Operation IceBridge monitors glaciers in Alaska

Operation IceBridge monitors glaciers in Alaska. Today’s Image of the Day from NASA features the Sheridan Glacier near Cordova, Alaska, which has a floating ice tongue that is rapidly deteriorating.

Glaciers in Alaska are losing a lot of ice and contributing to sea level rise.

NASA has launched Operation IceBridge, a project which flies scientific instruments on a small plane to measure the changes in Alaska’s ice cover. Operation IceBridge monitors glaciers in Alaska.

Alaska Inupiaq: Alaasikaq; Alutiiq: Alas’kaaq; Tlingit: Anáaski; Russian: Аля́ска, romanized: Alyáska) is a state located in the northwest extremity of the United States West Coast, just across the Bering Strait from Asia. An exclave of the U.S., it borders the Canadian province of British Columbia and territory of Yukon to the east and southeast and has a maritime border with Russia’s Chukotka Autonomous Okrug to the west. To the north are the Chukchi and Beaufort seas of the Arctic Ocean, while the Pacific Ocean lies to the south and southwest.
Alaska is the largest U.S. state by area and the seventh-largest subnational division in the world. It is the third-least populous and the most sparsely populated state, but by far the continent’s most populous territory located mostly north of the 60th parallel, with an estimated population of 738,432 as 2015—more than quadruple the combined populations of Northern Canada and Greenland. Approximately half of Alaska’s residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. The state capital of Juneau is the second largest city in the United States by area, comprising more territory than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware

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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer

Image Credit. NASA