First complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica, derived from radar interferometric data. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCI
PASADENA, Calif. – NASA-funded researchers have created the first complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica. The map, which shows glaciers flowing thousands of miles from the continent’s deep interior to its coast, will be critical for tracking future sea-level increases from climate change. The team created the map using integrated radar observations from a consortium of international satellites.
“This is like seeing a map of all the oceans’ currents for the first time. It’s a game changer for glaciology,” said Eric Rignot of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California (UC), Irvine. Rignot is lead author of a paper about the ice flow published online Thursday in Science Express. “We are seeing amazing flows from the heart of the continent that had never been described before.”
Rignot and UC Irvine scientists Jeremie Mouginot and Bernd Scheuchl used billions of data points captured by European, Japanese and Canadian satellites to weed out cloud cover, solar glare and land features masking the glaciers. With the aid of NASA technology, the team painstakingly pieced together the shape and velocity of glacial formations, including the previously uncharted East Antarctica, which comprises 77 percent of the continent.
Like viewers of a completed jigsaw puzzle, the scientists were surprised when they stood back and took in the full picture. They discovered a new ridge splitting the 5.4 million-square-mile (14 million-square-kilometer) landmass from east to west.
The team also found unnamed formations moving up to 800 feet (244 meters) annually across immense plains sloping toward the Antarctic Ocean and in a different manner than past models of ice migration.
“The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on,” said Thomas Wagner, NASA’s cryospheric program scientist in Washington. “That’s critical knowledge for predicting future sea level rise. It means that if we lose ice at the coasts from the warming ocean, we open the tap to massive amounts of ice in the interior.”
The work was conducted in conjunction with the International Polar Year (IPY) (2007-2008). Collaborators worked under the IPY Space Task Group, which included NASA; the European Space Agency (ESA); Canadian Space Agency (CSA); Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency; the Alaska Satellite Facility in Fairbanks; and MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates of Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. The map builds on partial charts of Antarctic ice flow created by NASA, CSA and ESA using different techniques. “To our knowledge, this is the first time that a tightly knit collaboration of civilian space agencies has worked together to create such a huge dataset of this type,” said Yves Crevier of CSA. “It is a dataset of lasting scientific value in assessing the extent and rate of change in polar regions.”
For a video animation of the new Antarctic map, visit: http://1.usa.gov/poJq1P .
For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov .
JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
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“The team also found unnamed formations moving up to 800 feet (244 meters) annually across immense plains sloping toward the Antarctic Ocean and in a different manner than past models of ice migration.”
Observations trump models again!
So these ice shelves are supposed to hold back the entire continent of ice cap?
And here I thought that the map was indicating an ice tsunami, with the speed picking up as the depth decreased.
40 years ago, we learned in jr. high that glaciers gouged out U-shaped canyons as the ice slid along the bottom. But, these ‘scientists’ are now surprised by this?
Oh, it’s alwasy about climate change and rising sea levels spoiling the view.
“The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on,” said Thomas Wagner”
Fundamentally new? WTF? If this guy is not being misquoted then he has definitely led a very sheltered life.
Cool……… 🙂
Waiting for the informed comments detailing flaws in assumptions about “Climate Change” and Willis to do some sort of magical mathematical analysis which clearly shows that there is more ice than there used to be!
“Bloke down the pub says:
August 23, 2011 at 1:17 am”
I missed that because I could not believe the statement from the article in the post I made, but I had a real chuckle about that one too. I despair when I read stuff like this.
“The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on,”
Fundamentally new! I can’t even hazard a guess as to what he thought the fundamentals were before his new discovery!
“The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on”
I’m wondering what else it could possibly be slipping on.. banana peels? Or maybe they were thinking the ground moves with it.. Or it flies through the air?
Seriously, I’d love to be completely dumb and miss whatever obvious mode of transport it moves with.
Oh come on! You gotta be f’n joking right? Hey Wagner, when your big press quote looks like something right out of an Onion satire or April Fool’s joke, something is seriously wrong! Thomas Wagner is a NASA scientist based in Washington D.C.? Houston, we’ve got a problem right there. What’s he researching? Potomac mosquitoes or taxpayer funded grants?
It sure sounds to me like this guy and his team are intentionally wording things to imply that they actually discovered something here, almost like they are taking credit for something real scientists have done already. Doesn’t he get the NatGeo or History channel (or WUWT)? Been there done that. Striations on Central Park bedrock. Great lakes carved by glacial movement and filled from meltwater. Likewise for countless other glacial and post-glacial locations all over the Earth. Why doesn’t he also take credit for discovering gravity too?
People *should* click that link to familiarize themselves with the real propaganda end-product here. An animation that makes it look like Antarctica is running like Colorado River rapids. Get used to it because it is ready-made for alarmist websites. Here is their disclaimer …
That is what the whole thing is about. Millions or Billions of dollars spent on satellites and super-computer time and countless man-hours to make that little animation and a few press releases and webpages. Taxpayer funded AGW hysteria propaganda. This theme is running rampant in all FedGov agencies, NSIDC with Serreze, NASA with Hansen and Gavin, NOAA, EPA, DEC, etc. Perhaps the only answer is to shut them all down, fire everyone, cancel their pensions and then, maybe, re-open one or two of them under new non-union, non-political, non-AGW management.
“ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on”
While common sense might tell you this is a common sense statement, it is bloody false. Glaciers don’t “slip”, they grind their way through the bedrock because they are pushed by the enormous weight of the ice from higher up. Glaciers dug the fjords in Norway, and they did not do this by “slipping”, but by grinding the rock under them and carrying the sand, the pebbles or even boulders as large as few hundred tons for hundreds of miles.
Glaciers move because there is more ice on top: if the movement of glaciers “accelerated” it’s because there is more ice on the higher ground, not because they melt and slide on water. When glaciers melt because of temperature they appear to be retreating, not advancing.
Been a unquestioning warmist myself before the fools started mouthing about glacier discharging into the ocean at “accelerated rates” …
Why? I mean, what’s so significant about this?
What’s next, mapping Buffaloes droppings?
No doubt, for another telephone-number sum, they are gearing up to “discover” that the ice that breaks off the edges move by drifting across the water it floats on. Oh, I seem to have got there first. Any chance of a few million to write it up?
Perhaps if they had looked at this British Antarctic Survey map of Antarctica on Wikipedia, linked from a NASA website created in 2008 this “new” ridge may not have come as such a surprise.
The contours of the greatest heights of ice coincides with this new ridge across several named domes. Isn’t gravity working its magic and causing the ice to flow away from this area a wonder to behold, visualised very nicely in their animation.
Of course if, as remarked on by early comentators above, they truly believe they have discovered something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on then unfortunately they would be unlikely to have learned anything from looking at such a map.
Dave N says:
August 23, 2011 at 1:51 am
“The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on”
I’m wondering what else it could possibly be slipping on.. banana peels? Or maybe they were thinking the ground moves with it.. Or it flies through the air?
The previous computer models had the glaciers slipping on ice. The old theory was that it was ice all the way down.
If this is new information, how can they possibly know that there will be “rising sea levels”? It would seem to me more scientifically appropriate to say,”This research will help us understand changes in the rate of ice flow with short-term seasonal changes and long-term changes in climate” or something to that effect. They (as usual) postulate (alleged) CAGW and go from there.
Not science.
At at the other end of the world, a sad note:
Polar Scientist killed in Resolute Bay air crash
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2011/08/21/mb-north-resolute-bergmann-crash.html?www.mymanitoba.com
Marty Bergmann, director of Natural Resources Canada’s Polar Continental Shelf Program was among the victims in Saturday’s crash of a First Air Boeing 737 that was attempting to land at Resolute Bay in the high Arctic
Quantity of Ice remaining (R) = Initial Amount of ice (I) + Ice Growth (G) – Ice Loss (L). I just made that up and I have never been to University! Can I have a grant please and I will expand on this.
“..including the previously uncharted East Antarctica, which comprises 77 percent of the continent.”
So once again “science is settled” even though they know nothing about 77 % of the largest ice mass on the planet!
as so m,any above were the statement..“The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on,” had me shaking my head..
we went and saw the gouges in the land near the sea in Sth Aus when I was a kid..
maybe this mob used to wag school?
Ian Plimers book had some brilliant descriptions of how ice can be “plastic” with the weight pressing on it..that was new to me. serious science -not dumbed down media crud.
and yeah that ridge also was NOT a new find..
Epic Fail on truth and fact.
Aside from the revelation that glaciers flow on the earth beneath them, I put this in Tips and Notes, albeit not the first, due to the outrageous title Scientific American gave it: Rivers of Melting Ice Mapped in Antarctica . This even with their article making no such reference.
OK, I’ll admit it’s a lovely animation and ignoring the April 1st nature of their supposed discovery lets apply some perspective to this press release.
Comparing the overall km scale bar to the m/yr rate of flow colour bar I see the following:-
From the farthest inland valley ice outflow to the farthest sea edge of the Ross Ice shelf = Up to 1000 years.
From the high centre of the continent to the sea level outflow = Approx 100,000+ years
So it will take the entire time from now to approximately the next interglacial warming for the ice in the middle to make it to the sea….. Therefore there appears to be NOTHING to worry about at all!
Whilst these clever folks are working on it, lets see their animation of total ice accumulation vs loss…. would it perhaps show accumulation inland with a slow gravity assisted slip off the edges? i.e. a dynamic system in action.
Where do I apply for a 7 figure grant to write up my amazing discovery?
“The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on,” said Thomas Wagner, NASA’s cryospheric program scientist in Washington.
*groan* This guy can’t be a glaciologist! He obviously doesn’t know what he’s talking about. How glaciers move is part of the tour guide spiel in various national parks that have or were once covered by glaciers. So what’s the requirement to be a “NASA’s cryospheric program scientist”? A PhD in BS?
Seems to me being English based in the UK that NASA seem to spend more time earthbound than space investigating. I suppose ice in space does not move by slipping along the ground so this is the reason the chap is so ebullient about it. He should have asked my children, they know this. Keep spending chaps, new budgets in 6 months.
From the article – “The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on,” said Thomas Wagner, NASA’s cryospheric program scientist in Washington.
Well that explains a lot about NASA. Most first year geology students learn that, but I guess it took this project to discover something fundamentally new by a cryospheric program scientist.
“Ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on . . .” is a crock. And it certainly is NOT revealed by computer animation.
Essentially all glacier ice moves by crystal-lattice deformation under the influence of gravity and confining pressure. Ice moves on ice by flowing plastically. And don’t forget phase transformations between different metastable crystal forms of H2O
Remember Silly Putty? Roll it into a ball and leave it on the table top – 30 minutes later, you have a Silly Putty pancake. It did not slip across the table surface. It flowed internally
The “gouging” and “grinding” terms are largely inappropriate as well. Glacial valleys are U-shaped due to freeze-thaw action on cracks in the rocks which acts to pluck material from the valley bottom and include it in the glacial stream. These entrained rocks do the “grinding” that forms glacial striations (e.g.). Ice is never hard enough to gouge anything – except other ice.
sheesh
It appears yet again to be worse than we thought!