We live in the most exciting time ever for Earth observation and the complex datasets that are building up, allowing us to trace the processes that characterise Earth systems science through multi year periods and tease out fascinating knowledge about many things that are happening on our beautiful planet that we were previously unaware of. One of these is the movement of ice on the continent of Antarctica, pictured here in mixed data comprising visible light and interferogram (superimposing new InSAR radar data on old to reveal what has changed). Red delineates areas of fast flow, purple slow, brown slowest.
Such data is vital to get a handle on the likely amount of sea level rise as man made global warming picks up the pace, this being one of the greatest risks facing us as we will have to evacuate all the coastal cities world wide over the next couple of centuries (or even earlier if events keep on moving faster than scientists most pessimistic expectations). Understanding the dynamics of ice flow will help us at least constrain what is likely to happen. This data is then plugged into climate models to help improve their accuracy by tying them more closely to what is actually happening on the ground. The project is an international collaboration, combining data from NASA, Canadian, Japanese and European satellites into the final product Read Article: http://the-earth-story.com/post/173023415393/iceflow-we-live-in-the-most-exciting-time-ever Comments are closed.
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AuthorThaddeus Dzieszko |