Greenland's Glaciers as seen by RadarSat

  • Released Tuesday, August 25, 2015
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An animation up the Greenland's Sermilik Fjord to the calving front of the Helheim Glacier, showing the glacier front's change between 2000 to 2013
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.

This animation is based on 30-meter topography data for Greenland along with an ocean and an ice sheet mask provided by the Greenland Ice Mapping Project (GIMP) at Ohio State. Each of these datasets consists of a 6 x 6 array of 124 megapixel tiles.

The surface texture is derived from seven sets of 20-meter Radarsat reflectance data from the Canadian Space Agency, mosaicked at the University of Washington's Applied Physics Lab and accurately registered to the topography data. Each of six tile sets represents data for one year between 2000 and 2013, while the final one is a composite of the six years that has most areas of missing data resolved. Each of these tile sets consist of a 5 x 5 array of 421 megapixel tiles.

The false color of the surface is derived as follows. Three different color scales are applied to the floating point Radarsat reflectance data based on their relationship within the GIMP masks. Areas within the ice sheet mask are mapped to a color ramp from white (high) to grey (low). Areas within the land region of the ocean mask but not in the ice sheet mask are similarly mapped to a color ramp of light to dark tan. The area indicating ocean is mapped to blue.

An animation of flows showing the drainage area of the Petermann glacier

An animation showing the region around Northeast Greenland along with the change in the calving front of the Zackary Istrom glacier from 2000 to 2013

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

Radarsat data courtesy of the Canadian Space Agency, mosaicked by Ian Joughin, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington

GIMP Topography and Ice/Land/Water mask courtesy of the BPRC Glacier Dynamics Research Group, Ohio State University

The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).

This page was originally published on Tuesday, August 25, 2015.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 12:06 AM EST.

Datasets used in this visualization

  • [RADARSAT-1: SAR]

    ID: 87
    Sensor: SAR Dates used: 2000 - 2013

    Credit: Additional credit goes to Canadian Space Agency, RADARSAT International Inc.

    See all pages that use this dataset

  • GIMP Greenland DEM (Greenland Mapping Project (GIMP) Digital Elevation Model)

    ID: 746
    Type: Data Compilation Dates used: 2003 - 2009
    See all pages that use this dataset

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.