NASA scientists will use a high-altitude laser system to measure a single summer season of changes in the height of the Greenland Ice Sheet and surrounding areas brought on by surface melting.
Researchers will measure ice elevation with the highly sensitive Land, Vegetation and Ice Sensor, or LVIS (pronounced Elvis), and the LVIS-GH, a smaller version designed to fly on NASA's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle. Both LVIS systems will measure separate but overlapping swaths of the ice from a C-130 at an altitude of 28,000 feet, NASA said. The LVIS system uses its lasers to see the top of the snowy surface, while the CryoSat satellite system measures beneath the snow to the beginning of the ice beneath.
NASA said this study will mark the first time a single season of surface melting will be measured by aircraft.
"Surface melt is more than half of the story for Greenland's mass loss," said Ben Smith, senior physicist at the University of Washington's Advanced Physics Laboratory in Seattle.
The other portion of Greenland's mass loss comes from ice flowing downhill into the ocean, often breaking off to form icebergs, and from melting at the base of the ice sheet, NASA said.
The fresh data gathered by the LVIS devices provide supplemental data for the ICESat-2 mission, which is scheduled for a 2016 launch.
Michelle Hofton, an LVIS mission scientist, said the plan is to gather flyby data on northwest, southeast and southwest Greenland and the Arctic Ocean.
"The measurements we collect along lines sampled in IceBridge's spring 2013 Arctic campaign will allow scientists to assess changes over the summer," she said, referring to the space agency's project dedicated to understanding the polar region's impact on the global climate system.
Nathan Kurtz, sea ice scientist at Goddard, said the mission "will be crucial for assessing the snow cover on sea ice during a very different time of year."