November 12, 2021 - Sea Ice forming in Kuskokwim Bay

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Fresh ice off the coast of southwestern Alaska shimmered in the
sunlight of an autumn day in early November 2021. The Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Aqua
satellite acquired this true-color image on November 11.

The icy fingers stretch across Kuskokwim Bay, a large embayment of the
Bering Sea. It receives freshwater from several rivers, especially the
large Kuskokwim River a glacially turbid river that originates in the
Kuskokwim Mountains and traves approximately 900 miles through remote
territory to reach the Bay. The drainage basin that flows into the
river is the second-largest in the state of Alaska. The river typically
ices up in mid-November, when sea ice also begins to form in the Bering
Sea. This year, frigid temperatures near the ground arrived early and
the annual expansion of sea ice is well underway. The rapid river
ice-up stranded a barge that was carrying building materials downriver
to Eek, a town of about 400 people in a remote area not far from the
Kuskokwim River. In late October, as the barge turned towards the Eek
River, a rapid drop in temperature brought a rapid freeze up of the
river, obstructing the barge’s movement. It is planned to leave the
barge in place overwinter and return to recover it in spring.

The National Weather Service reports that the sea ice minimum for the
entire Arctic was called on September 16, with the overall sea ice
extent in Alaska farther south than most of the last 10 years. The
transition from ice shrinking to expansion is well underway, but the
report states that new growth has been confined to the ice edge and is
limited by sea surface temperatures. The sea surface temperatures in
the northern Bering Sea were cooler than recent years, spurring a
less-delayed start of freeze-up in this region.

To view the change in sea ice between October 29 and November 10, the
NASA Worldview App provides a roll-over comparison. To view this, click
here.

The NASA Worldview app provides a satellite's perspective of the planet
as it looks today and as it has in the past through daily satellite
images. Worldview is part of NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and
Information System. EOSDIS makes the agency's large repository of data
accessible and freely available to the public.

Image Facts
Satellite: Aqua
Date Acquired: 11/10/2021
Resolutions: 1km (267.2 KB), 500m (858.2 KB), 250m (2.3 MB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2021-11-12

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