Operation IceBridge - Arctic Spring 2017

[Jim Hunt]

The Arctic 2017 NASA Operation IceBridge campaign is already underway. NASA report that:

For the past eight years, Operation IceBridge, a NASA mission that conducts aerial surveys of polar ice, has produced unprecedented three-dimensional views of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, providing scientists with valuable data on how polar ice is changing in a warming world. Now, for the first time, the campaign will expand its reach to explore the Arctic’s Eurasian Basin through two research flights based out of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the northern Atlantic Ocean.

The mission is surveying the region as part of its 2017 Arctic spring campaign, which completed its first flight on March 9 and will continue until May 12.

The Operation Icebridge Facebook page reveals that:

IceBridge had a great first mission of the campaign flying over Arctic sea ice to the North Pole and back. This is the earliest in the year the mission has been flown and the sun is still waiting for spring to rise at the highest latitudes, precluding good photo opportunities at the pole itself. Here [is an] image of Ellesmere Island and the surrounding sea ice with the sun peeking just over the horizon.

Photo credit NASA/Nathan Kurtz:

[Neven]

Can't wait to see the results, in relation to the PIOMAS vs CryoSat divergence.

[Jim Hunt]

Can't wait to see the results, in relation to the PIOMAS vs CryoSat divergence.

The IceBridge P3 did a CryoSat-2 under flight at the start of the campaign:

https://www.facebook.com/NasaOperationIcebridge/posts/1262585787151772

It'll take a while for the results to be revealed however!

[Jim Hunt]

A set of stunning photographs from Mario Tama, embedded with Operation IceBridge this year:

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/04/above-canada-and-greenland-with-nasas-operation-icebridge/521733/

[Cate]

They're posting amazing photos almost daily on FB and probably on Twitter and Snapchat, too, for all I know.  Today they're flying "Northwest Coastal C."

[Cate]

Yesterday: "This morning IceBridge is preparing for the CryoVex-2 sea ice survey, the last mission of the campaign that will coordinate with other partners. Today's flight underflies a pass by the CryoSat-2 satellite, and conditions permitting, this afternoon a CryoVex team based out of Alert will hopefully deploy by Twin Otter and survey in situ the southernmost sites on the CryoSat-2 line. Prior to the beginning of surveying the CryoSat-2 line from its northern end, we will transit over Ellesmere Island and survey three quarters of the northernmost transect of North Canada Basin, a high-priority sea ice flight."

[oren]

Does anyone know if they posted a photo of the Nares "Arch" in the Lincoln Sea? I am very curious to see what it looks like up close.

[Cate]

Oren, I've been looking for that too.

And a big chunk has just broken loose (April 12).

http://www.arctic.io/explorer/4Xa5A/2017-04-12/9-N82.26727-W60.25128

[shendric]

Does anyone know if they posted a photo of the Nares "Arch" in the Lincoln Sea? I am very curious to see what it looks like up close.

This is how it looked like on March 24, seen from Polar-5 during one of the CryoVEx surveys (http://blogs.esa.int/campaignearth/)
Cheers, Stefan

[Blizzard92]

Here are some amazing Arctic (IceBridge) photos from an article in Mashable today:

http://mashable.com/2017/04/13/arctic-meltdown-nasa-photos-changing-ice/#1rOFESH4O05o

[romett1]

Nice article about Arctic and Operation IceBridge, CNN front page today. http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2017/04/world/arctic-nasa-cnnphotos/index.html

[JayW]

saw an article on IceBridge with this image.  It does seem like melt ponds need large slabs of ice to form efficiently.

http://www.ibtimes.com/operation-icebridge-nasa-measuring-melting-arctic-sea-ice-plane-2569956

[marcel_g]

saw an article on IceBridge with this image.  It does seem like melt ponds need large slabs of ice to form efficiently.

Thanks for posting that, it's a neat image.

How big is that floe, though? Since we can see the shadows from the ridges at its edge, I'd guess it can't be more than 100m across. Which is far smaller than the resolution we get from the satellite images, and the floes we see on the satellite images are measured in km. From that frame of reference I'd argue that it's actually a quite small piece of ice and yet still has melt ponds.

Which would mean that melt ponds are still an important indicator on the fractured ice we're seeing on the satellite images, until the floes get down to a size where they look like gray slush.

[Andre]

Where global warming gets real: inside Nasa’s mission to the north pole

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/27/watching-ice-melt-inside-nasas-mission-to-the-north-pole

"From the window of a Nasa aircraft flying over the Arctic, looking down on the ice sheet that covers most of Greenland, it’s easy to see why it is so hard to describe climate change. The scale of polar ice, so dramatic and so clear from a plane flying at 450 metres (1,500ft) – high enough to appreciate the scope of the ice and low enough to sense its mass – is nearly impossible to fathom when you aren’t sitting at that particular vantage point.

But it’s different when you are there, cruising over the ice for hours, with Nasa’s monitors all over the cabin streaming data output, documenting in real time – dramatising, in a sense – the depth of the ice beneath. You get it, because you can see it all there in front of you, in three dimensions."

[josh-j]

Where global warming gets real: inside Nasa’s mission to the north pole

Thanks Andre, that was a brilliant article!