Antarctic Peninsula glacier flow

A team of scientists from the University of Leeds in the UK and the Utrecht University in the Netherlands processed over 10,000 Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar images to measure the speed of 105 glaciers on the Peninsula’s west coast over a six-year period, from 2014 to 2021.

The paper published today in Nature Geoscience describes how they found that the glaciers experiencing the most seasonal change actually flow over 22% faster in summer than winter, with all glaciers in this region speeding up by 12% on average. This new discovery of faster summer ice speeds has not been seen before in this region of Antarctica.

The perspective in this image of the peninsula is tilted, but it covers a distance of around 800 km from top to bottom. The red colours in the image show where the glaciers are flowing the fastest.

A video panning this image of the peninsula is also available.

Read full story: Antarctic Peninsula glaciers on the run