These summer time pictures from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 missions showcase completely different satellite tv for pc views of Greenland’s west coast.
The optical Sentinel-2 picture on the left, acquired on 5 August 2024, highlights the mouth of the Ilulissat Icefjord, clearly seen in white. This fjord is house to the Jakobshavn Glacier, often known as Sermeq Kujalleq in Greenlandic, one of many quickest and most lively glaciers on the planet.
Jakobshavn Glacier drains roughly 6.5% of the Greenland ice sheet and produces round 10% of its icebergs. Many of those icebergs are so giant that they turn out to be grounded in shallower areas of the fjord, the place they continue to be for years till melting sufficiently to interrupt aside and disperse.
A number of icebergs within the picture seem as white dots scattered throughout the fjord, speckling the waters of Disko Bay like stars within the night time sky. These towering icebergs, some reaching heights of 100 m above the water, conceal even bigger parts beneath the floor. Their shapes, sizes and hues range drastically. Regardless of their look, a number of the largest icebergs pictured right here have a fringe of two km.
Simply north of the fjord’s mouth lies the small city of Ilulissat, with the city’s airport seen in gentle brown additional north. Ilulissat, which implies ‘icebergs’ in Greenlandic, is a well-liked vacation spot for vacationers who come to see the large icebergs passing close to the port.
The radar picture on the appropriate, captured on 03 August 2024 by Copernicus Sentinel-1, reveals the positions of the large bergs two days previous to the Sentinel-2 acquisition. By evaluating these two pictures, the motion of the icebergs could be tracked. Their motion will depend on numerous elements, together with dimension, sea depth, currents and wind. On this area, icebergs sometimes drift northward in the direction of Ilulissat.
Radar missions like Sentinel-1 are remarkably helpful in monitoring sea ice, ice sheets and drifting icebergs, significantly in polar areas. Not like optical imaging, radar can purchase pictures beneath any climate circumstances, day or night time.
On 5 December, Sentinel-1C, the third Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite tv for pc, was launched from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Together with its sibling Sentinel-1A already in orbit, Sentinel-1C will restore the mission to its full energy as a two-satellite constellation to proceed help a various vary of purposes, equivalent to environmental administration, catastrophe response and local weather change analysis.
