New NASA satellite uses lasers to track Earth's melting

ICESat-2 will use six laser beams to measure the height of the ice, as shown in this small scale artist's rendering.

(Courtesy of NASA)

According to NASA, its new $ 1 billion satellite will give humanity a more solid vision of how fast the Earth's ice will melt.

The ICESat-2 satellite, which travels every 91 days, is about the size of a smart car and will bring lasers back to the ground countless times to give scientists an accurate measure up to one centimeter from the polar planet . ice patches and their evolution, according to the agency.

Scientists will be able to examine how ice reacts to changes in the atmosphere and ocean, giving them an image over time of what melts ice or not in certain areas.

Once they have gathered this data on the thickness of the sea ice and the height of the ice caps, they will inform their future models to better predict the potential scenarios for the elevation of the seal level. says NASA.

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"As the climate warms up, we are seeing changes in the sea level – the sea level is rising," Helen Fricker, professor of glaciology at the Scripps Oceanographic Institution, who worked with NASA on WBUR, told WBUR. the ICESat-2 project. "But what we are trying to do is how much ice are we going to lose and how fast are we going to lose it?"

According to NASA, melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica has raised the global sea level by more than one millimeter a year, or one-third of the global increase.

ICESat-2, which was launched on September 15, is able to provide much more comprehensive coverage of ice loss around the world.

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"At a time when someone has to blink half a second, ICESat-2 is going to collect 5,000 measurements in each of its six clusters, and that will do it every hour, every day …" Is a huge amount of data. "Said Tom Neumann, assistant researcher at NASA, Guardian.

According to Fricker, the first ICESat-2 data will begin returning in mid-October.

"It will last several months as we determine what these data tell us and we are really waiting. It's incredibly exciting, "she said.