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NASA starts Arctic ice surveys for 2011
A NASA research team has arrived in Greenland to start its annual aerial survey of Arctic ice, the agency announced March 15. The survey is part of Operation IceBridge, a program that began in 2009 and that involves conducting airborne sorties over the Arctic starting in March each year, and overflying the Antarctic, starting in October. This year’s Arctic operation will include surveys of Canadian ice caps and will involve expanded international cooperation, NASA said.
“Each successive IceBridge campaign has broadened in scope,” said IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger of Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “This year, we have more flight hours and flight plans than ever before. We are looking forward to a busy, fruitful campaign.”
Overnight transit to Fairbanks NASA says that one of its highest priority flights will involve an overnight transit to Fairbanks, Alaska, to collect sea-ice thickness data across the Arctic Ocean, with another high priority flight involving the collection of data from ice caps in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
NASA uses data collected from IceBridge surveys to supplement satellite-based ice elevation measurements that ended in 2009 and are not scheduled for restart until 2016. This year’s Arctic mission will involve flights over ground-based calibration sites for a European Space Agency satellite program, to improve the measurements from that program.
Overflights of several Greenland glaciers will enable scientists to assess whether ice loss from these glaciers is slowing or accelerating, NASA says.
The survey will involve the use of a NASA P-3B aircraft, equipped with radar and gravity instrumentation, and with a laser altimeter. A NASA King Air B-200 will operate another laser altimeter, designed for relatively high altitude use.
—Alan Bailey
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