NASA’s Operation IceBridge Completes Eleven Years of Polar Surveys
From NASA International Local weather Change
NASA’s Operation IceBridge, a ten-year mission to gather polar knowledge between ICESat and ICESat-2, could also be coming to a detailed, however its a whole lot of terabytes of knowledge and the experience of its group will proceed to gasoline analysis and discovery for many years to return. Credit score: NASA / Jim Yungel
By Jessica Merzforf,
NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Heart
For eleven years from 2009 by 2019, the planes of NASA’s Operation IceBridge flew above the Arctic, Antarctic and Alaska, gathering knowledge on the peak, depth, thickness, circulate and alter of sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets.
For 11 years from 2009 to 2019, the planes of NASA’s Operation IceBridge flew above the Arctic, Antarctic and Alaska, gathering knowledge on the peak, depth, thickness, circulate and alter of sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets. Credit score: NASA/ Katie Jepson. This video will be downloaded without cost at NASA’s Scientific VIsualization Studio.
Designed to gather knowledge through the years between NASA’s two Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellites, ICESat and ICESat-2, IceBridge made its ultimate polar flight in November 2019, one yr after ICESat-2’s profitable launch.
Because the group and planes transfer on to their subsequent assignments, the scientists and engineers mirrored on a decade of IceBridge’s most important accomplishments.
2009: IceBridge’s Launch and First Flights
NASA’s first Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite tv for pc (ICESat) monitored ice, clouds, atmospheric particles and vegetation globally starting in 2003. As ICESat neared the tip of its life, NASA made plans to maintain measuring ice elevation with plane till ICESat-2’s launch. ICESat completed its service in August 2009, and IceBridge took over land and sea ice measurements for the following decade.
The quantity and fashions of IceBridge plane modified from yr to yr, they usually carried greater than a dozen devices, from elevation-mapping lasers and ice-penetrating radars, to optical and infrared cameras, to gravimeters and magnetometers that reveal details about the bedrock underneath the ice. Past merely bridging the altimetry hole, the mission’s complete suite of devices allowed it to doc quick and sluggish modifications to the ice sheets, perceive the geophysical causes of these modifications, monitor yearly fluctuations in sea ice thickness and enhance computing and modeling instruments for analysis.
Earlier than IceBridge, NASA was yearly monitoring susceptible areas of the Greenland Ice Sheet through the Arctic Ice Mapping Undertaking (AIM). However IceBridge far surpassed earlier campaigns in dimension and scope, with annual surveys of each poles, extra devices and an extended timeframe that allowed it to trace modifications throughout and even inside years.
Certainly one of IceBridge’s first vital contributions was mapping a whole lot of miles of grounding strains in each Antarctica and Greenland. Grounding strains are the place a glacier’s backside loses contact with the bedrock and begins floating on seawater. A grounding line that’s increased than rock that the ice behind it’s resting on will increase the opportunity of future unstable retreat.
“Earlier than IceBridge, we had plenty of glaciers the place we didn’t have data on their grounding strains, which made it difficult to mannequin them and develop dependable projections of sea stage rise,” mentioned Michael Studinger, group lead for the Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) instrument and IceBridge’s venture scientist from 2010 to 2015.
The group mapped 200 glaciers alongside Greenland’s coastal areas over their decade of labor, in addition to coastal areas, the inside of the Greenland Ice Sheet and high-priority areas in Antarctica. “We requested, ‘How will this look in 2030 or 100 years from now?’” Studinger mentioned.
2011: Antarctic Glacier Rifts and Calving Occasions
The group’s experience and adaptableness enabled them to shortly modify flight routes as wanted. Throughout their 2011 Antarctic survey, IceBridge scientists noticed a large crack in Pine Island Glacier, one of many fastest-changing glaciers on the continent. They later returned to check it extra intently, and the crack produced a brand new glacier that October. This nimbleness made IceBridge uniquely versatile and aware of the wants of the science neighborhood, enabling extra science than their baseline assignments.
A photograph from the window of NASA’s DC-Eight exhibits the rift throughout the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf operating off towards the horizon. The aircraft flew throughout the crevasse on Oct. 26, 2011 as a part of NASA’s Operation IceBridge, and in addition flew instantly over the rift for about 18 miles, taking detailed measurements of its depth, width and form. The ice shelf hadn’t calved a significant iceberg since 2001, and IceBridge took benefit of the chance afforded by recognizing the crack to fly over it and measure its traits. Credit score: NASA / Michael Studinger
Pine Island has grown thinner and extra unstable in current many years, now producing new icebergs nearly yearly. IceBridge monitored Pine Island and different Antarctic glaciers yearly, waiting for cracks that would result in icebergs and utilizing radar and gravimeters to map options just like the deep water channel beneath Pine Island Glacier, which can deliver heat water to its underside and make it soften quicker.
“We want measurements to grasp Antarctica’s ice at the moment and fashions to grasp its future, which finally impacts us all through sea-level change,” mentioned IceBridge venture scientist Joe MacGregor. “Exactly measuring which Antarctic glaciers are thinning proper now – and watching how they evolve over a number of years – helps us enhance these fashions. Many of the largest modifications in Antarctic ice are occurring in West Antarctica, and sadly, that ice could be very more likely to proceed thinning for the foreseeable future.”
2013: Wanting Under the Ice – at Each Poles
The brand new bedrock map of Antarctica developed in 2013 from IceBridge and different knowledge was way more detailed than earlier maps, giving researchers and modelers new details about how ice flows or sticks on the rock beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. Credit score: NASA / Cynthia Starr
In 2013, scientists from the British Antarctic Survey launched an up to date map of the bedrock beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The mannequin included floor elevation, ice thickness and bedrock topography knowledge from ICESat, IceBridge and missions from worldwide companions.
Understanding what sort of rock lies beneath an ice sheet can yield vital clues about how the ice on high may circulate and alter, mentioned Studinger.
“Gravity and magnetic measurements give you constraints to deduce what sort of rock you could have beneath an ice sheet,” he mentioned. “That issues for the way in which and velocity the ice is flowing. If in case you have tender sediment rock, that and meltwater generally is a lubricant for an ice sheet. Crystalline rock, like granite, is more durable to show right into a lubricant, making it more difficult for an ice sheet to develop a quick circulate.”
Carried by its personal weight and the dynamics of the bottom or water beneath it, ice flows towards the ocean, finally floating offshore and probably breaking off into icebergs, like these of the Pine Island Glacier. The higher scientists perceive this circulate, the higher they will mannequin the way it may progress sooner or later. IceBridge’s array of devices measuring the highest, center and backside of the Antarctic ice sheet are uniquely suited to finding out this course of, mentioned Studinger.
“Having all these items of knowledge collectively is extremely useful, and we repeat the measurements yr after yr so we will see how issues change over time,” he mentioned. “That may be a super knowledge asset and one thing we will’t do from house.”
Typically measuring the unseen bedrock not solely helps clarify recognized processes, but in addition yields new surprises. Researchers from the College of Bristol used many years of airborne radar knowledge, a lot of it from IceBridge, to map the bedrock beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet. They discovered a beforehand unknown canyon greater than 400 miles lengthy and as much as a half-mile deep slicing by the northern half of the nation.
The scientists consider the canyon — dubbed the “grand canyon” of Greenland — could have as soon as been a river system, and at the moment probably transports subglacial meltwater from Greenland’s inside to the Arctic Ocean.
2015: It’s What’s Inside (the Ice Sheet) that Counts
After mapping the bedrock underneath the Greenland Ice Sheet, scientists turned their consideration to the center layers of the ice. Utilizing each ice-penetrating radar and ice samples taken within the area, MacGregor and his group created the primary map of the ice sheet’s many layers, shaped as 1000’s of years of snow grew to become compacted downward and shaped ice.
As with all fashions, a greater understanding of the previous means extra strong predictions of the long run. Measuring previous soften, accumulation and circulate helps glaciologists refine their fashions of the Greenland Ice Sheet’s future.
“Getting a way of how previous Greenland’s ice is at completely different depths throughout the island allowed us to see into its previous,” mentioned MacGregor. “Making the 3D map of Greenland’s ice layers enabled us to find that the ice sheet has slowed down over the past a number of thousand years. It additionally gave us clues as to how the ice sheet has warmed previously, and the place it might be frozen to bedrock or slowly melting as a substitute.”
2018: Finishing the Information Bridge
ICESat-2 launched from California’s Vandenburg Air Power Base on September 15, 2018, rocketing IceBridge into the ultimate part of its mission: connecting ICESat and ICESat-2.
IceBridge continued amassing knowledge after ICESat-2’s launch, its main operate being to validate the brand new satellite tv for pc’s measurements. By conducting exact underflights, the place planes traced the satellite tv for pc’s orbit strains and took the identical measurements at almost the identical time, the science groups might evaluate outcomes and ensure ICESat-2’s devices have been functioning correctly.
Usually, IceBridge flights have been performed in full daylight, for max visibility. However through the satellite tv for pc underflights, the planes additionally took measurements at nightfall, to search for modifications in accuracy with decrease gentle. In addition they measured so-called “blue ice,” or ice not coated by snow, to higher perceive how the lasers penetrated ice.
IceBridge underflew a lot of European satellites throughout its ten years, just like the ESA’s CryoSat-2 and Sentinel-Three satellites, and overflew floor campaigns like ESA’s CryoVEx marketing campaign and the Danish PROMICE climate stations. Its exact, dependable measurements offered an ordinary to assist different missions guarantee high-quality measurements of their very own.
2019: The Finish of an Period
In 2019, IceBridge continued flying in assist of ICESat-2 for its Arctic and Antarctic campaigns. The a whole lot of terabytes of knowledge the group collected over the last decade will gasoline science for years to return.
“This knowledge doesn’t get previous,” Studinger mentioned. “This knowledge set we have now proper now shall be extremely useful going into the long run. It’s principally the one knowledge set of its form that we have now.”
“Our knowledge is freely out there to anybody,” mentioned venture supervisor Eugenia De Marco. “I consider that, as people, we’re stewards of this planet, and as such, it’s our accountability to care for it. Step one in that course of is to search out out what’s occurring with the bodily world so we will higher deal with the challenges going through our planet. I consider IceBridge and the information it has collected helps reply the query of what’s occurring, and that is without doubt one of the largest contributions IceBridge has offered over time.”
The marketing campaign accomplished greater than 900 flights between Greenland and Antarctica, and greater than 150 in Alaska. Whereas some members of the group modified over the last decade, some have been with the venture since its starting.
“We had this unbelievable can-do perspective on each the instrument groups and the plane groups,” mentioned Studinger, who was the venture’s first lead scientist in 2009 and labored with the mission all through the last decade. “We’d have been working actually lengthy days for 11 weeks straight in Greenland, however nonetheless, at 5 within the morning, folks step on the airplane and say hey with a giant smile on their face. It actually speaks to the folks, who, for me, have been essentially the most gratifying half – the IceBridge household.”
IceBridge completed its final polar flight on November 20, 2019. The group will full another set of Alaska flights in 2020.
“Operation IceBridge took what NASA had already realized the way to do with planes on the poles and supersized it, with persistently profitable airborne campaigns throughout the Arctic and Antarctic for eleven years straight,” mentioned MacGregor. “Whereas IceBridge was laser-focused on its main goal – bridging the hole between ICESat and ICESat-2 – it was sufficiently large and broad in scope that it generated a momentum all its personal, too. IceBridge opened the door to new methods of serious about monitoring the polar areas and enabled quite a few surprising discoveries, and introduced new scientists and new knowledge sorts into the fold.”
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