ESA and NASA join forces to measure Arctic sea ice

Credits: NASA/M. Studinger

A view of Arctic sea ice from NASA’s P-3 aircraft as it joins ESA to validate measurements of the ice taken from space by CryoSat. 

On 2 April, ESA and NASA planes flew together across the Arctic Ocean, exactly under CryoSat orbiting 700 km above.

Credits: ESA/DTU Space/R. Saldo/M. Davidson

The animation shows the flight tracks of the ESA and NASA aircraft during joint operations on 2 April 2012 over the Arctic Ocean. The blue line represents the ESA Twin-Otter aircraft, the green shows the track of the NASA P-3 plane and the red line shows CryoSat’s path as it orbits 700 km above. The background images, assembled by the Technical University of Denmark, come from ESA’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar on Envisat.

Marking another remarkable collaborative effort, ESA and NASA met up over the Arctic Ocean this week to perform some carefully coordinated flights directly under CryoSat orbiting above.

The data gathered help ensure the accuracy of ESA’s ice mission.

The aim of this large-scale campaign was to record sea-ice thickness and conditions of the ice exactly along the line traced by ESA’s CryoSat satellite orbiting high above. A range of sensors installed on the different aircraft was used to gather complementary information.

These airborne instruments included simple cameras to get a visual record of the sea ice, laser scanners to clearly map the height of the ice, an ice-thickness sensor called EM-Bird along with ESA’s sophisticated radar altimeter called ASIRAS and NASA’s snow and Ku-band radars, which mimic CryoSat’s measurements but at a higher resolution.

In orbit for two years, CryoSat carries the first radar altimeter of its kind to monitor changes in the thickness of ice.

As with any Earth observation mission, it is important to validate the readings acquired from space. This involves comparing the satellite data with measurements taken in situ, usually on the ground and from the air.

The teams of scientists from Europe, US and Canada expect that by pooling flight time and the results they will get a much-improved accuracy of global ice-thickness trends measured by CryoSat and NASA’s IceSat.

This will, in turn, lead to a better understanding of the impact of climate change on the Arctic environment.