Antarctic Ice Velocity Data Now Available through A-CAP

Understanding ice flow and its temporal changes is essential to answering questions about whether Antarctic ice volume is changing and how it may change in the future. Since changes in Antarctic ice have an impact on sea level, this is a problem with global importance. The VELMAP collection on A-CAP is composed of 47 selectable layers. Each of these can be displayed as either a data location map, to help differentiate the different layers, or a graded ice velocity map. The opacity of these maps is also configurable. All layers are queryable so that a user can determine the ice velocity, bearing/azimuth, collection date, station name, and magnitudes of error for each point observation. As with all A-CAP layers, the info icon opens a pop-up window with pertinent citation and summary information about each VELMAP layer. A-CAP is a geo-visualization and data download tool developed at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) Antarctic Glaciological Data Center (AGDC). A-CAP provides AGDC data and other Antarctic-wide parameters, including glaciology, ice core data, snow accumulation, satellite imagery, Digital Elevation Models (DEM’s), sea ice concentration, and many other cryosphere-related scientific measurements.
For more information on how to access data using A-CAP, see the A-CAP User Manual (http://nsidc.org/agdc/acap /user_manual.html).