NASA Launches Mission to Measure Changes in Greenland Ice Sheet and Arctic Melt

As our climate changes it's more important than ever to understand exactly how major ice sheets are being impacted by warming temperatures. That's why NASA has now launched its first ever airborne campaign to measure changes in the height of the Greenland Ice Sheet and surrounding Arctic sea ice produced by a single season of summer melt.

Currently, NASA plans to use its C-130 research aircraft to conduct survey flights to collect data. This will potentially improve the current understanding of seasonal melt and provide baseline measurements for future satellite missions. More specifically, it will provide context for measurements that will be gathered during NASA's ICESat-2 mission, which is scheduled for launch in 2016.

"The more ground we cover the more comparison points we'll have for ICESat-2," said Bryan Blair of the Goddard Spaceflight Center in a news release.

The Greenland Ice Sheet continues to experience melting as temperatures warm through the region. In fact, the Jakobshavn Glacier, which is located in the lower elevations of western Greenland, has experienced declines of nearly 100 feet in elevation over a single summer in past years.

"Surface melt is more than half of the story for Greenland's mass loss," said Ben Smith, one of the researchers working on the new campaign, in a news release.  The rest of the melt can be attributed to ice flowing downhill into the ocean. This particular phenomenon often causes ice to break off to form icebergs.

Currently, the researchers plan to measure ice elevation using the LVIS laser altimeter and the LVIS-GH, a new, smaller version that's designed to fly on NASA's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle. These instruments will sample both high- and low-elevation ice and a variety of geographic areas.

This mission will hopefully allow scientists to better understand the melting on the ice sheets. More specifically, it will help researchers get a clearer picture of what happens over the summer and allow them to gather data on Arctic sea ice shortly after it reaches its annual minimum extent. It will also help scientists gather new data on snow covering sea ice.

Want to learn more about the mission? You can find out more about it here.