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CryoSat ice data now open to all

01. 02. 11

Scientists can now tap into a flow of new data that will help to determine exactly how Earth's ice is changing. This information from ESA's CryoSat mission is set to make a step change in our understanding of the complex relationship between ice and climate.

Considering the loss of the original CryoSat satellite during launch in 2005, scientists around the world have had a long wait for information on ice thickness – making the release even more of a milestone for the mission.
ESA's CryoSat Mission Manager Tommaso Parrinello announced the release at the CryoSat Validation workshop currently taking place. He said, "We are pleased to announce this important milestone, which comes only few weeks after the end of the commissioning phase.

"As of today, the international science community will have free and easy access to all of the measurements from CryoSat. This will amount to a unique dataset to determine the impact climate change is having on Earth's ice fields."


ESA's Earth Explorer CryoSat (Credits: ESA / AOES Medialab)

Launched in April last year, CryoSat and the ground processing set-up have shown to be in excellent working order.

Prof. Duncan Wingham from University College London said, "It’s great to see the data go out on general release, and it is a measure of the efforts from the ESA team that this has been achieved so soon after launch.

"We already know that the hardware is providing extremely accurate results; now we can start to see that translate into real scientific achievements."

CryoSat carries a sophisticated radar altimeter that can measure the thickness of sea ice down to centimetres and detect changes in ice sheets, particularly around the edges where icebergs are calved from the vast ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica.

It is the ability to detect minute changes in these two different types of ice that sets the CryoSat mission apart, along with the fact that the satellite's orbit takes it closer to the poles than earlier missions.

For more information on CryoSat visit ESA's dedicated CryoSat pages.

This news item originally appeared on the ESA website


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