Right here’s a glacier as you’ve by no means seen it earlier than, its ordinary white and blue hues changed by a psychedelic rainbow.
This trippy view of the Malaspina glacier on the southeastern coast of Alaska was taken by Nasa’s OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager-2) on Landsat 9 on October 27.
By capturing the picture in infrared, all is just not because it appears. Water and icy options are a wonderful array of reds, oranges and yellows. Vegetation is inexperienced, and gray previous rock is reworked into blue.
The Malaspina glacier, referred to as Sít’ Tlein, or ‘huge glacier’ in Tlingit, is round 1,680 sq. miles in dimension, sprawling throughout Alaska’s Wrangell-St Elias Nationwide Park.
It’s also the world’s largest piedmont glacier, a uncommon phenomenon when the ice from a mountain or valley glacier spreads out as an enormous lobe over flat terrain.
The Malaspina glacier is fed by the Seward glacier, and covers an space larger than Luxembourg.
The darkish blue-purple strains seen on the ice are moraines, areas the place rock, soil and different particles have been scraped up by the glacier on its lengthy, gradual march in direction of the ocean and dropped alongside its edges.
The zigzag sample is attributable to its uneven motion. Glaciers on this area of Alaska usually surge ahead for one to a number of years at a time, earlier than slowing down once more.
Due to this irregular stream, the moraines can fold, compress, and shear to type the attribute textures seen on Malaspina.
On the finish of the glacier, the terminus, a skinny strip of land is holding again the ice from the Gulf of Alaska.
Extra: Trending
A comparability of satellite tv for pc imagery over time has revealed a lagoon system forming alongside that barrier over the previous few a long time, notably within the backside proper of the picture.
Small patches of open water are seen in a rusty pink color. A few of this water is almost as salty because the ocean, in accordance with current analysis, which means that comparatively heat ocean water is making contact with the ice.
This might result in large-scale calving and hasten the glacier’s retreat.
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