Super high-resolution spy satellites have been imaging sea ice at the poles for the last decade on behalf of earth scientists. But the images has been kept from the public and nearly all scientists, too.

Over the last 10 years, a tiny group of scientists with security clearance was able to see some of the images, but couldn’t use them publicly. Now, mere hours after a National Academy of Sciences committee recommended that the intelligence community “should release and disseminate all Arctic sea ice” imagery that can be created from the classified satellite data, the United States Geological Service has published the set of high-res images.

The new data provides what NAS committee member Thorsten Markus called “a dramatic improvement” in what we can see. The previously off-limits sea ice data has a resolution of one meter. The previous scientific standard sea ice images from the Landsat program have a resolution of 15 meters. Markus saw some of the sea ice images last December when the committee reviewed the scientific value of the spy satellite data. “It’s a very nice data set,” Markus said. “I think people will jump on it, quite frankly.”

With the new info in hand, scientists should be able to build better models of smaller sea-ice features like melt ponds and ridges. Both are believed to have important roles in sea ice dynamics, but how important they are remains unclear. It’s not just the high resolution of the satellite data that’s got scientists excited. The intelligence community has also been snapping photos of more locations and for longer than anyone else. “[The data] is better in quality, it’s longer in duration and it’s broader in coverage,” said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, who did not contribute to the new report, but is looking at similar issues for the National Academy of Sciences.

Gleick noted that the information release could be part of a larger trend in which the scientific and intelligence communities realize that they share a concern for environmental problems. “The intelligence community is increasingly aware that some of these global environmental issues are also security issues. And in that sense, working with the scientific community in an open way helps both communities,” Gleick said. “If we can reduce environmental threats and reduce security risks at the same time by releasing more data, then we’re all better off. That’s the key. And that’s why there is more cooperation in this area.”

In this case, the data release went incredibly smoothly. Less than a day after the NAS panel briefed Congress Tuesday, and within hours of the report’s official publication, the website with the images went live. “I was shocked, in a positive way,” said Markus. “Normally, you do a recommendation and then nothing happens for months. This is quite unusual.”

(Por Alexis Madrigal, Wired, 16/07/2009)