High-speed drones to monitor Greenland's ice sheet
Climate change is threatening Greenland's ice. Drones are to collect data every twelve hours in order to gain a more accurate picture of the threat.
Greenland's ice is threatened by melting due to climate change.
(Image: Michal Balada/Shutterstock.com)
Norwegian scientists from the University of Bergen and drone specialist Marble have found a way to monitor Greenland's ice sheet, which is under severe strain and threatened by increasing melting, and to create a "real-time map" of it twice a day.
A fleet of high-speed drones will be used to regularly fly over the ice and use the data to create a map of the Greenland ice sheet, writes New Scientist. The first tests are planned for May. They are to begin near the Ilulissat Icefjord in West Greenland. The researchers and Marble then want to set up a low-cost monitoring system that is regularly flown over by drones at high speed.
Drones will be used in the same way as those used for marine surveillance. The difference, however, is that the drones are now exposed to much more adverse weather conditions than before. Accordingly, improvements have to be made and tested to see what works under icy conditions with high wind speeds and what may need to be improved.
Maps for monitoring the ice melt
The drones are equipped with lidar, cameras and radar, the data from which is used to create an up-to-date, high-resolution map documenting changes in the ice. The drones are designed to do this automatically and much faster, more detailed and cheaper than satellites or manned aircraft. The scientists want to reduce costs by a factor of around 1000. This is because people are no longer needed on site for monitoring purposes. The researchers assume that a complete map of Greenland can be updated every twelve hours with their system.
The scientists want to keep an eye on the Greenland ice sheet, which, as the second largest ice sheet on earth, can influence global sea levels through melting. If the entire Greenland ice sheet were to melt over centuries and millennia, the global sea level would rise by seven meters.
However, the scientists want to concentrate on immediate changes first. Model calculations predict a rise of up to one meter in the overall sea level by the end of the millennium. In order to be able to make more accurate predictions, the new ice maps are now to be created and evaluated.
The previous measurement data from satellite images is too imprecise. To do this, the most accurate statements possible must be made about ice thickness in order to be able to predict glacier behavior and identify possible climate tipping points at an early stage.
(olb)