About the Sun The whole picture Jezek wants space agencies to
pull together to create new satellite images of polar regions
Posted May 23, 2008 A decade after using an Earth-observing
satellite to image Antarctica to create the first high-
resolution mosaic of the continent, Ken Jezek hopes the world’s
space agencies will pull together their spaceborne resources to
map the cryosphere in unprecedented detail and breadth. The
International Polar Year (IPY) project will rely on countries
from Russia to China to the United Kingdom to use the
constellation of Earth-observing satellites to capture data
about ice sheets and sea ice in areas undergoing rapid changes.
GIIPSY, for Global Inter-agency IPY Polar Snapshot Year, will
use a range of satellite frequencies, from microwave to optical,
to create a series of different images for a benchmark that
scientists can use to track future changes. “The challenges are
formidable,” concedes Jezek, a geophysicist with Byrd Polar
Research Center at The Ohio State University i