Spy images of Arctic ice melt released in US

WASHINGTON: The United States released more than a thousand intelligence images of Arctic ice to help scientists study the impact of climate change, within hours of a recommendation by the National Academy ofSciences. In an unusually fast move by a US government agency, the Interior Department made the images public on Wednesday. The academy’s report urging this action was released at 11am on Wednesday. Some 700 images show swatches of sea ice from six sites around the Arctic Ocean, with an additional 500 images of 22 sites in the United States. Changes in the Arctic affect global climate, since the Arctic region acts as an “air conditioner” for the planet. The Arctic images have a resolution of about 1 metre, a vast improvement on previously available pictures of sea ice, said Thorsten Markus of Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The images were derived from classified images made as part of the Medea program, which lets scientists request spy pictures from environmentally sensitive locations around the globe. Medea scientists asked for intelligence images of Arctic sea ice during the summer melting season, but these were considered unsuitable for public release. Knowing about these melt pools is valuable to producing models of what might happen in the Arctic in the future, but with images that have a resolution of 30 meters or so, these pools might well be missed.