The cryosphere is an umbrella term for those portions of Earth's surface where water is in solid form. This includes sea ice, ice on lakes or rivers, snow, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets, and frozen ground. Thus, there is a overlap with the hydrosphere. The cryosphere is an integral part of the global climate system. It also has important feedbacks on the climate system. These feedbacks come from the cryosphere's influence on surface energy and moisture fluxes, clouds, the water cycle, atmospheric and oceanic circulation.
Glaciology is the scientific study of glaciers, or, more generally, ice and natural phenomena that involve ice.
An ice shelf is a large platform of glacial ice floating on the ocean, fed by one or multiple tributary glaciers. Ice shelves form along coastlines where the ice thickness is insufficient to displace the more dense surrounding ocean water. The boundary between the ice shelf (floating) and grounded ice is referred to as the grounding line; the boundary between the ice shelf and the open ocean is the ice front or calving front.
The National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) was one of the national environmental data centers operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The main NODC facility was located in Silver Spring, Maryland, and consisted of five divisions. The NODC also had field offices collocated with major government or academic oceanographic laboratories in Stennis Space Center, MS; Miami, FL; La Jolla, San Diego, California; Seattle, WA; Austin, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; Norfolk, Virginia; and Honolulu, Hawaii. In 2015, NODC was merged with the National Climatic Data Center and the National Geophysical Data Center into the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).
The Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center (BPCRC) is a polar, alpine, and climate research center at Ohio State University founded in 1960.
A polar ice cap or polar cap is a high-latitude region of a planet, dwarf planet, or natural satellite that is covered in ice.
In glaciology, an ice cap is a mass of ice that covers less than 50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi) of land area. Larger ice masses covering more than 50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi) are termed ice sheets.
The United States Antarctic Program is an organization of the United States government which has a presence in the Antarctica continent. Founded in 1959, the USAP manages all U.S. scientific research and related logistics in Antarctica as well as aboard ships in the Southern Ocean.
The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) is a research institute that is sponsored jointly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) and the University of Colorado Boulder (CU). CIRES scientists study the Earth system, including the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and geosphere, and communicate these findings to decision makers, the scientific community, and the public.
The Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) is a centre for research into the polar regions and glaciology worldwide. It is a sub-department of the Department of Geography in the University of Cambridge, located on Lensfield Road in the south of Cambridge.
The International Permafrost Association (IPA), founded in 1983, is an international professional body formed to foster the dissemination of knowledge concerning permafrost and to promote cooperation among individuals and national or international organisations engaged in scientific investigation and engineering work related to permafrost and seasonally frozen ground. The IPA became an Affiliated Organisation of the International Union of Geological Sciences in July 1989.
Measurement of sea ice is important for safety of navigation and for monitoring the environment, particularly the climate. Sea ice extent interacts with large climate patterns such as the North Atlantic oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, to name just two, and influences climate in the rest of the globe.
The Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration, often abbreviated as the CAA, is a Beijing-based agency of the People's Republic of China's State Oceanic Administration (SOA). Established in 1981, it organizes China's scientific program for both the Arctic and Antarctic, and it provides logistic support to Antarctic expeditions. There are several divisions, including General Affairs, Operation & Logistics, Science Programs, International Cooperation, representation in the Chinese Embassy in Chile, and a Winter Training Base. The director is Qu Tanzhou.
Jason Eric Box is an American glaciologist who is professor in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. For 10 years (2002-2012) he worked at Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, eventually a tenured physical climatology and geography associate professor in the department of geography.
The Exchange for Local Observations and Knowledge of the Arctic, is an Arctic research data management program that combines local traditional knowledge (LTK) and local observations data from Indigenous Arctic residents utilizing effective and appropriate western methods to properly share Arctic Indigenous Knowledge. The LTK data the program stewards consists of observations of sea ice, weather, wildlife and comes in many forms such as written interview transcripts, audio or video tapes and files, photographs, artwork, illustrations and maps. Housed at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Sciences (CIRES), ELOKA is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Arctic Observing Network (AON) research program that came out of the 2007-2008 International Polar Year (IPY).
The Arctic ice pack is the sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean and its vicinity. The Arctic ice pack undergoes a regular seasonal cycle in which ice melts in spring and summer, reaches a minimum around mid-September, then increases during fall and winter. Summer ice cover in the Arctic is about 50% of winter cover. Some of the ice survives from one year to the next. Currently, 28% of Arctic basin sea ice is multi-year ice, thicker than seasonal ice: up to 3–4 m (9.8–13.1 ft) thick over large areas, with ridges up to 20 m (65.6 ft) thick. Besides the regular seasonal cycle there has been an underlying trend of declining sea ice in the Arctic in recent decades as well.
Mark Clifford Serreze is an American geographer and the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), a project of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. In 2019, he was named a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geography. Serreze is primarily known for his expertise in the Arctic sea ice decline that has occurred over the last few decades due to global warming, a topic about which he has expressed serious concern. He has authored over 150 peer-reviewed publications.
Antarctic sea ice is the sea ice of the Southern Ocean. It extends from the far north in the winter and retreats to almost the coastline every summer. Sea ice is frozen seawater that is usually less than a few meters thick. This is the opposite of ice shelves, which are formed by glaciers; they float in the sea, and are up to a kilometre thick. There are two subdivisions of sea ice: fast ice, which are attached to land; and ice floes, which are not.
Jacob Sebastian Haugaard Mernild is a Danish professor in climate change, glaciology and hydrology, who is the pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Southern Denmark. Mernild has been an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) author for the United Nations since 2010. Initially a contributing author on the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, he was lead author on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.
