Slashgeo

Taking this whole summary from slashdot: "Earlier today the ESA lauched their "Cryosat" satellite, designed to monitor ice levels across the Arctic/Antarctic. It's being reported a failure, disappearing 90 minutes after the launch. It cost £90M (160M US$) to build, and was supposed to spend three years determining the effects of global warming." From the article: "The satellite rode into space on a Rockot vehicle, a converted SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missile. The rocket, which in the Cold War would have been armed with nuclear weapons, had been modified for peaceful space duties with the addition of a Breeze-KM upper stage. Dr Matthias Oehm, chief executive officer of Eurockot, said they had not received the expected signals from either the spacecraft or the upper stage of the rocket that should have injected it into orbit."

This press release tells us that most detailed maps ever produced of the vast snow-covered Antarctic continent has been created with the help of RADARSAT-1. Here's the Mosaic of Antarctica on NASA's website. From the PR: "The Mosaic removes the terrain distortion and produces a more accurate and natural-looking view of the continent and its very subtle surface features. "Using the Mosaic map together with the Canadian satellite, RADARSAT, is a real breakthrough," says Ted Scambos, one of the creators of the Mosaic at NSIDC. "The Mosaic shows the snow and rock surface almost perfectly, and RADARSAT reveals some of the features below the snow. It's very informative.""

The BBC writes: "A new space-based study of Antarctica shows its ice sheet is shrinking. Researchers used satellites to plot changes in the Earth's gravity in the Antarctic during the period 2002-2005... Data comes from a pair of satellites together known as Grace which orbit the Earth in tandem, measuring changes in its gravitational field. When they fly over regions where there is lots of material below, such as mountain ranges, or where crustal rocks are more dense, they will register an increase in the Earth's gravity - tiny, but measurable... "This is a completely new way of measuring the ice sheet mass balance, and so it's extremely exciting," commented David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey, a specialist on the issue."

The Map Room links to the Canadian International Polar Year Internet Map Server. From the International Polar year website: "The International Polar Year is a large scientific programme focused on the Arctic and the Antarctic from March 2007 to March 2009. IPY, organized through the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), is actually the fourth polar year, following those in 1882-3, 1932-3, and 1957-8."

blueheeler writes "PanglossTech has released Sea Level Deluxe for NASA World Wind. This add-on displays high resolution bathymetric/topographic maps of Earth's sea level, ranging from the last ice age to the potential melting of the polar ice sheets. It identifies low-lying cities and coastal flood zones at greatest risk from rising sea levels, storm surges, etc. PanglossTech also provides many free terrestrial and planetary data layers for World Wind. Sea Level Deluxe includes shaded relief maps at 10 meter sea level intervals from 120 meters below the present value (~18-20,000 years ago) to 80 meters higher, the estimated level that would accompany complete melting of the ice fields in Greenland and Antarctica. Corresponding contours are provided for these same datasets. Image layers are provided that depict low-lying coastal regions subject to flooding from rising sea levels, storm surges and other causes. Over half of the world's cities with a million or more occupants lie less than 80 meters above sea level. These cities may be represented with different combinations of names and icons. Several basic administrative map layers are included to facilitate creation of presentation-quality graphic and video displays. These data layers may be combined with one another or with compatible layers built into World Wind or prepared by other developers." See also this previous story on modeling sea level change in NWW and GE.

Ogle Earth discuss the new Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA) data available from the International Polar Year (IPY) program. APB links to a Nature article which provides more coverage: "It will be used in every discipline from biology to geology to glaciology, both to answer scientific questions and plan fieldwork in the vast unexplored tracts of Antarctica. For educators, students, and the general public, LIMA will bring to life the Antarctic continent like nothing before it." Meanwhile, The Google Earth Blog discuss an arctic ice melting animation available for Google Earth. I copied below a few related previous stories. If you're looking for geospatial data over the poles, take a look at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.

The GeoNames blog informs us the addition of 18,104 new GeoNames places for Antarctica. From the entry: "The CGA [Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica] is compiled by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) who have kindly given us the permission to use their data under the condition that we publish the disclaimer below. The CGA is itself an aggregator and includes data from 23 sources from 22 countries. 12′000 features are from US sources, Russia and the UK both contribute 4′800 places." Make sure you read this previous entry on data over Antarctica, more below.

Yet another busy week for me, here's a dose of recent geonews we haven't covered so far. I discovered this morning that the Canadian national media network offer a webmap of news, using Google Maps. I found it only for the French version of the site, not the english one yet. I don't think they use GeoRSS at the moment. Mandown informs us on what's coming next in ArcGIS Mobile 9.4. Geoweb Guru informs us Google Maps now have a 'webcam' layer. The Map Room points to the Tobacco Atlas. Spatially Adjusted runs an entry on licensing on the geoweb, about paying for geospatial services we don't need. SA offers another entry on using Safe Software's FME with open source software and tools. Ogle Earth has an entry on Sweden censorship making it's way to Google Earth. The same blog offers kml overlays of the Wilkins ice bridge breakup in Antarctica. The Google Geo Developers Blog introduces a Mapplets API demo gallery. The GEB shares entries about visualizing GPS tracks for trips with GE Plugin, a Submarine Sim for Google Ocean and a demonstration of YouTube synchronization with the Google Earth Plugin. Mapperz shares an entry on Dual Maps v3, showing streetview and 2D map side by side. The FGT blog augments his list of GIS software on MacOSX with GISLook and GISMeta. The same blog show how you can use different projections in Google Earth and discusses two IP address mapping utilities. APB have an entry on dislocation intelligence: the use of GIS and location intelligence by corporations to concoct their exit strategies from cities. The same blog informs us the GPS ban in Egypt has ended and about selling location-based services without GPS. Baliz links [fr] to AT&T FamilyMap, locating the family via their smartphones. I haven't catched up every geoblog yet, more 'old' stories may appear next week. Some related stories copied below.