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August 31, 2020 - Sea Ice off East Coast of Greenland
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On August 26, 2020, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a stunning false color image highlighting a late-summer’s day in Eastern Greenland.
This type of false-color image, which combines infrared and visible light bands (7,2,1), is especially helpful to sort out cloud from ice. In this combination, clouds appear white while ice and snow appears electric blue. Vegetation appears bright green, open land appears tan, and deep water appears dark inky blue.
Filigrees of drifting sea ice float along the eastern coast of Greenland, free from the shore and curled at the edges by the prevailing currents. Inland, a layer of blue marks Greenland’s ice sheet. Summer’s warmth has melted snow, revealing a rocky landscape edged with green vegetation. Puffs of white cloud hang over the ice sheet in the north of the image.
Arctic sea ice generally reaches its maximum extent each March and its minimum extent each September. This ice has historically ranged from roughly 14-16 million square kilometers (about 5.4-6.2 million square miles) in late winter to roughly 7 million square kilometers (about 2.7 million square miles) each September. In recent years, however, those numbers have been much lower. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, on August 17, sea ice extent stood at 5.15 million square kilometers (1.99 million square miles). This on essentially ties with 2007 for the third-lowest extent for the date since the satellite record began in 1979. The August 17 extent was lower only in 2012 and 2019.
Image Facts
Satellite:
Terra
Date Acquired: 8/26/2020
Resolutions:
1km (171 KB), 500m (430 KB), 250m (803.9 KB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit:
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
On August 26, 2020, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a stunning false color image highlighting a late-summer’s day in Eastern Greenland. This type of false-color image, which combines infrared and visible light bands (7,2,1), is especially helpful to sort out cloud from ice. In this combination, clouds appear white while ice and snow appears electric blue. Vegetation appears bright green, open land appears tan, and deep water appears dark inky blue.
Filigrees of drifting sea ice float along the eastern coast of Greenland, free from the shore and curled at the edges by the prevailing currents. Inland, a layer of blue marks Greenland’s ice sheet. Summer’s warmth has melted snow, revealing a rocky landscape edged with green vegetation. Puffs of white cloud hang over the ice sheet in the north of the image.
Arctic sea ice generally reaches its maximum extent each March and its minimum extent each September. This ice has historically ranged from roughly 14-16 million square kilometers (about 5.4-6.2 million square miles) in late winter to roughly 7 million square kilometers (about 2.7 million square miles) each September. In recent years, however, those numbers have been much lower. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, on August 17, sea ice extent stood at 5.15 million square kilometers (1.99 million square miles). This on essentially ties with 2007 for the third-lowest extent for the date since the satellite record began in 1979. The August 17 extent was lower only in 2012 and 2019.
Image Facts
Satellite:
Terra
Date Acquired: 8/26/2020
Resolutions:
1km (171 KB), 500m (430 KB), 250m (803.9 KB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit:
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
