Latest Pine Island Glacier Stories

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Scientists and flight crew members with Operation IceBridge, NASA's airborne mission to study Earth's changing polar ice, are beginning another campaign over Antarctica. Now in its fourth year, IceBridge's return to the Antarctic comes almost a year after the discovery of a large rift in the continent's Pine Island Glacier. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The first science flight of the campaign began...

Scientists and flight crew members with Operation IceBridge, NASA's airborne mission to study Earth's changing polar ice, are beginning another campaign over Antarctica. Now in its fourth year, IceBridge's return to the Antarctic comes almost a year after the discovery of a large rift in the continent's Pine Island Glacier. The first science flight of the campaign began Friday at 8 a.m. EDT when NASA's DC-8 research aircraft left Punta Arenas, Chile, for an 11-hour flight that will take it...

[ Watch the Video ] A new study examining nearly 40 years of satellite imagery has revealed that the floating ice shelves of a critical portion of West Antarctica are steadily losing their grip on adjacent bay walls, potentially amplifying an already accelerating loss of ice to the sea. The most extensive record yet of the evolution of the floating ice shelves in the eastern Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica shows that their margins, where they grip onto rocky bay walls or...

[ Watch the Video ] In October 2011, researchers flying in NASA’s Operation IceBridge campaign made the first-ever detailed, airborne measurements of a major iceberg calving event while it was in progress. Four months later, the IceBridge team has mapped the crack in Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier in a way that allows glaciologists and the rest of us to fly through the icy canyon. The above image is a still frame captured from a three-dimensional, virtual flight through the new...

[ Watch the Video ] Breathtaking images taken from outer-space by NASA's Operation IceBridge -- the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever flown -- reveal a 19-mile long, 195 ft.-deep crack across a floating ice shelf in Antarctica that could produce the world’s largest iceberg. The rift was first discovered last October, but IceBridge scientists returned soon after to obtain the first-ever detailed airborne measurements of the 310 square mile iceberg calving in progress....

[ Watch the Video ] An international team of researchers funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will travel next month to one of Antarctica's most active, remote and harsh spots to determine how changes in the waters circulating under an active ice sheet are causing a glacier to accelerate and drain into the sea. The science expedition will be the most extensive ever deployed to Pine Island Glacier. It is the area of the ice-covered continent that concerns scientists...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An international team of researchers funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will travel next month to one of Antarctica's most active, remote and harsh spots to determine how changes in the waters circulating under an active ice sheet are causing a glacier to accelerate and drain into the sea. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The science expedition will be the most extensive ever deployed to...

NASA will host a media teleconference at 11 a.m. EST on Wednesday, Nov. 9, to discuss a new field campaign season on one of Antarctica's "hottest" spots: the rapidly-melting Pine Island Glacier. The Pine Island Glacier ice shelf expedition, an international effort led by seven institutions, aims to peek beneath the ice and determine how the ocean is melting the glacier's underbelly. During the news conference, panelists will discuss this season's scientific goals, state-of-the-art data...

[ Watch the Video ] After discovering an emerging crack that cuts across the floating ice shelf of Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, NASA's Operation IceBridge has flown a follow-up mission and made the first-ever detailed airborne measurements of a major iceberg calving in progress. NASA's Operation Ice Bridge, the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever flown, is in the midst of its third field campaign from Punta Arenas, Chile. The six-year mission will yield an...

Researchers said on Wednesday that an Antarctic glacier with the potential to raise global sea levels could speed up its retreat within 20 years. Columbia University researchers said the Thwaites Glacier is expected to speed up once it detaches from an underwater ridge it is currently attached too. The ridge appears to be slowing the glacier's slide into the sea, but the finding says the glacier is losing its grip on a previously unknown ridge. The researcher said this explains why...