Polar+ Ice Shelves

Project Description

The Polar+ Ice Shelves project aims to produce a suite of Earth Observation datasets to characterise how ice shelves in Antarctica have changed over the last decade and to make use of these data sets to investigate the physical processes driving this evolution.

This is done by exploiting the 25-year record of ESA satellite observations to generate new measurements of ice shelf thickness change, ice speed, crack propagation, area change, and surface and basal melt across Antarctic Ice Shelves. The goal is to improve our understanding of the way in which ice shelves around Antarctica are changing today in order to discover new insights about the physical mechanisms driving change and affecting the future stability of ice shelves in this remote and inaccessible continent.

Project Details

Project Duration: 2020 – 2022

Project Partners:

  • European Space Agency (ESA)
  • University of Leeds
  • German Aerospace Center (DLR)
  • Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI)
  • ENVEO
  • University of Edinburgh
  • University of Zurich