Cryospheric Research Roundup

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.
 

July-August 2011

Tohoku Tsunami Created Icebergs In Antarctica

08.08.11 -- Kelly Brunt, a cryosphere specialist at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and colleagues were able to link the calving of icebergs from the Sulzberger Ice Shelf in Antarctica following the Tohoku Tsunami, which originated with an earthquake off the coast of Japan in March 2011. The finding, detailed in a paper published online today in the Journal of Glaciology, marks the first direct observation of such a connection between tsunamis and icebergs.

> Read the full story and watch the video here.

May-June 2011

Explore@NASA Goddard

05.09.11 -- Scientists are taking part in the open house event at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Saturday, May 14, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event, Explore@NASA Goddard, is organized into six zones including Earth Science, where visitors can experience how NASA measures and monitors our changing Earth.

Make a stop at the Visitor Center throughout the day and use ICESat images to see how Arctic sea ice has declined in recent years. At 3 p.m., visit the Educator Resource Center (located within the Visitor Center) to chat with IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger, live from the mission’s base in Thule, Greenland. The mission’s deputy project scientist Lora Koenig, who returned from the field on May 7, will also be on hand to answer questions.

> Visit the Explore@NASA Goddard Web page for more information and to view the event program.
 

Goin’ ROGUE!

05.02.11 -- Scientists Matt Hoffman and Tom Neumann are in Greenland this month for the Real-time Observations of Greenland’s Under-ice Environment (ROGUE) project. The goal of ROGUE is to examine the nature and cause of short-term ice velocity changes near Swiss Camp, Greenland, by observing interactions between the ice sheet, the atmosphere and the bed. The team’s primary objective this spring is to install eight GPS stations on the ice sheet to measure how fast the ice is flowing toward the ocean. 

> Follow their adventures here.

Matt Hoffman (above) poses in front of the LC-130 that carried the team and cargo to Greenland. Credit: NASA/Matt Hoffman

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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