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Images of Arctic Ocean and Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)
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Minimum Sea Ice Extent (WMS)
| Title |
Minimum Sea Ice Extent (WMS) |
| Abstract |
Each year, the ice covering the Arctic Ocean grows during the northern hemisphere winter and shrinks with the northern hemisphere summer. The ice extent is usually greatest during the month of March and is the least during the month of September. This image shows the average minimum extent of sea ice over the northern hemisphere during the month of September over 24 seasons, from 1979 - 2002. The red line shows the area where the average sea ice concentration is 15%. |
| Completed |
2005-07-01 |
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Minimum Sea Ice Extent (WMS)
| Title |
Minimum Sea Ice Extent (WMS) |
| Abstract |
Each year, the ice covering the Arctic Ocean grows during the northern hemisphere winter and shrinks with the northern hemisphere summer. The ice extent is usually greatest during the month of March and is the least during the month of September. This image shows the average minimum extent of sea ice over the northern hemisphere during the month of September over 24 seasons, from 1979 - 2002. The red line shows the area where the average sea ice concentration is 15%. |
| Completed |
2005-07-01 |
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Bockfjorden
| Title |
Bockfjorden |
| Description |
Far north within the Arctic Circle off the northern coast of Norway lies a small chain of islands known as Svalbard. These craggy islands have been scoured into shape by ice and sea. The effect of glacial activity can be seen in this image of the northern tip of the island of Spitsbergen. Here, glaciers have carved out a fjord, a U-shaped valley that has been flooded with sea water. Called Bockfjorden, the fjord is located at almost 80 degrees north, and it is still being affected by glaciers. The effect is most obvious in this image in the tan layer of silty freshwater that floats atop the denser blue water of the Arctic Ocean. The fresh water melts off land-bound glaciers and flows over the sandstone, collecting fine red-toned silt. In this image, the tan-colored fresh water flows northward up the fjord and is being pushed to the east side of the fjord by the rotation of the Earth. Glaciers here and elsewhere on Spitsbergen are cold bottom glaciers, which means that they are frozen to the ground rather than floating on top of a thin layer of melt water. The glaciers are also land glaciers since their terminus (end) lies on land, rather than floating on the water (a tidewater glacier). Land glaciers grow and retreat slowly, balancing fresh snow with the melting and draining of old ice. Their rate of growth or retreat can be affected by global warming. In most cases, including the glaciers around Bockfjorden, global warming has caused glaciers to retreat from increased melting. On the eastern side of Svalbard, however, glaciers are growing from enhanced snowfall. The reason for this pattern remains only one of many intriguing unanswered questions of Arctic science in the islands. The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, (ASTER [ http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/ ]) on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite captured this false-color image on June 26, 2001. The image was created by combining near-infrared, red, and green wavelenghts (ASTER bands 3, 2, & 1 respectively). NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the Goddard Earth Sciences DAAC [ http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ] courtesy of the NASA/GSFC/MITI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team [ http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/ ] |
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Forest Fires Across Central
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| Title |
Forest Fires Across Central Siberian Plateau |
| Description |
On the Central Siberian Plateau, the northeastward direction of the Lena River is turned sharply northward as the river encounters the Verkhoyanskiy Mountains. The river flows northward along the base of the range for several hundreds more miles before emptying into the Arctic Ocean via the Laptev Sea. In the area where the Lena rounds this sharp corner, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite detected numerous fires (marked in red) burning in the region's boreal forests on July 7, 2005. As in Alaska, summertime thunderstorms in the northern forests often bring lightning that starts forest fires. Fires also start through carelessness or accidents of people visiting forests. In Russia's boreal forests, another major source of forest fires is arson. People set fires to acquire salvage logging permits, which are far cheaper than permits for other forests. The arsonists set fires that may only disturb underbrush and small trees, while leaving the bigger, more lucrative trees unscathed. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
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Northwest Passage Open
| Title |
Northwest Passage Open |
| Description |
Although nearly open, the Northwest Passage was not necessarily easy to navigate in August 2007. Located 800 kilometers (500 miles) north of the Arctic Circle and less than 1,930 kilometers (1,200 miles) from the North Pole, this sea route poses significant challenges, and the severe depletion of sea ice means only one of these is reduced. Nevertheless, long-term opening of the passage would have global impacts on trade and natural resource use. You can download a 250-meter-resolution KMZ file of the Northwest Passage [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/Archive/Aug2007/nwpassage_amo_2007241.kmz ] suitable for use with Google Earth. [ http://earth.google.com/ ] NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using data obtained from the Goddard Land Processes data archives (LAADS). [ http://laads.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ] Thanks to Walt Meier, NSIDC, U.S. National Ice Center, and John Falkingham, Environment Canada - Canadian Ice Service for image interpretation., For over 500 years, Arctic explorers have sought a passage between the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Such a passage, often called the Northwest Passage, would connect Europe to Asia via shorter routes than the long voyage south around Africa. In 1497, English King Henry VII sent Italian explorer John Cabot to look for this hypothetical route and expeditions from some of the most famous explorers in the centuries that followed—Sir Francis Drake and Captain James Cook among them—met with failure. The combined efforts of a number of explorers eventually uncovered a winding path from the Atlantic to the Arctic and Pacific Oceans through the ice-bound islands of northern Canada. Even in modern times, navigating from the Atlantic to the Pacific through Canada's Arctic islands has been difficult. The summer of 2007, however, melted enough sea ice in Canada's far north to open up this long-sought passage. This image shows the islands north of mainland Canada adjacent to Greenland, as observed by the the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ] flying on NASA's Aqua [ http://aqua.nasa.gov/ ] satellite on August 29, 2007. While the usual veil of clouds over the Arctic is visible through the scene, the sea ice pack that normally covers the water between the islands is absent. Areas often choked with ice at this time of year, but free of it in this MODIS scene, include the Parry and McClintock Channels and the McClure Strait. Larsen Sound and Victoria Strait are hidden beneath cloud cover, but they are also largely free of sea ice. [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17752 ] This provided a nearly ice-free connection between Baffin Bay (a long body of water between Canada's Baffin Island and Greenland that is regularly ice-free in summer) and the Arctic Ocean. An ice-free gap between the North American mainland and the Arctic sea, not shown here, extends all the way to the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia, creating a connection almost free of all sea ice from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific. Multi-year ice (ice that survives more than one melt season) tends to be thicker and more resistant to melt than first-year ice (formed over just one winter). According to John Falkingham of the Canadian Ice Service, most of the multi-year ice melted from Victoria Strait and McClintock Channel in the summer of 2006, leaving these traditionally difficult areas more open. In mid-August 2007, only patchy areas of ice filled Victoria Strait and Larsen Sound. Falkingham described the Northwest Passage as "nearly open." Changes in the Northwest Passage were part of a larger pattern of melt in 2007 that also affected the East Siberian Sea. [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17743 ] |
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Fires in South-Central Russi
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| Title |
Fires in South-Central Russia |
| Description |
Separated by a ridge of mountains, the Ob and Yenisey Rivers of south-central Russia flow northward toward the Arctic Ocean. On April 24, 2007, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ] on NASA's Aqua [ http://aqua.nasa.gov ] satellite captured this image of scores of fires burning in the area around these two rivers. Snow still blankets the peaks of the Altay Mountains in the south, but the lowlands are free of snow. These fires are probably agricultural fires that people have set to prepare land for the upcoming growing season. The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides this image in a variety of resolutions. NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov ] Goddard Space Flight Center. |
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Fires North of Russia's Lake
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| Title |
Fires North of Russia's Lake Baikal |
| Description |
Forest fires were burning across a broad swath of the Central Siberian Plateau on July 24, 2006, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ] on NASA's Aqua [ http://aqua.nasa.gov ] satellite passed overhead and captured this image. Places where the sensor detected actively burning fires are marked in red. A shroud of smoke spreads over thousands of square kilometers of Russia. In the center of the image, the smoke has a brownish tinge. The city of Ust'-Ilimsk, normally visible as a tan spot along the Angara River, is completely hidden by smoke. The scene spans the plateau from Russia's Irkutsk region in the south to the Arctic Ocean in the north. Lake Baikal would be just outside the lower right corner of the scene. This comparison might be helpful in understanding the scale of the event: if the above image covered the United States, the scene would stretch from California to the New Mexico-Texas state line, and it would reach more than a hundred miles both north and south of the borders of the United States. The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 500 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/?2006205-0724/Russia.A2006205.0610 ] at additional resolutions. NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov ] Goddard Space Flight Center. |
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Flooding in Southern Siberia
| Title |
Flooding in Southern Siberia |
| Description |
Springtime flooding in southern Siberia is not unusual. Melting snow fills the north-flowing rivers in the south even as upstream sections of the river are still frozen. Floods build up behind dams of ice, or simply build under the fast flow of spring runoff. Spring of 2006 was not exceptional. The Ob River of southern Siberia bulged with melted snow when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ]) on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite captured the top image on May 7, 2006. A little over two weeks earlier, lower image, the river was still partially frozen, as evidenced by the strips of light blue ice on the river. Snow, pale blue here, was just beginning to melt on April 21. By May 7, most of the snow was gone, and the river had expanded out over its flood plain. Under the clouds along the right edge of the image is the city of Biysk, where 1,350 houses were flooded, according to news reports. Approximately 5,000 people had evacuated from the region. The Ob forms near Biysk where two smaller rivers converge. The smaller rivers flow out of the Altay Mountains of southern Russia and Mongolia near the borders of China and Kazakhstan. From the segment of the river shown here, the Ob will flow 3,700 kilometers (2,260 miles) north to the Kara Sea, a branch of the Arctic Ocean. NASA images created Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the Goddard Earth Sciences DAAC. [ http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ] |
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Flooding on the Ob River
| Title |
Flooding on the Ob River |
| Description |
As much a sign of spring as longer days, greening plants, and melting snow, the Ob River had spread across its floodplain in far northern Russia when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ]) on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite captured the top image on June 20, 2007. The Ob River and its tributary, the Irtysh, together form one of the longest river systems in Asia, flowing from the Altay Mountains of northern China to the Arctic Ocean. The northern reaches of the Ob flow over a flat, permafrost plain. As spring creeps north, the snow that covered northern Russia gradually melts, and the runoff flows into the river. Swollen with spring runoff, the river flows north, where it meets ice jams on sections of the river that have not thawed. Since the river cannot cut deep channels into the frozen land, it flows out over the surrounding plain during the spring melt, creating the wide band of water seen in this image. The lower image shows the Ob River in the fall, immediately before winter secured the region in its frozen grip. The river was a fraction of the size it would be the following spring. Both images were made using a combination of visible and infrared light. Water is black and dark blue. Snow, light blue, dusts the ground south of the Gulf of Ob in the October image and covers the peaks of the Ural Mountains west of the river in the June image. Also in the June image, a smooth pane of ice, also light blue, covers the Gulf of Ob, providing the natural dam that created the floods shown here. Pale blue, frozen lakes dot the permafrost north of the river, and darker, ice-free lakes adorn the land to the south of the river. Plant-covered land is green, and clouds are light blue and white. You can download a 250-meter-resolution KMZ file of the mouth of the Ob River [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/Archive/Jun2007/ob_tmo_2007171.kmz ] suitable for use with Google Earth. [ http://earth.google.com/ ] NASA images created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ] team. |
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Flooding on the Ob River
| Title |
Flooding on the Ob River |
| Description |
As much a sign of spring as longer days, greening plants, and melting snow, the Ob River had spread across its floodplain in far northern Russia when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ]) on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite captured the top image on June 20, 2007. The Ob River and its tributary, the Irtysh, together form one of the longest river systems in Asia, flowing from the Altay Mountains of northern China to the Arctic Ocean. The northern reaches of the Ob flow over a flat, permafrost plain. As spring creeps north, the snow that covered northern Russia gradually melts, and the runoff flows into the river. Swollen with spring runoff, the river flows north, where it meets ice jams on sections of the river that have not thawed. Since the river cannot cut deep channels into the frozen land, it flows out over the surrounding plain during the spring melt, creating the wide band of water seen in this image. The lower image shows the Ob River in the fall, immediately before winter secured the region in its frozen grip. The river was a fraction of the size it would be the following spring. Both images were made using a combination of visible and infrared light. Water is black and dark blue. Snow, light blue, dusts the ground south of the Gulf of Ob in the October image and covers the peaks of the Ural Mountains west of the river in the June image. Also in the June image, a smooth pane of ice, also light blue, covers the Gulf of Ob, providing the natural dam that created the floods shown here. Pale blue, frozen lakes dot the permafrost north of the river, and darker, ice-free lakes adorn the land to the south of the river. Plant-covered land is green, and clouds are light blue and white. You can download a 250-meter-resolution KMZ file of the mouth of the Ob River [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/Archive/Jun2007/ob_tmo_2007171.kmz ] suitable for use with Google Earth. [ http://earth.google.com/ ] NASA images created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ] team. |
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Record Arctic Sea Ice Loss i
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nasa, nasaimageofthedaygalle
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Accessed September 26, 2007.
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arctic_ams_2007259
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2007-09-16 |
| creator |
NASA -- Arctic image courtesy svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/ NASA Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio, based on data from AMSR-E. Graph courtesy Walt Meier, nsidc.org National Snow and Ice Data Center. |
| identifier |
arctic_ams_2007259 |
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Fire on Alaska's North Slope
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nasa, nasanaturalhazards
On July 16, 2007, lightning
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ge_19139
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2007-09-25 |
| creator |
NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day |
| identifier |
ge_19139 |
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Fire on Alaska's North Slope
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nasa, nasanaturalhazards
On July 16, 2007, lightning
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ge_19139
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2007-09-25 |
| creator |
NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day |
| identifier |
ge_19139 |
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Coccolithophores in the Bare
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nasa, nasanaturalhazards
The Barents Sea features a s
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Barents.TMO2002234
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2002-08-22 |
| creator |
NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day |
| identifier |
Barents.TMO2002234 |
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Fires in South-Central Russi
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nasa, nasanaturalhazards
Separated by a ridge of moun
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Russia_AMO_2007113
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2007-04-23 |
| creator |
NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day |
| identifier |
Russia_AMO_2007113 |
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Fires North of Russia's Lake
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nasa, nasanaturalhazards
Forest fires were burning ac
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Russia.AMO2006205
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2006-07-24 |
| creator |
NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day |
| identifier |
Russia.AMO2006205 |
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Antarctic Sea Ice: Image of
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nasa, nasaimageofthedaygalle
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Of the 15 million square kil
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ge_08503
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2008-02-24 |
| creator |
NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day |
| identifier |
ge_08503 |
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Antarctic Sea Ice: Image of
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nasa, nasaimageofthedaygalle
…
Of the 15 million square kil
…
ge_08503
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2008-02-24 |
| creator |
NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day |
| identifier |
ge_08503 |
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Forest Fires Across Central
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nasa, nasanaturalhazards
On the Central Siberian Plat
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Russia.AMOA2005188
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
July 7, 2005 |
| creator |
NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day |
| identifier |
Russia.AMOA2005188 |
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MISR Sights the Bering Strai
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PIA02638
Sol (our sun)
Multi-angle Imaging SpectroR
…
| Title |
MISR Sights the Bering Strait |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
With the Seward Peninsula of Alaska to the east, and Chukotskiy Poluostrov of Siberia to the west, the Bering Strait separates the United States and the Russian Federation by only 90 kilometers. It is named for Danish explorer Vitus Bering, who spotted the Alaskan mainland in 1741 while leading an expedition of Russian sailors. This view of the region was captured by MISR's vertical-viewing (nadir) camera on August 18, 2000 during Terra orbit 3562. The boundary between the US and Russia lies between Big and Little Diomede Islands, which are visible in the middle of the Bering Strait. The Arctic Circle, at 66.5 degrees north latitude, runs through the Arctic Ocean in the top part of this image. This circle marks the southernmost latitude for which the Sun does not rise above the horizon on the day of the winter solstice. At the bottom of this image is St. Lawrence Island. Situated in the Bering Sea, it is part of Alaska and home to Yupik Eskimos. MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC. The Terra satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. For more information: http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov |
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Distinguishing Clouds from I
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PIA03717
Sol (our sun)
Multi-angle Imaging SpectroR
…
| Title |
Distinguishing Clouds from Ice over the East Siberian Sea, Russia |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
As a consequence of its capability to retrieve cloud-top elevations, stereoscopic observations from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) can discriminate clouds from snow and ice. The central portion of Russia's East Siberian Sea, including one of the New Siberian Islands, Novaya Sibir, are portrayed in these views from data acquired on May 28, 2002. The left-hand image is a natural color view from MISR's nadir camera. On the right is a height field retrieved using automated computer processing of data from multiple MISR cameras. Although both clouds and ice appear white in the natural color view, the stereoscopic retrievals are able to identify elevated clouds based on the geometric parallax which results when they are observed from different angles. Owing to their elevation above sea level, clouds are mapped as green and yellow areas, whereas land, sea ice, and very low clouds appear blue and purple. Purple, in particular, denotes elevations very close to sea level. The island of Novaya Sibir is located in the lower left of the images. It can be identified in the natural color view as the dark area surrounded by an expanse of fast ice. In the stereo map the island appears as a blue region indicating its elevation of less than 100 meters above sea level. Areas where the automated stereo processing failed due to lack of sufficient spatial contrast are shown in dark gray. The northern edge of the Siberian mainland can be found at the very bottom of the panels, and is located a little over 250 kilometers south of Novaya Sibir. Pack ice containing numerous fragmented ice floes surrounds the fast ice, and narrow areas of open ocean are visible. The East Siberian Sea is part of the Arctic Ocean and is ice-covered most of the year. The New Siberian Islands are almost always covered by snow and ice, and tundra vegetation is very scant. Despite continuous sunlight from the end of April until the middle of August, the ice between the island and the mainland typically remains until August or September. The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer views almost the entire Earth every 9 days. These images were acquired during Terra orbit 12986 and cover an area of about 380 kilometers x 1117 kilometers. They utilize data from blocks 24 to 32 within World Reference System-2 path 117. MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC. The Terra satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. |
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