Filaments of sea ice trace ocean currents, creating swirls visible along the coast of Labrador, in eastern Canada.
Filaments of sea ice trace ocean currents, creating swirls visible along the coast of Labrador, in eastern Canada. The dazzling display of frozen seawater was captured by satellite sensors and an astronaut on the International Space Station.
As sea ice at far northern latitudes approached its maximum annual extent, the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of the Labrador Sea on February 3, 2024. Situated between Canada’s Labrador Peninsula and Greenland, the sea is part of the North Atlantic Ocean and connects to the Arctic Ocean via various straits and bays to the north. Swirls of smaller sea ice pieces churned along the crumbling edge of the more consolidated ice pack off the coast of Labrador Inuit Lands, in the Newfoundland and Labrador province.
Ocean currents can stir ice chunks into circular vortices, or eddies. Eddies form frequently along boundaries between cold and warm ocean currents in the spring and fall, due to differences in water density. Even then, however, an ice eddy won’t form except under certain conditions: it must be warm enough for the ice to fragment, but cool enough for it to remain frozen.
Read more at: NASA Earth Observatory
Photo Credit: Michala Garrison
