NSIDC

News Roundup: Polar ice caps, poachers and space detectives

October 14, 2014

Polar ice caps

The US National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has recently updated their KML files of Arctic and Antarctic ice to include 2014 data. We have looked at their work many times in the past, as you can see here. Also of note is this press release from them explaining that the Arctic sea ice extent is shrinking and the Antarctic sea ice extent is growing. They also indicate this is the 6th lowest amount of ice recorded since they began measurements. Keep in mind that this is minimum and maximum extent of sea ice as measured by satellite and not thickness or total volume.

What interested me most about the animations showing the historical record is how the maximum extent of sea ice seems to be a very different shape each year.

Arctic sea ice extent, September 2014. The pink line is the monthly median sea ice extent 1981-2010

Poachers tracked down with Google Earth

There was an interesting story on Mongabay.com about how a poachers’ camp was identified using the imagery in Google Earth.

The ‘machamba’ (small farm with a few huts) shown in the article.

The interesting part of the story from a Google Earth perspective is that the imagery used was from July 2013 and July 2012, yet it was still useful in tracking down active poachers in 2014. To see the location in Google Earth download this KML

World’s first space detective agency launched.

See the full article here.

Because satellite imagery is being used in court cases more and more frequently, Raymond Harris and Raymond Purdy have launched the world’s first space detective agency. They will specialize in finding and obtaining appropriate satellite imagery for legal cases as well as ensuring that the acquisition and subsequent handling of imagery meets the standards required by courts.

Using Google Earth on Earth Day

April 20, 2012

This Sunday is Earth Day, a time to sit back and think about our wonderful planet, and some of us will be out picking up some trash, or just enjoying nature.
For those of you stuck inside due to weather, work, or other reasons – perhaps you might want to spend the day exploring our wonderful planet through the power of Google Earth. Here are a few links of stories from Google Earth Blog (GEB) in the past year describing environmental related content available for viewing in Google Earth:
• Saving the tigers of Sumatra — Saving the Indonesian Tiger.
• The Living Oceans Society — An interactive map focusing on oil risks to Canada’s Pacific coast.
• Disney’s Worldwide Conservation Fund — The areas around the world that Disney is helping to protect via their fund.
• The Tallest Mountain to the Deepest Ocean Trench — A journey from Mount Everest to the Mariana Trench
• Mapping the world’s sea turtles — A massive database of sea turtle nesting sites around the globe.
• The Japanese Tsunami created some massive icebergs — Imagery showing icebergs created in Antarctica as a result of the Japanese tsunami.
• Tracking Bluefin Tuna across the Pacific — Interesting ways to view their migration patterns.
• Sea Ice Extent Animation updated for 2011 — An update to the annual sea ice extent animation from the NSIDC.
• Increasingly high-resolution imagery in Antarctica — The quality of imagery in Antarctica continues to improve.
• Tracking wave-powered robotic gliders across the Pacific — Small wave gliders that can track ocean data without requiring a ship to collect them.
• Track Sea Turtle migrations — Tracking Jklynn, a female Hawksbill sea turtle.
• 100 years since the Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica — Exploring the 1912 expeditions to Antarctica.
• The tales of the Arctic Tern and the Sea Grapes — Tracking the annual migration of Arctic Tern.
• Using maps to help protect coral reefs — View coral reef threat levels around the globe.
• Google Street View now covers the Amazon — View Street View-type imagery in the Amazon.
• The Perpetual Ocean — A neat way to view ocean surface currents.
For more, you can check out our posts from 2011, 2010 or 2009 and read stories that go back even further.

Sea Ice Extent Animation updated for 2011

October 12, 2011

As they’ve done for the past few years (here is 2010), the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has produced their annual Sea Ice Extent data

While 2011 wasn’t a record year for ice loss, it came close, ending just slightly above the mark set in 2007. You can view the data for yourself by loading this KMZ file

Google Earth File. You must have GE installed.

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Here are the details for this year:

Average ice extent for September 2011 was 4.61 million square kilometers (1.78 million square miles), 2.43 million square kilometers (938,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average. This was 310,000 square kilometers (120,000 square miles) above the average for September 2007, the lowest monthly extent in the satellite record. Ice extent was below the 1979 to 2000 average everywhere except in the East Greenland Sea, where conditions were near average.

As in recent years, northern shipping routes opened up this summer. The Northern Sea Route opened by mid August and still appeared to be open as of the end of September. The southern “Amundsen Route” of the Northwest Passage, through the straits of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, opened for the fifth year in a row. Overall, sea ice in the wider and deeper northern route through Parry Channel reached a record low, according to Stephen Howell of Environment Canada, based on Canadian Ice Service analysis. Parry Channel had a narrow strip of ice that blocked a short section of the channel, but it did appear to open briefly in early September.

You can read more about this year’s data on the NSIDC site or by watching the video below, which shows all of the data from 1979-2011:

Sea Ice Extent Animation updated for 2010

October 12, 2010

We’ve told you a few times about the excellent Sea Ice Extent data that the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has been producing. They’ve recently updated their files to show data from 2010, and the results are quite stunning:

According to their site, the 2010 low (reached on September 19) was the third lowest on satellite record:

Average ice extent for September 2010 was 4.90 million square kilometers (1.89 million square miles), 2.14 million square kilometers (830,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average, but 600,000 square kilometers (230,00 square miles) above the average for September 2007, the lowest monthly extent in the satellite record. Ice extent was below the 1979 to 2000 average everywhere except in the East Greenland Sea near Svalbard.

The U.S. National Ice Center declared both the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route open for a period during September. Stephen Howell of Environment Canada reported a record early melt-out and low extent in the western Parry Channel region of the Northwest Passage, based on analyses of the Canadian Ice Service. Two sailing expeditions, one Norwegian and one Russian, successfully navigated both passages and are nearing their goal of circumnavigating the Arctic.

You can check it out for yourself using this KMZ file. Or, if you’d prefer, you can simply watch the video below that shows all of the data in the KMZ.

Soil Moisture Animations

May 13, 2010

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has put out some pretty interesting Google Earth data in the past year. Among other things, they brought us the Wilkins Ice Shelf and the “Climate Change Tour of Cold Places“.
Now they’ve released a variety of animations regarding global soil moisture levels. Using data from the AMSR-E (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer) satellite, they’ve released KML files showing the the past 30, 60 and 90 days of soil moisture levels for the entire planet.

Not only is this display of data pretty neat to look at, it can be very useful for people in a variety of fields. According to the NSIDC site, “soil moisture and other land surface variables are key variables in understanding land surface hydrology and in modeling ecosystems, weather, and climate.”
You can read more on the NSIDC Virtual Globes site, or download the KML files here: 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.