Diomede Islands, Bering Strait, November 2024 and March 2025
Two radar acquisitions of the same 48 by 27 km window, 108 days apart, record the strait's transition from open water in November to fractured pack ice in March.
2024-11-16
2025-03-04
- Place
- Diomede Islands, Bering Strait
- Coordinates
- 65.7600, -168.9500
- Acquired
- 2024-11-16 and 2025-03-04
- Region
- United States, Alaska
- Themes
- Ice and snow, Islands, Coasts
- Satellite
- Sentinel-1, radar
- Occasion
- Arctic sea-ice maximum
- Source
- Sentinel-1A interferometric wide swath, ground-range detected, VV polarisation
- Catalog
- Microsoft Planetary Computer STAC, collection sentinel-1-grd
- Resolution
- 25 m ground sample distance
- Scenes
Sentinel-1A IW GRDH VV, relative orbit 161 descending, 2024-11-16,Sentinel-1A IW GRDH VV, relative orbit 161 descending, 2025-03-04- Rights
- Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2024, 2025. Copernicus Sentinel data is free, full, and open. Rendering by Heimdall Research.
- Credit
- Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2024, 2025.
- Published
Context
What this shows
Big Diomede and Little Diomede sit in the middle of the Bering Strait with the international date line between them. Radar sees through cloud and polar night, so the same pass can be compared across the season. In the November image the strait is open water, which returns almost no signal and appears dark. In the March image the islands are locked in pack ice: bright, fractured, and pushed against their northern shores.
This pair is the reference case for the Arctic Open-Water Window dataset, which counts open-water days at fixed gates in this strait.
Method
How the image was made
Two acquisitions from the same Sentinel-1 orbit, 108 days apart, warped to a common 25-meter grid and shown with one fixed brightness stretch so the two dates are directly comparable. Bright is rough or icy; dark is calm open water. No classification has been applied; this is the measured backscatter, contrast-stretched.
Prints
Prints
Every print carries the place, the date, and the source credit on the mat, as shown. Sizes and paper are quoted with the rights and source resolution confirmed.
Related
Related
-
Ilulissat Icefjord and Disko Bay, Greenland, August 2024 to October 2025
Thirty-eight Sentinel-1 passes at a twelve-day interval record the icefjord's discharge, the freeze and break-up of Disko Bay, and the seasonal advance and retreat of sea ice over fifteen months.
This observation
Prints and analysis
Prints are quoted once rights and source resolution are confirmed. Analysis requests get a direct answer about what the imagery can and cannot show.