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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'><font size="3" style="font-size:12pt;">Dear GLIMS colleagues,</font><div><font size="3" style="font-size:12pt;"><br></font></div><div><font size="3" style="font-size:12pt;">I have mostly good news-- finally-- from ASTER Mission Operations on glacier image acquisitions.</font></div><div><font size="3" style="font-size:12pt;">Total acquisitions for the 12 months up through 3 June 2013 are up 24% over the previous 12-month period.</font></div><div><font size="3" style="font-size:12pt;">Acquisitions in Greenland, Antarctica, and many alpine regions are up.</font></div><div><font size="3" style="font-size:12pt;"><br></font></div><div><font size="3" style="font-size:12pt;">The bad news is that most of Alaska again suffered from what it has suffered from since ASTER was launched-- a so-called exclusion zone, which is an impenetrably mysterious Mission Operations rule that has been explained to me, but I still don't understand it (and the explainers conceded that they don't understand it.) I have my suspicions about it-- having to do with high-priority countries that are roughly 180 degrees of </font>longitude away, but that's a speculation and probably not correct.</div><div><br></div><div>The good news regarding Alaska is that there is-- for the first time-- some kind of waiver of the exclusion zone or extremely heightened priority being given to Alaska this summer, to start in a few weeks. It is implemented in the scheduler. We'll see if it works.</div><div><br></div><div>Meanwhile, 24% increase in overall image acquisitions is good news but not really good enough in itself, because we all know that clouds have been a difficult issue for GLIMS. It's not likely that we will get more than this number of scenes in future years (GLIMS is now taking a large fraction of the total ASTER resources, for the first time ever), but I need to understand what areas are still not getting good images. Please do an image search from 4 June 2012 to 3 June 2013, and look at the browse scenes (and if needed, download whatever is needed to check quality), and tell me what the stats are for your region of interest:</div><div><br></div><div>1. What is your region of interest? (regional center; or lat/lon box or description of geographic area if not identical to a regional center boundary)</div><div><br></div><div>2. Number of scenes acquired</div><div><br></div><div>3. Number of usable scenes</div><div><br></div><div>4. Number of excellent scenes</div><div><br></div><div>5. Main reasons for poor scenes-- taken wrong time of year, e.g., too snowy or not illuminated or too cloudy due to wrong imaging season; too cloudy despite being the right imaging season; too saturated; noisy image). If wrong season, tell how you want the imaging season shifted (start and stop dates).</div><div><br></div><div>Good news will be welcome; but under-covered areas might need something like the enhanced priority just now implemented for Alaska.</div><div><br></div><div>--Jeff Kargel</div><div><br></div> </div></body>
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