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Surveying Canadian Ice Caps for Impact of Climate Change
Recent reports have found that the massive glaciers of southern Greenland are thinning, a likely result of climate change. But the smaller ice caps of the Canadian Arctic, which would respond more quickly to a changing climate, have not yet been measured for possible thinning. Waleed Abdalati of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center will lead an airborne mapping mission this month to see how much the ice has changed in remote regions of Canada's Nanavut Territory, north of the Arctic Circle. Abdalati will map these ice caps with the same technique used to study Greenland's Ice Sheet: airborne laser altimetry. This NASA mission will create the first large-scale maps of ice change in this region.
Contact:
Lynn Chandler, NASA Goddard Public Affairs Office, Greenbelt, Md., (301) 614-5562
Science Goals:
The massive Greenland Ice Sheet is subject to both geological and climate-induced factors that contribute to the recent decrease in the amount of ice they contain. The smaller ice caps in the Canadian Arctic are influenced by different geological forces and they are warmer than the high-elevation Greenland Ice Sheet, suggesting that they may be more susceptible to climate change.
Abdalati will be able to see how much the ice caps have changed over the past five years by comparing new precision topographic maps produced by this field campaign with maps made in 1995. The field experiment is funded by NASA's New Investigators Program and NASA's Polar Program.
Abdalati and investigators from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility expect to have new estimates of the amount of ice change in these ice caps by early 2001. Data from these flights will also provide a baseline for future measurements by the ICESat Geoscience Laser Altimetry System, scheduled for launch in July 2001.
Infrastructure:
Using precise GPS and laser-ranging technology developed by NASA, the Airborne Topographic Mapper instrument, which will be flown on a commercial twin-propeller aircraft, will measure the elevation of the ice surface to within an accuracy of 15 centimeters (6 inches). Recent research indicates that parts of the southern Greenland Ice Sheet has decreased by as much as one meter per year.
Location:
Eight separate ice caps will be mapped on Baffin Island, Devon Island, and Ellesmere Island west of Baffin Bay. Flights will originate from small towns on these islands.
Schedule:
Eleven flights are planned, beginning May 19 and ending by the second week of June.
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