Investigating Climate Change by Digital Analysis of Blue Ice Extent on Satellite Images of Antarctica
Year: 1990
Type: article
Abstract: Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and SPOT data collected two years apart from an identical area of Dronning (Queen) Maud Land, Antarctica, have been analyzed to detect variations in surface features that may signal climatic change, and to establish a technique that readily identifies such changes. We found that selective principal component analysis (Chavez and Kwarteng 1989), on band ratios of near-IR/green, highlights changes in blue ice areas. The formation and preservation of blue ice is poorly understood, but we suggest that it generally takes longer to increase a blue ice area than to decrease it, and that blue ice extent is most sensitive to changes in accumulation rate. The investigated blue ice area shows a decrease in extent over the two-year period caused by incursion of snow that probably resulted from an increase in accumulation rate. Comparison of two TM images collected 18 days apart shows that transitory snow drifts have little effect on blue ice extent.
Source: Annals of Glaciology
Authors: Olav Orheim, Baerbel Lucchitta
Institutions: Norwegian Polar Institute, United States Geological Survey
Language: English
Subfield: Atmospheric Science
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W239667524