These summer season photos from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 missions showcase totally different satellite tv for pc views of Greenland’s west coast.

The optical Sentinel-2 picture on the left, acquired on 5 August 2024, highlights the mouth of the Ilulissat Icefjord, clearly seen in white. This fjord is house to the Jakobshavn Glacier, referred to as Sermeq Kujalleq in Greenlandic, one of many quickest and most energetic glaciers on the earth.

Jakobshavn Glacier drains roughly 6.5% of the Greenland ice sheet and produces round 10% of its icebergs. Many of those icebergs are so giant that they turn into grounded in shallower areas of the fjord, the place they continue to be for years till melting sufficiently to interrupt aside and disperse.

A number of icebergs within the picture seem as white dots scattered throughout the fjord, speckling the waters of Disko Bay like stars within the night time sky. These towering icebergs, some reaching heights of 100 m above the water, conceal even bigger parts beneath the floor. Their shapes, sizes and colors range tremendously. Regardless of their look, a number of the largest icebergs pictured right here have a fringe of two km.

Simply north of the fjord’s mouth lies the small city of Ilulissat, with the city’s airport seen in mild brown additional north. Ilulissat, which implies ‘icebergs’ in Greenlandic, is a well-liked vacation spot for vacationers who come to see the enormous icebergs passing close to the port.

The radar picture on the suitable, captured on 03 August 2024 by Copernicus Sentinel-1, exhibits the positions of the enormous bergs two days previous to the Sentinel-2 acquisition. By evaluating these two photos, the motion of the icebergs will be tracked. Their motion will depend on numerous components, together with measurement, sea depth, currents and wind. On this area, icebergs sometimes drift northward in the direction of Ilulissat.

Radar missions like Sentinel-1 are remarkably helpful in monitoring sea ice, ice sheets and drifting icebergs, significantly in polar areas. Not like optical imaging, radar can purchase photos beneath any climate situations, day or night time.

On 5 December, Sentinel-1C, the third Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite tv for pc, was launched from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Together with its sibling Sentinel-1A already in orbit, Sentinel-1C will restore the mission to its full power as a two-satellite constellation to proceed help a numerous vary of purposes, resembling environmental administration, catastrophe response and local weather change analysis.