Turkey: A study of 72 Landsat, 5 ASTER, and 41 commercial satellite images reveals that Turkey has lost more than half of its ice cover since the 1970s. The study has been conducted by Ege University in Turkey and NASA’s Goddard Space and Flight Center. An evaluation of the satellite data shows that the total glacial area has fallen from 25 kilometer-square in the 1970s, to 10.8 kilometer-square in 2013. Five of the glaciers have completely vanished. The research concludes that most glacial retreat can be attributed to climate change and its impact on rising summer nighttime and minimum temperatures. Lauding geospatial technology, one of the researchers, Compton Tucker, points out that without Landsat’s long record, a study like this would be impossible, because we don’t have a time machine to go back to the 1970s and see how Turkey’s glaciers were doing then.
Source: NASA
