Now, Antarctic exploration from your armchair
Ever had a yen to fly across the Antarctic ice? Or cruise the slopes of Mt. Erebus, maybe the coldest active volcano on the planet?
Me neither.
But scientists at NASA, the USGS, the National Science Foundation and the British Antarctic Survey can hardly contain themselves at the notion. They are hailing the completion of the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA), the biggest, most detailed photographic map of Antarctica ever assembled.
With a few clicks of a computer mouse, geologists, glaciologists, global warming researchers — in fact, anyone with a computer — can now float at will above the ice, zoom in on any region of the continent and see it all in the full light of day – no pesky clouds, no snowstorms no months-long darkness.
“I have had an absolute ball working with this data set,” said Robert Bindschadler, chief scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center’s Hydrospheric and Biospheric Lab. He’s been on the ice many times, he said, but LIMA has “changed my view of Antarctica. It has influenced the scientific questions I am asking.”
LIMA is not just for scientists. The entire photo map is available free, online, to anyone with Internet access. Since its unveiling on Tuesday, servers for the site have been swamped by people dropping in to cruise the continent most of us will never see.
A sort of Google Earth for the empty wastes of the planet’s remotest continent, LIMA allows anyone to explore the snowy plains and rugged, ice-choked sounds and coastlines. Users on NASA’s LIMA website can choose to explore Antarctic mysteries, zip to specific sites by typing in one of 14,000 place names, or access classroom materials designed for teachers.
“The climate of the Earth is changing nowhere faster that at these polar regions,” Bindschadler said. People must learn to care about the Antarctic “because it is part of our planet, and to understand what’s happening, they have to understand what scientists are telling us” about change at the cold ends of the Earth.
To visit the USGS LIMA site, click here. For a more user-friendly experience, try the NASA LIMA site.
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