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my name is dave eastmont i'm the mission

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manager for wallops aircraft at this

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time my previous experience has been

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with the p3 i've done dc8 flights i've

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done air sound uav flights

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and c-130 flights

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i probably got upwards to about

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4 000 hours in the back of the plane

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okay my name is bill crable i'm the

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project scientist for operation

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icebridge

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and i've been flying missions like this

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the the aircraft behind me is nasa's p3

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uh research aircraft it's used as a

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platform for various remote sensors

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and we're going to be using it in

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greenland this year

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as we have most years since 1991 to

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collect a suite of measurements that

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tell the scientists the uh the thickness

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of the ice and how fast it's flowing um

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out to the ocean

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and what we're observing is the the

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decade of the 90s was

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was exhibiting very small changes

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if we saw a half a meter to a meter per

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year of thinning that was a pretty large

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number

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uh in that time frame

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but since the turn of the century

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we're seeing some of those same glaciers

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now thinning at 15 and 20 and 25 meters

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per year so there are some very drastic

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changes taking place up in greenland

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the additional work that we'll be doing

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for operation icebridge

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will be to follow the exact same orbit

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paths on the surface that that icesat

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has followed in the past and and will

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follow in the future and that icesat-2

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would follow when it gets launched in

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2015.

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it does a a very nice job of of global

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coverage particularly of antarctica

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that's quite remote and very difficult

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to get to with an airplane

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so whereas the the typical flights that

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we would make in the past are are

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focused targeted towards the outlet

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glaciers

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um we'll now also do the same kinds of

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measurements that a satellite would and

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this sort of ties the two projects

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i'm jim jungle i'm a lead engineer on

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the nasa airborne topographic mapper

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project it measures the elevation of the

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train the aircraft flies over

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it does this

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by firing pulses of laser light from the

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aircraft to the ground and back

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those pulses are scanned in a uh an oval

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scan

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and this allows us to map a swath of

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terrain underneath the aircraft and it

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allows us to return in a future year

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and repeat those measurements uh pretty

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accurately

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we're we're concerned with the ice

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sheets of the world because

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to some degree they control sea level

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greenland is the second largest ice

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sheet in the world it contains enough

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ice and snow that if it were to melt

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would raise sea levels substantially

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maybe as much as 20 feet in this area

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you can imagine greenland as a huge ice

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cube that's a thousand miles long and

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400 miles wide and two miles thick in

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the center

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it nicely buffers global climate

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regional climate

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so that changes in the ice sheet

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become very important indicators of

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it's something you have to experience

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we'll fly these patterns at 1500 feet

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above the ground level and you get up on

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your sheets like flying over the clouds

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when you look down it's just white

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fluffy sometimes it just looks like a

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cloud you have to

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keep in your head that that's solid

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probably one of the neatest things to

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see is when you're flying down the

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glacier towards the ocean you're at 1500

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feet

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and just as you hit the ocean the

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glacier drops off and about another

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thousand feet it's just