But starting in the mid-1980s, the glacier’s front began retreating rapidly, and by 2019 was 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) upstream. The Columbia Glacier, for example, was relatively stable when the first Landsat satellite launched 1972. Other glaciers show patterns that give scientists hints of what drives glacier changes. Some show surges that pause for a few years, or lakes forming where ice used to be, or even the debris from landslides making its way to the sea. The videos clearly illustrate what’s happening to Alaska’s glaciers in a warming climate, he said, and highlight how different glaciers respond in varied ways.

This video can be downloaded for free at NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio. New time-lapse videos of Earth’s glaciers and ice sheets as seen from space – spanning nearly 50 years – are providing scientists with new insights into how the planet’s frozen regions are changing. “When you play these movies, you get a sense of how dynamic these systems are and how unsteady the ice flow is.” “We now have this long, detailed record that allows us to look at what’s happened in Alaska,” Fahnestock said. Using images from the Landsat mission dating back to 1972 and continuing through 2019, glaciologist Mark Fahnestock of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, has stitched together six-second time-lapses of every glacier in Alaska and the Yukon. And in Antarctic ice shelves, the view from space could reveal lakes hidden beneath the winter snow. Over Greenland, different satellite records show a speed-up of glacial retreat starting in 2000, as well as meltwater ponds spreading to higher elevations in the last decade, which could potentially speed up ice flow.

One series of images tells illustrates the dramatic changes of Alaska’s glaciers and could warn of future retreat of the Hubbard Glacier. 9 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, scientists released new time series of images of Alaska, Greenland, and Antarctica using data from satellites including the NASA-U.S. New time-lapse videos of Earth’s glaciers and ice sheets as seen from space – some spanning nearly 50 years – are providing scientists with new insights into how the planet’s frozen regions are changing.Īt a media briefing Dec.

Past satellite images of my house