The Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA’s Goddard Flight Center has released its latest visualization of the health of the cryosphere from space. Since most of the ice is in the polar regions, I wish that they had kept the visualization focused on that region instead of showing the equatorial view of Earth.
Sea ice is frozen seawater floating on the surface of the ocean. Some sea ice is semi-permanent, persisting from year to year, and some is seasonal, melting and refreezing from season to season. The sea ice cover reaches its minimum extent at the end of each summer and the remaining ice is called the perennial ice cover.
The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer – Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) instrument on the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) Aqua satellite, provides data mapped to a polar stereographic grid at 12.5 km spatial resolution. This satellite data can be used to monitor the health of the cryosphere from space.
Over the water, Arctic sea ice changes from day to day showing a running 3-day maximum sea ice concentration in the region where the concentration is greater than 15%. The blueish white color of the sea ice is derived from a 3-day running maximum of the AMSR-E 89 GHz brightness temperature. Over the terrain, monthly data from the seasonal Blue Marble Next Generation fades slowly from month to month. For more information about sea ice see http://nsidc.org/data/amsre or http://modis-snow-ice.gsfc.nasa.gov
Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
