Image of the day
A glacier in Greenland
Earth Observation | Copernicus
Glaciers
Location: Petermann Glacier, Greenland
Credit: European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2
So, what is a glacier?
A glacier is made up of fallen snow that has been compressed into a large, thickened ice mass over many thousands of years.
Captured on July 21, 2024, this glacier image shows the power of true colour Sentinel-2 imagery for evaluating cryosphere patterns. Slight highlight compression was applied to avoid the oversaturation of bright snow surfaces, and level-1 imagery was used leaving the shadows on steep slopes uncorrected. Although this is a summer image, the sun's angle above the horizon is quite low. Even the true colour imagery allows the identification of sediment-rich brown plumes where rivers flow into the sea.
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