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You may never be able to reach the South Pole, but you can now see Antarctica and its glaciers with unprecedented details.
The researchers announced this week the publication of a new high resolution topographic map of the southernmost continent, called the REMA (Reference Elevation Model), which makes Antarctica the best-mapped continent on the planet.
Antarctica is the most desolate and inhospitable place on the planet and its remoteness makes it difficult to monitor changes in ice and water levels. Due to global warming, seasonal changes in Antarctica are worsening, making it even more important to understand the loss of ice.
Ian Howat, Senior Project Scientist and Professor of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University, and Paul Morin of the University of Minnesota, used data from a constellation of polar-orbiting satellites to visualize waste frozen. The satellites belong to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, which is part of the Department of Defense.
Previous maps of the continent had a resolution similar to that of seeing the entire Central Park from a satellite. With this new data, it is possible to see the size of a car and even smaller in some areas. The data is so complete that scientists now know the height of each element of the continent a few feet.
"If you're someone who needs glasses to see, it's a bit like being almost blind and putting on glasses for the first time and seeing 20/20," said Howat.
The team used 187,585 images collected over six years to create the map. The images are so detailed that researchers had to use one of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet to ingest the data.
"Until now, we had a better map of Mars than that of Antarctica," said Howat.
By observing snowfall, ice growth, and melting and cracking rates, scientists will be able to more accurately monitor sea level rise and melting ice. Ice platforms are under pressure from rivers flowing against them. The faster the ice melts on the ground, the more the ice platform must weigh, causing glacier breaks in the sea.
Due to the location of Antarctica and the fact that the satellites do not have enough light at the poles for the rest of the year, images can only be taken from December to March, in summer.
Explorers and scientists stationed in Antarctica will also find the map useful. Thanks to such a detailed topographic map, new routes to scientific stations can be planned around the dangerous terrain of the continent.
"Something that has always been a problem is knowing where the ice is and knowing its thickness," Howat said.
The 150-terabyte data set is the first to allow researchers to observe fracking ice shells over a three-week period, closely following the changes on the ice in real time.
Howat and Morin hope to update the map every year.
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