Satellite aims to track global warming

A new satellite scientists hope will help pin down the effects of global warming on the Earth’s ice packs more precisely is due for launch tomorrow.

The European Space Agency’s CryoSat 2 mission will be able to pinpoint details of changes in polar ice so scientists can better understand the picture of the world’s retreating ice caps.

Although most scientists agree that global warming is significantly affecting the Earth’s ice sheets, many also say too little is known with certainty, and that is where the CryoSat 2 mission aims to help.

“We hope to find out more about the role the sea ice plays for the climate system and more about the height of the land ice,” Heinrich Miller, one of the two project directors, said.

“We know that it is dwindling but we don’t know exactly what mechanisms are at work,” he said.

CryoSat 2 will be the only satellite that can deliver the necessary data.

Earlier satellites helped lay the groundwork for decades of research on the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, but those have gone out of operation without being replaced in time.

The CryoSat mission originally was to start in 2005 but suffered a severe setback when the launcher rocket failed and the satellite was lost – costing about €125m.

In 2006 ESA decided to rebuild the satellite and launch it in 2009. Lift-off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan was then postponed several times, the last of which was in February because of technical problems with the transport rocket.

ESA says its new satellite is the “most sophisticated ever to investigate the Earth’s ice fields.” It aims to operate for at least three to five years space agency estimates the total cost for the mission at €159m.

Using radar technology from 447 miles above Earth’s surface, CryoSat will measure the thickness of both land and floating ice and pinpoint changes to within a centimetre.

Scientists know there have been significant changes in the polar regions and recent summers have seen record lows in the extent of summer ice cover in the Arctic sea, ESA said.

However, to understand more about how climate change is affecting these sensitive regions, “there is also an urgent need to determine how ice thickness is changing,” the agency said.

For coastal cities and islands, the information may be a question of survival.