NEW DELHI (dpa-AFX) - NISAR will study changes to the world's ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice in fine detail, as climate change warms the air and ocean.
NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have teamed up to create NISAR, short for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar.
The soon-to-launch radar satellite will measure some key Earth vital signs, from the health of wetlands to ground deformation by volcanoes to the dynamics of land and sea ice.
This will help researchers decipher how small-scale processes can cause monumental changes in the ice sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland, as well as on mountain glaciers and sea ice around the world.
NISAR will provide the most comprehensive picture to date of motion and deformation of frozen surfaces in Earth's ice- and snow-covered environments, collectively known as the cryosphere.
'Our planet has the thermostat set on high, and Earth's ice is responding by speeding up its motion and melting faster,' said Alex Gardner, a glaciologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. 'We need to better understand the processes at play, and NISAR will provide measurements to do that.'
NASA says NISAR will be launched this year by ISRO from southern India, and observe nearly all the planet's land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. The satellite's unique insights into Earth's cryosphere will come from the combined use of two radars: an L-band system with a 10-inch wavelength and an S-band system with a 4-inch wavelength.
L-band can see through snow, helping scientists better track the motion of ice underneath, while S-band is more sensitive to snow moisture, which indicates melting. Both signals penetrate clouds and darkness, enabling observations during months-long polar winter nights.
NISAR's orientation in orbit will enable it to collect data from Antarctica's far interior, close to the South Pole - unlike other large imaging radar satellites, which have more extensively covered the Arctic.
Antarctica's ice sheets hold the planet's largest reservoir of frozen fresh water, and the rate at which it may lose ice represents the greatest uncertainty in sea level rise projections. NISAR's increased coverage will be crucial for studying the motion of ice flowing down from central Antarctica's high elevations toward the sea, according to the U.S. space agency.
The measurements will also enable scientists to closely study what happens where ice and ocean meet.
The satellite will also track changes in Earth's mountain glaciers, which has contributed about a third of the sea level rise seen since the 1960s.
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