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Antarctica's Ice Flow Fully Mapped For the First Time

Posted by samzenpus on from the check-out-all-that-ice dept.

tvlinux writes "Antarctica is a big continent, so mapping all of its ice flow isn't exactly a piece of cake. But for the first time scientists have been able to get the complete picture of the southernmost continent's ice flow, from the South Pole to the shoreline. From the article: '"This is like seeing a map of all the oceans' currents for the first time. It's a game changer for glaciology," said Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California (UC), Irvine. Rignot is lead author of a paper about the ice flow published online Thursday in Science Express. "We are seeing amazing flows from the heart of the continent that had never been described before."'"

2 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Re:New discovery??? by chromas · · Score: 2, Funny

    No, prior to this breakthrough, it was believed the ice just grew legs and walked off.

  2. How it was done... by ignavus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Apparently up until now, a lot of the penguins wouldn't let the Google camera vans drive onto their glaciers.

    Now that's been sorted out (yep, Google bought out the penguins AND got Motorola into the bargain), so Google has been able to map the whole Antarctic glacial flow.

    A random picture from a glacier's street view is below:
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    (Sorry about the blizzard)

    --
    I am anarch of all I survey.