MODIS Mosaic of Antarctica view of Pine Island and Thwaites Glacier without ICESat Topography

  • Released Thursday, December 1, 2005
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NASA has released a digital image map of the Antarctic continent and surrounding islands. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Mosaic of Antarctica (MOA) image map is a composite of 260 swaths comprised of both Terra and Aqua MODIS images acquired between November 20, 2003 and February 29, 2004. MOA provides a cloud-free view of the ice sheet, ice shelves, and land surfaces at a grid scale of 125 m and an estimated resolution of 150 m. All land areas south of 60° S that are larger than a few hundred meters are included in the mosaic. Also included are several persistent fast ice areas and grounded icebergs.

This animation flys over the Thwaites Glacier exposing the line of grounded icebergs and into Pine Island Bay to view the Pine Island Glacier. This animation does not use ICESat topography, but it is match-framed to animation ID 3294 which does have topography.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
Haran, T., J. Bohlander, T. Scambos, and M. Fahnestock compilers. 2005. MODIS mosaic of Antarctica (MOA) image map. Boulder, CO, USA: National Snow and Ice Data Center. Digital media.

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Thursday, December 1, 2005.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:56 PM EDT.

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Datasets used

  • MOA (MODIS Mosaic of Antarctica (MOA) Image Map) [Terra and Aqua: MODIS]

    ID: 627
    Type: Mosaic Sensor: MODIS Collected by: National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and the University of New Hampshire

    Staff from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and the University of New Hampshire have assembled two digital image maps of surface morphology and optical snow grain size that cover the Antarctic continent and its surrounding islands. The MODIS Mosaic of Antarctica (MOA) image maps are derived from composites of 260 MODIS (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) orbit swaths acquired between 20 November 2003 and 29 February 2004. The MOA provides a cloud-free view of the ice sheet, ice shelves, and land surfaces, and a quantitative measure of optical snow grain size for snow- or ice-covered areas. All land areas larger than a few hundred meters that are south of 60° S are included in the mosaic, as well as persistent fast ice regions and some grounded icebergs present near the coast in the 2003-2004 austral summer. The MOA surface morphology image map is derived from digitally processed MODIS Band 1 data. The optical snow grain size image is compiled using a normalized ratio of atmospherically corrected, calibrated band radiance data from Bands 1 and 2.

    This dataset can be found at: http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0280.html

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