gusl | Greenland

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My Helsinki->Boston flight flew about 1000km over of the coast of Greenland, a significant Northwards deviation from the geodesic (we reached 70N). This was at about ~2pm Greenland time. The date was July 21, i.e. middle of summer.

These light blue blobs intrigued me. What are they?

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From: (Anonymous)

These light blue blobs are water holes. Once some of surface ice has melted, sunlight gets absorbed and melts even more; whence the blob form. These things can actually pierce the whole ice floe.

Nice shots, btw!
Christian

From:

gustavolacerda.livejournal.com

ice floe? I thought this was on land.

Christian who?

From: (Anonymous)

I couldn't see the ground underneath. Well, then call them ice sheets.

Christian
( We've been studying together at the ILLC. )

From:

x77303066.livejournal.com

Yeah, definitely some kind of ice. You can see the specular reflection on them.

As for the coloring, if it's not from water underneath, maybe it's some kind of scattering effect?

(Can you tell I'm a graphics nerd?)

From:

entomologist.livejournal.com

I'm pretty sure the larger, darker blob in your last pic is a pool of meltwater, but the lighter ones could be exposed ice; glacial ice with no air bubbles in it is about that color.

From:

bhudson.livejournal.com

Awesome; I once flew up there (during MXP - SFO), looked out the window, figured it was cloudy, then saw the mountains and realized what it was I was looking at. But, I didn't get pictures.

What stuck with me most was the flow lines in the glaciers. Though I'd seen them before, I hadn't seen them on such a scale. I don't remember melt pools, but if I were taking a remote sensing exam that's what I'd guess the light-blue things were (but when I took that class we focused on deep-space stuff, so I don't actually know).