The flights are part of Operation IceBridge, a six-year mission that NASA says is the largest airborne survey of Earth’s polar ice ever flown. This year’s mission is planned to take ten weeks and is based in Thule, Greenland.
Since 2009, Operation IceBridge has flown annual campaigns over the Arctic starting in March and over Antarctica starting in October for multi-instrument views of the rapidly changing ice features.
The mission results in a three-dimensional view of ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice at both poles, that are important indicators of climate change. With this multi-year data, scientists can begin to see how glaciers are changing, where ice loss is slowing or accelerating, and why, NASA’s web site reads.
- Understanding the change happening in the Arctic is very important because the poles serve as harbingers for the Earth’s climate system. Basically this means that the poles give insight into what changes will happen around the world before any other place on earth, wrote Eric Brugler at the United States Naval Academy, in the mission’s blog.
The mission is conducted from a P3-B specialized four-engine turboprop plane capable of long duration flights up to 12 hours, large payloads up to 15,000 pounds and altitudes to 30,000 feet.
Watch video about Operation IceBridge
