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NASAhas released a trippy , technicolor orbiter photo of Alaska ’s Malaspina Glacier , which makes the massive ice mass feel like a fiery , ripple blob of pigment . The new image spotlight recent discoveries at the glacier , including a " concealed lagoon . "
The glacier , in Wrangell - St. Elias National Park on the state ’s southeast seashore , covers around 1,680 substantial international nautical mile ( 4,350 straight kilometers ) , making it North America ’s largest glacier and the globe ’s heavy piedmont glacier — a character of lobate glacier that spills out from raft onto flatten undercoat .
Alaska’s Malaspina Glacier looks unrecognizable in a stunning new false-color satellite image shared by NASA.
Malaspina Glacier is also know as Sít ' Tlein , which imply " big glacier " in the Tlingit language verbalise by the Indigenous people in the field .
The image was captured on Oct. 27 by the Landsat 9 satellite , which is co - owned by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey . It was free byNASA ’s Earth Observatoryon Nov. 25 .
The picture is a sham - color simulacrum created usinginfrared radiation . The yellow and orangish colors represent ice ; the red hues show water ; and the dingy and green colors show where land and vegetation occur , severally . The ripples , or folds , in the ice are moraines — bands of land , rock and other debris that are scraped up as the glacier slowly swag forward .
The image also shows the Seward and Agassiz glaciers, as well as a recently discovered lagoon (boxed).
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The Seward Glacier , which feeds into the Malaspina Glacier from the Saint Elias Mountains , and the Agassiz Glacier , which is fertilize by the same mountain range , are also seeable in the simulacrum .
In February , a study issue in theJournal of Geophysical Research : Earth Surfacerevealed that the volume of the Malaspina Glacier ’s ice had previously been overestimated by around 30 % — but if the intact deoxyephedrine mess were to melt away , it could put forward the global median sea level by 0.06 inch ( 1.4 millimeters ) , the studys show .
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The written report also let out that the benighted - red mend of water , located between the chalk and an outstretched piece of music of commonwealth at the remainder of the glacier , is a seawater lagune that was hiding in plain visual modality . The laguna is warmer than scientists antecedently suspected because of its high Strategic Arms Limitation Talks substance , which could accelerate the icing melt rate .
The researchers also found that there are subglacial channels of water that run through the basics beneath the glacier . These channel extend up to 22 miles ( 35 km ) under the ice and could further speed up the glacier ’s retreat .
