ONE day soon, much of the icy polar landscape could be water. Among the first people to know will be NASA researchers who monitor the melting ice sheets and frozen seas by flying long missions over them to check their thickness.
These vital efforts are known as Operation IceBridge. For the past decade, NASA teams have used adapted aircraft and remote runways to survey polar areas. These flying laboratories are packed with specialised equipment such as radar, lasers and cameras, and carry up to 30 crew.
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Generally, IceBridge spends the earlier months of the year studying the Arctic, then later turns its attention to the Antarctic. There, it keeps an eye on features including the vast iceberg A-68, which calved from the Larsen C ice shelf last July. It weighs about 1 trillion tonnes and is a quarter the size of Wales.
The flights could end in 2020, as ICESat -2, a satellite the size of a fridge, takes over many of the airborne observations. Due to launch this September, it is the successor to ICESat, whose demise in 2009 saw IceBridge step in to avoid any gap in data collection.
In that time, the NASA teams have seen trends that point to a loss of polar ice. That continues this year, with the second lowest maximum extent of sea ice in the Arctic on record. Mid-year, this ice retreats. Some scientists say climate change may soon lead to a North Pole free of sea ice in warmer months.
Photographer
Mario Tama, Getty Images
This article appeared in print under the headline “Life of the ice watchers”
