Eight Miles To Go On Larsen C Collapse - And The Satellite Tech That Lets Us Track It
The Larsen C ice shelf is about to calve one of the biggest icebergs on record.The iceberg-to-be is hanging on by a thread, with just eight miles of solid ice standing in the way of a rift that’s spent years carving through the ice. Scientists can track the growth of the crack with precision during the summer season by flying over it, but even during the dead of Antarctic night, they’re still able to see it clearly thanks to eyes in the sky.
Two European satellites, known as Sentinel-1, criss-cross over the region every six days like clockwork. Their sensors are able to see through clouds and darkness to provide a real-time image of the most-watched patch of ice on the planet. “The close monitoring of this rift really is a success story for Sentinel-1,” Adrian Luckman, a glaciologist at Swansea University, said.
Luckman is part of Project MIDAS, a team of researchers intently monitoring the crack. He said without the satellite, researchers would only have access to low-resolution images or have to pay for data from private companies. To monitor Larsen C, scientists are using what’s known as synthetic aperture radar. It’s particularly useful in polar regions because it can see through clouds and darkness, both of which are plentiful at certain times of the year at high latitudes. The same technology has also been used on space probes to image the surface of cloud-covered Venus.
With Larsen C likely to calve one of the largest icebergs on record, having instruments that can track it no matter the condition is crucial to improving researchers’ understanding of the polar regions. While the rift on Larsen C is likely due to natural causes, the instability that climate change is fueling in the Antarctic make these types of observations essential to know what comes next.
EDIT
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/larsen-c-monitoring-satellites-21564
