Early look

Ground motion around Kiruna

One summer of radar measurements shows a narrow zone beside the Kiirunavaara mine moving far faster than the land around it. Its fastest points sank by about 15 cm in four months.

Open the mapAbout 18 MB of point data.

Map of vertical velocity around Kiruna with a dark red zone next to the Kiirunavaara mine marker — Vertical velocity from June to September 2019. Red is down and blue is up, relative to a reference point south of the town.

130,706measurement points, each a 10 m cell seen by both radar tracks

21images every 6 days, 1 June to 29 September 2019

−153 mmmedian vertical change of the fastest 0.5% of points

The fastest ground is tightly grouped

The fastest 0.5% of points all lie in a strip about 2.6 km long just east of the mine marker. The single fastest moved about 23 cm down over the window, while the typical point across the map changed by about 7 mm.

Median vertical displacement in mm for the fastest 0.5% of points, relative to 1 June 2019.

How to read it

It is one summer. Rates in mm per year on the map are straight-line fits over four months, so they are extrapolations. The changes in mm are the direct measurement.
Fast motion can be underestimated. Radar interferometry loses track when ground moves too far between images, so the fastest values may be too low.
East and vertical assume no north motion. Each dot combines an ascending and a descending track.
Cause is not established here. The position beside the mine stands out, but this view does not separate causes. Smaller red patches elsewhere have not been examined and may be noise or surface effects.

Open the map

Processed from Copernicus Sentinel-1 data. Click a dot on the map to see its time series; triangles mark GNSS stations.