The most thorough polar region topography maps yet produced have been produced by a group of researchers led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities using four extra years of high-resolution aerial data that have been added to eight years of prior data. The maps, which show the polar regions in exquisite detail using high-resolution satellite data, will reveal fresh information about the long-term effects of climate change.
Thanks to a partnership between the researchers and Amazon Web Services, the high-resolution photography data is now free for anyone to use in the cloud.
According to Claire Porter, acting co-director of the Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, which receives funding from the National Science Foundation, “Our prior data has generated more than 300 scientific papers.” “These are transformational data sets with four more years of data that are even more accessible. We’re interested in learning what the scientific community will find out about how our planet is changing.
Images from a network of polar-orbiting satellites that were 400–700 kilometers above the Earth were used to launch the project. Researchers at the Polar Geospatial Center used photos taken by Maxar’s commercial satellites with a resolution of 50 centimeters and a license from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to make digital elevation models.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota created the maps using computing resources from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which provided the Blue Waters supercomputer, a leadership-class academic supercomputer. The software to process the images was created by partners at The Ohio State University and the Ohio Supercomputer Center. The high-resolution topographic maps were produced by the researchers after processing millions of photographs.
They were able to completely cover the polar regions north of 60 degrees N (covering most of Scandinavia, Greenland, northern Canada, Alaska, and Siberia) and south of 60 degrees S using the most recent data set, which filled in all the previous data gaps (including all of Antarctica). Also, they made a landscape map that covers all of Antarctica, and they plan to release an Arctic version this winter.
Due to the fact that the effects of climate change are magnified at the poles, the polar region are particularly crucial. Researchers can use these digital elevation models to see the exact shape of the land, including specific trees, lakes, roads, and buildings.
In the past, data was gathered by researchers using pricey aircraft or expensive land expeditions during specific periods of the year. “Since we’ve been doing it for more than a decade, we are currently monitoring the Earth’s surface at a resolution and geographic scale that no one has ever seen before,” said Porter.
Incredibly detailed observations of glacier movement, erosion, landslides, and flooding across time have also been made, according to Porter. “That changes everything for everyone seeking to safeguard our planet for the future.”
