Meltwater Lakes Greenland

Description

Satellite image of pools of meltwater (blue) on the Greenland Ice Sheet during summer 2015. This area is near Greenland’s west coast. The seasonal lakes vary greatly in size and depth, some reaching depths of up to nine metres. The larger lakes can contribute to the movement of the glacier by forcing open crevasses and draining down to bedrock to lubricate the ice flow. This image was acquired on 15 July 2015, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) sensor on the Landsat 8 satellite. (Photo by Science Photo Library Archive)