Antarctic ice sheet

For the first time, data from ESA’s CryoSat mission have been used to map the height of the ice sheet that blankets Antarctica. The preliminary data used here are from February and March 2011. More data still need to be collected to study the ice sheet in detail. Nevertheless, CryoSat's ability to map the edges of the ice sheet is demonstrated by the detail that can be seen of the flow from east Antarctica onto the Ronne-Filchner ice shelf in the west. Orbiting closer to the poles than other Earth observation missions, CryoSat offers additional coverage. The outer white circle represents the limits of earlier missions and the inner circle shows that CryoSat is collecting data up 88° latitude.