Cool Geo-Pic: Both Routes Around Arctic Open at Summer's End

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" .... As of the first week of September 2008, Arctic sea ice extent had not fallen below the record low observed in 2007, but the season set a new kind of record. For the first time in probably half a century—and definitely since satellite observations began about three decades ago— sea ice retreated enough to create open (not ice-free) waters all the way around the northern ice pack. Open water is defined by the World Meteorological Organization for the purposes of navigation as areas where the ice covers less than one-tenth of the surface ...."

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Credits:

Revkin, A. (2008, September 6). Arctic Ice Hints at Warming, Specialists Say. NYT.com. Accessed September 8, 2008.
U.S. National Ice Center. (2008, September 5). The Northern Sea Route (Northeast Passage) appears ‘open’ as of Sep 4th, 2008. Posted on NYT.com’s Dot Earth blog. Accessed September 8, 2008.
Further reading
Southern Route Through Northwest Passage Opens
Record Arctic Sea Ice Loss in 2007
Ice Shelves Retreat on Ellesmere Island
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using data obtained courtesy of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.

Cool Geo-Pic: Sunglint on the Amazon River, Brazil

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The setting sun glints off the Amazon River and numerous lakes in its floodplain in this astronaut photograph from August 19, 2008. Large areas of sunglint are common in oblique views (shot from an angle, rather than looking straight down from the spacecraft). About 150 kilometers of the sinuous Amazon is shown here; the area is about 1,000 kilometers inland from the Atlantic Ocean. Arrows show the generally eastward direction of flow of the Amazon. One of the great river’s tributaries, the Uatumã River, enters on the north side of the Amazon (top center). A small side channel, or distributary, of the Madeira River (beyond the left edge of the image) enters the view from the left. Tupinambarama Island occupies the swampy wetlands between the Amazon and Madeira rivers.

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Credits:

Astronaut photograph ISS017-E-13856 was acquired on August 19, 2008, with a Nikon D2Xs digital camera fitted with a 400 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 17 crew. The image in this article has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast. Lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by M. Justin Wilkinson, NASA-JSC.

Cool Geo-Pic: Ice Shelves Retreat on Ellesmere Island

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Ice Shelves Retreat on Ellesmere Island

Large images
July 22, 2008 (Aqua MODIS; 3.6 MB JPEG)
August 29, 2008 (Terra MODIS; 4.0 MB JPEG)

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Prior to July 2008, only five ice shelves remained in the Canadian Arctic: Serson, Petersen, Milne, Ward Hunt, and Markham. With an estimated age of 4,500 years, these ice shelves were the remnants of a once-massive “glacial fringe” that explorer Robert Peary described in his trek along the Ellesmere Island coast in 1907. In July 2008, these shelves began disintegrating rapidly. By late August, Ellesmere ice shelves had lost a total of 214 square kilometers (83 square miles). A research team led by Derek Mueller at Trent University, and Luke Copland at the University of Ottawa, documented the ice shelves’ retreats through satellite images and photos.

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Credits:

For more information, see the Earth Observatory feature Rapid Retreat: Ice Shelf Loss along Canada’s Ellesmere Coast.
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response team. Caption by Michon Scott.

Cool Geo-Pic: Stormy Atlantic - Sept 2008

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Another cool Geo-Pic from NASA:


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" .... The Atlantic hurricane season typically peaks in early to mid-September after the ocean’s surface has had time to heat up in the summer sun. As if on cue, a string of storms formed over the Atlantic as September approached during the 2008 hurricane season.


When the GOES satellite captured this view of the atmosphere at 1:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on September 3, four storms were lined up across the Atlantic, and one had developed in the Eastern Pacific. GOES’ view of the clouds are overlaid on the NASA Blue Marble. ...."


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