NASA Map Reveals Clear View of Frozen Continent

spiegel ^ | jtw/afp

[humint]

A team of international scientists has unveiled a mosaic map of Antarctica compiled from satellite images. The new map allows experts and laypersons alike to observe its majestic landscapes online and in stunning clarity.

The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA) is composed of high-resolution images taken from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Landsat 7 satellite between 1999 and 2001. It offers accurate, true-color images of the polar region.

[humint]

Animation of Larsen B breakup, 31 January to 7 March 2002

Doesn't seem to have shrunk much in 35 years???

That's an empirical question/assertion... This is a true color animation of the events of January, February, and March 2002 as recorded by NASA's MODIS satellite sensor. (MODIS stands for Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer, a sensor flying on NASA's Terra satellite.) The images show the Larsen B ice shelf and parts of the Antarctic Peninsula (on left). The first scene from 31 January 2002 shows the shelf in late austral summer with dark bluish melt ponds dotting its surface. In the next two scenes minor retreat takes place, amounting to about 800 km2, during which time several of the melt ponds well away from the ice front drain through new cracks within the shelf. The main collapse is seen in the last two scenes, on 5 March and 7 March, with thousands of sliver icebergs and a large area of very finely divided 'bergy bits' where the shelf formerly lay. Brownish streaks within the floating chunks mark areas where rocks and morainal debris are exposed from the former underside and interior of the shelf. The last phases of the retreat totalled ~2600 km2.Resolution of the original images is 500 m.