NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Arctic - March - May 2013

IceBridge
Flying over the poles to monitor critical areas of Earth's ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice From late March through early May, NASA's Operation IceBridge will return to Thule and Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, to continue its annual survey of Earth's polar ice. Of particular interest to IceBridge scientists are rapidly changing outlet glaciers, such as the Jakobshavn Glacier in western Greenland and Arctic sea ice, which reached a record minimum in September of 2012. Also, as in previous campaigns, IceBridge researchers plan to fly surveys out of Fairbanks, Alaska, to measure sea ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

The P-3B airborne laboratory based out of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., will operate out of airbases in Thule and Kangerlussuaq, carrying a suite of scientific instruments to gather vital data on Arctic sea and land ice. The 2013 Arctic campaign builds on the existing record of ice elevation started with NASA's ICESat satellite to keep a continuous record of measurements until the launch of ICESat-2 in 2016. IceBridge researchers will again produce a data product on sea ice thickness that will be released around the end of the campaign. The aim of this product, first released last year, is to eventually provide data on initial ice conditions for seasonal Arctic sea ice forecasts.


> Read More about the Arctic 2013 IceBridge Campaign