NASA satellite captures rare sight of 'sea smoke' at Antarctica's Pine Island glacier

A satellite orbiting hundreds of miles above Earth recently captured rare images of an atmospheric phenomenon that makes Antarctica glaciers appear to be smoking.

The wisps of "sea smoke" blowing above the Pine Island glacier would typically be a sight obfuscated by clouds. But on Oct. 10, the U.S. Geological Survey's Landsat 8 satellite, which NASA helped to develop, managed to capture an image of the phenomenon, which is actually fog caused by rising steam.

The striking image, captured from 438 miles high, illustrates “the power of the wind,” said Christopher Shuman, a glaciologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in a statement.

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Satellite image captures 'sea smoke'

The image shows the "sea smoke" pluming around Pine Island glacier, which, along with neighboring Thwaites glacier, is one of the main pathways for ice flowing from the west Antarctic ice sheet to the Amundsen Sea.

The smoky effect is caused by steam forming and rising as cold air moves across warmer water at the edges of the glacier due to differences in temperature between the ice and water surrounding it, Shuman said.

In this case, winds pushed water and sea ice away from the ice front, which drove relatively warm water to replace it from below. The wind is also kicking up snow from the surface of the adjacent ice sheet, which created streams of white across the scene.

What is the Pine Island Glacier?

The Pine Island glacier is considered to be one of the fastest-retreating glaciers in Antarctica. The glacier, along with the nearby Thwaites glacier, together contain enough ice to raise global sea level by about four feet, according to NASA.

The glacier, which has steadily been losing large chunks of ice over the past three decades, regularly fractures and calves off icebergs, some of which have been large enough to be named. In 2020, for instance, an iceberg twice the size of Washington, D.C. broke off Pine Island.

Wind-drive phenomena doesn't just create striking imagery, but also may help scientists understand the changing climate of Antarctica, particularly around the Pine Island glacier. But understanding the extent to which the blowing snow contributes to the loss of the surface mass balance of polar ice sheets is hampered by the difficulty in collecting ground-based data and making satellite observations, scientists say.

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NASA satellite captures rare sight of 'sea smoke' in Antarctica