Categories: Data Centres, For Schools, Human-Environment Interactions, The Arctic, USA
From the physical sciences to the social sciences, NSIDC scientists work on a diverse mixture of research projects that focus on various aspects of the cryosphere and how it impacts society, including snow, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets, sea ice, permafrost, and more.
The cryosphere is a global system stretching from the Arctic to the Antarctic and includes all the snow, ice, and other frozen regions across the planet. These frozen parts of Earth are important components of the global climate system, and provide fresh water and other ecosystem services to people, plants, and animals. As climate change warms the planet, the cryosphere is one of the most rapidly changing systems on Earth. Sea ice and glaciers are disappearing, permafrost is thawing, snow in the polar regions is turning to rain, and so on. These changes affect communities, habitats, sea levels, ocean currents, air temperatures, and more. The better we understand what is happening with the cryosphere, the more we know what other changes are occurring across our planet—that is why NSIDC’s research is more urgent now than ever. Since 1976, NSIDC scientists have worked to improve understanding of how the cryosphere is changing, forecasting of what the impacts of these changes will be, and global awareness of the importance of the cryosphere. Our organization includes physical and social scientists with centuries of experience between them. We believe rigorous scientific research is essential to the stewardship of our planet and positively impacts the future of humanity. Explore Data: https://nsidc.org/data/explore-data Learn about the cryosphere: https://nsidc.org/learn Ask a scientist: https://nsidc.org/learn/ask-scientist Explore and visualize Earth data: https://nsidc.org/data/visualize-data
