A
break in the clouds on October 29, 2014, allowed scientists the opportunity to
fly over Pine Island Glacier—one of Antarctica’s most rapidly changing areas.
The flight was part of NASA’s Operation IceBridge, a mission that makes annual
surveys of Greenland and Antarctica with instrumented research aircraft.
After
months of darkness in Antarctica, the Sun continues to rise a little higher
each day. IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger captured this
photograph of late day sunlight striking glaciers and mountains in coastal West
Antarctica at the end of the October 29 survey of Pine Island Glacier.
The
recent, rapid changes at Pine Island have made it a high priority target for
IceBridge. The weather, however, is not always agreeable. Paths flown in 2014
were last surveyed by IceBridge in 2012, and prior to that from 2002 to 2009.
In 2013, satellite imagery found that a large iceberg had separated from the
glacier's calving front. During the first 2014 flight, instruments found a new
crack—a relatively common feature, according to scientists.
Repeat
measurements of land and sea ice from aircraft extend the record of
observations once made by NASA's Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite, or
ICESat, which stopped functioning in 2009. In addition to extending the
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