All,
A successful Pine Island Glacier mission was completed under blue skies. The earlier portions of the mission had considerable blowing snow above the ice surface which the optical instruments were able to deal with, and the area over Pine Island was clear with blue skies.
All instruments reported good data collection today.
We also had the pleasure of three visitors from the US embassy flying with with us today.
Weather forecasts for prime science target sites continues to be favorable, so we’ll attempt to fly again tomorrow.
Today’s flight (NASA flight tracker website)
Crossing over the ice en-route to Thwaites, the flat expose of white snow and ice
Approaching the rougher portions of Pine Island glacier
The following are images of the Pine Island Glacier calving front, note the snow blowing off the calving front:
ATM T6 wide scan lidar elevation plot crossing the Thwaites calving front. The edge of the calving front is ~70 meters from the water to the top edge of the front.
ATM T6 wide scan lidar elevation plot crossing some crevasses on Thwaites Glacier. The deepest crevasses (blue) are about 20 meters deep.
ATM T6 wide scan lidar elevation plot of Thwaites Glacier crevasses in more detail. Again the deepest crevasses are about 20 meters below the glacier surface.
A cross section of ATM T6 wide scan lidar elevations as we crossed the Pine Island Glacier calving front (170 sec), turned around over the ocean (from 170 to 330 sec), and crossed the calving front again (330 sec) in a different location as we flew up a different flight line. The first crossing calving front height (from water to top of calving front) was 70 meters, the second was about 60 meters