Our #CryoSat mission has revealed that, over the last seven years, #Antarctica has lost an area of underwater ice the size of Greater London. This is because warm ocean water beneath the continent’s floating margins is eating away at the ice attached to the seabed.

ESA’s ice mission, #CryoSat is now giving scientists a closer look at oceans, coastal areas, inland water bodies and even land, reaching above and beyond its original objectives.

A novel way of using ESA’s #CryoSat mission has revealed how lakes beneath Thwaites Glacier drained into the Amundsen Sea – potentially the largest such outflow ever reported in this region of West #Antarctica.

ESA’s #CryoSat satellite sees the West #Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing over 150 cubic kilometres of ice each year – considerably more than when last surveyed. 

Read more: 
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/CryoSat/Antarctica_s_ice_loss_on_the_rise

CryoSat reveals recent Greenland ice loss

In the most detailed picture to date, information from ESA’s CryoSat satellite reveals how melting ice in Greenland has recently contributed twice as much to sea-level rise as the prior two decades. Between 2011 and 2014, Greenland lost around one trillion tonnes of ice. This corresponds to a 0.75 mm contribution to global sea-level rise each year – about twice the average of the preceding two decades.

Full story here:
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/CryoSat/CryoSat_reveals_recent_Greenland_ice_loss

Video: Greenland ice loss
https://youtu.be/WcokTjwmSqA

You may also want to read:
International effort reveals Greenland ice loss
https://plus.google.com/+PierreMarkuse/posts/FHc4Ky5ntQq
Warming Seas and Melting Ice Sheets
https://plus.google.com/+PierreMarkuse/posts/5vnHqZi7peC

More on CryoSat:
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/CryoSat
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/The_Living_Planet_Programme/Earth_Explorers/CryoSat-2/ESA_s_ice_mission
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryoSat

Where to start when looking for information on climate change?

Check out NASA's Global Climate Change Vital Signs of the Planet website with lots of information on global climate change
http://climate.nasa.gov/

Image credit: ESA’s Earth Explorer CryoSat mission is dedicated to precise monitoring of changes in the thickness of marine ice floating in the polar oceans and variations in the thickness of the vast ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica. ESA/AOES Medialab http://goo.gl/VjHRX2

#science  #earth #greenland  #cryosat   #greenlandicesheet   #climatechange   #globalwarming   #esa   #sealevelrise  

 Arctic sea-ice thickness for April 2013, as measured by CryoSat. Maps showing three years of Arctic sea-ice measurements will be unveiled later this week at the Living Planet Symposium in Edinburgh, UK. #livingplanet2013  

On the first day of the symposium, a special session will be held to celebrate the scientific achievements and legacies of Seymour Laxon and Katharine Giles. The two scientists, who passed away earlier this year in separate incidents, were key players in the #CryoSat mission and exploitation of its data.

Credits: Planetary Visions/CPOM/UCL/ESA

Cool summer boosts Arctic ice

Measurements from ESA’s CryoSat satellite show that the volume of Arctic sea ice increased by a third following the unusually cool summer of 2013. This new finding suggests that ice in the northern hemisphere is more sensitive to changes in summer melting than it is to winter cooling.

Full story here:
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/CryoSat/Cool_summer_boosts_Arctic_ice

More on CryoSat-2:
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/CryoSat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryoSat-2

Where to start when looking for information on climate change?

Check out NASA's Global Climate Change Vital Signs of the Planet website with lots of information on global climate change:
http://climate.nasa.gov/

Image credit: ESA’s Earth Explorer CryoSat ESA/AOES Medialab http://bit.ly/1GyeEzT

#science   #earth   #arctic   #arcticice   #cryosat   #esa   #climatechange  

Three years of observations from ESA’s CryoSat satellite show that the Antarctic ice sheet is now losing 159 billion tonnes of ice each year – twice as much as when it was last surveyed.

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/CryoSat/CryoSat_finds_sharp_increase_in_Antarctica_s_ice_losses

#CryoSat #Antarctica #satellite

Swapping summer for winter for ESA’s CryoSat mission - a blog report from Stefan Hendricks (Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research) who joined a voyage on the Polarstern Research Icebreaker for #CryoVex  which is looking at how ESA’s #CryoSat mission can be used to understand the thickness of sea ice in #Antarctica. (great photos!)

Read more:
http://blogs.esa.int/campaignearth/2013/10/08/winter-instead-of-summer-for-esas-cryosat-mission/