Tracking the Movement of Ice Across Antarctica
Sindya N. Bhanoo, The New York Times
A new map of Antarctica illustrates for the first time how ice moves across the continent. The map’s creators believe it may be a crucial tool in helping researchers understand how a warming climate is changing the continent.
The creation of the digital map was supported by NASA and combines data gathered from 2007 to 2009 by satellites belonging to the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
“It’s a unique collaboration with each satellite contributing different skills and mapping different parts of the continent,” said Eric Rignot, an Earth system scientist at the University of California, Irvine, and the study’s lead author.
The Japanese satellite, for instance, was useful in mapping fast ice motion over coastal Antarctica, he said.
Dr. Rignot, along with his colleagues Jeremie Mouginot and Bernd Scheuchl, also of U.C. Irvine, describe the map in the current issue of the journal Science.
Before their effort, vast portions of East Antarctica, which accounts for 77 percent of the continent, remained unmapped, Dr. Rignot said.
According to the findings, an intricate pattern of organized ice flow connects the interior regions of the continent with its coast. This flow is largely caused by sheets of ice sliding on rocky beds, the researchers report.
“It’s really the first time we get to see what ice motion looks like over the whole continent,” Dr. Rignot said. ”Before, we just had models of what we thought it looked like.”
