West Antarctic Sea Ice Campaign
The West Antarctic Sea Ice Campaign includes passive microwave measurements on board the ship Laurence M. Gold and aircraft-based measurements of sea ice concentration. The campaign began in Punta Arenas, Chile, and traveled the Bellinghausen and Weddell Seas.
Dr. Konrad Steffen led the ship campaign, which monitored sea ice surface at various passive microwave frequencies to obtain brightness temperatures. The following photograph shows graduate students Russell Huff and Nicolas Cullen from the University of Colorado. They are making ice thickness validation measurements with an EM31 sensor on small ice floes. The photograph was taken by Dr. Steffen from a small boat that launched from the research ship shown in the background.
The campaign dates were 14 August - 4 September 2003. The following map shows the coverage area that the ship study covered. (Note the brown tip of South America on the left side of the map.)
The aircraft-based campaign is headed by Dr. Joey Comiso, 14 August - 15 September 2003. The aircraft study was to have encompassed a larger area than the ship campaign, as shown in the following map, however, mechanical problems forced cancellation of this part of the mission.
Maps are AVHRR EASE-GRID South 5.0 KM resolution, 1:8 scale. The maps were created using NSIDC's JazPanel tool.
For more information, see the Antarctic AMSR-E Sea Ice Campaign. |
