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Observing Change in Glacier Flow from Space

- Bas Altena and Andreas Kääb

A glacier is a large moving body of ice. Glaciers are natural phenomena that occur at the colder places of this Earth. When you travel to a glacier and look at it, you will see an enormous collection of ice, which lays in between mountains tops. At first sight, nothing seems to be moving, but this is not the case. Ice is actually a very thick liquid, and moves like honey, but very slowly. If you want to see a glacier move, you will need to wait a long time. But if you take a picture and come back some days or weeks later to take a second picture, the ice will have moved, and this can be measured if you compare both images. When we research glaciers, we use the same technique, but we use pictures from satellites. The satellites fly over every part of the Earth and can see any glacier. This makes it possible for us to look at the flow of glaciers anywhere on Earth.

License information: CC BY 4.0
MPAA: G
Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2018.00009

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