aimed at collecting new ice cores to extend records of snow accumulation in Western Antarctica. Koenig accompanied her team to McMurdo Station and Byrd Camp in Antarctica, to oversee the logistics of the expedition and check the scientific instruments in the field. The team collected an ice core at Byrd. Five members of the group, including Ludovic Brucker, a research associate at NASA Goddard, embarked on a snowmobile traverse. They covered 500 kilometers and collected eight more ice cores in 18 days, completing their field work on December 28.

> Check the SEAT traverse's blog

Expedition to Pine Island Glacier

An international team of researchers led by Robert Bindschadler, emeritus glaciologist with the cryospheric lab, headed in November to Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier, one of the fastest-melting spots in the southernmost continent. The group will use a combination of traditional tools and new oceanographic instruments to study how changes in the waters circulating under its ice sheet are causing the glacier to accelerate and drain into the sea.

> Read a feature on the expedition here.

IceBridge: Highlights of the 2011 Antarctic Campaign

IceBridge's 2011 Antarctic Campaign finished on November 20. The two planes participating in the campaign, NASA's DC-8 and a Gulfstream-V from the National Science Foundation, accomplished 35 science missions and spent 390 hours on the air, flying a total of 268,000 kilometers. The IceBridge team collected 165 hours of data over its target sites.

Women of Goddard book and exhibit

Goddard's climatologist Claire Parkinson co-authored a new book, "Women of Goddard". The book and its accompanying set of six posters were highlighted in November in an exhibit at the Maryland Women's Heritage Center. The book features 103 Goddard women in science, technology, engineering and math careers, including Parkinson herself and two other researchers with the cryospheric sciences lab: Lora Koenig and Nancy Maynard.

> Download the book here

September-October 2011

Third IceBridge campaign in Antarctica

Researchers with NASA's Operation IceBridge campaign began in October the mission's third year of aerial surveys of Antarctica. The team uses several remote-sensing instruments loaded into two planes, a DC-8 jet and a Gulfstream V jet. The planes fly to Antarctica from a base in Punta Arenas, Chile, and cover not only new routes, but also previous flight lines to measure how much glaciers and ice sheets have changed since the last time they were surveyed.
On Oct. 14, IceBridge scientists observed a massive crack running across the ice shelf of Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica. The rift indicated that the glacier, which is rapidly melting and contributing to sea level rise, is about to shed a 300-square-mile iceberg to the ocean.    

> Visit Operation IceBridge’s website for more information on the mission.

Arctic sea ice at its second minimum

Satellite data from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center showed that the sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean was at its second-lowest extent on record this September. Cryospheric lab’s Joey Comiso said that the pace of the decline is also accelerating, with the older, thicker ice declining faster than the rest. Comiso’s analysis of Arctic sea ice using data from the microwave radiometer on the Aqua satellite showed that while the sea ice extent was larger than during the 2007 minimum record, the sea ice area was slightly lower than 2007 levels for about 10 days in September. Sea ice area equals the actual surface area covered by ice, while extent includes any zone where ice covers at least 15 percent of the ocean.

> Read NASA’s press release on Arctic sea ice extent minimum in 2011.

Snow cover map

Dorothy Hall and colleagues recently launched an interactive, near-real-time map of snow cover in North America. The map visualizes data from the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on the Terra and Aqua satellites and it’s updated daily. Users can zoom in on their geographical areas of interest and download images at different resolutions. Although MODIS can’t see snow cover beneath clouds, the website allows users to use filters to grey out the cloud cover or highlight the snow cover layers, to better visualize what areas are covered in snow.
 
> Check the Daily North American Snow Cover map.
 

Cryospheric Sciences at NASA Goddard

Cryospheric research at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center addresses the physics of ice sheets and glaciers, sea ice, snow on ice and land, and their roles in the global climate system.

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