What is the Cryospheric Sciences Program?

The cryosphere is that component of the Earth System that contains water in its frozen state. This may include glaciers, snow, lake ice, sea ice, ice caps, ice sheets and permafrost. While these elements of the cryosphere exist at many locations on earth, they are in greatest abundance in the polar regions.

Model simulations of global climate indicate that the high-latitude ice-covered regions of the Earth, particularly the Arctic, are most sensitive to climate change. Among the reasons for this sensitivity is the positive albedo feedback associated with the warming and melting of snow and ice. Other factors include the changes in thermohaline circulation and energy exchanges associate with the melting of sea ice. Consequently, an understanding of the Earth's cryosphere and its relationship with the rest of the Earth System is essential to understanding the past, present, and future behavior of the Earth as a whole.

The Cryospheric Sciences Program within the NASA's Earth Science Enterprise is a fundamental component of the "Oceans and Ice in the Earth System" research theme. The broad goals of the program are:

• measuring and understanding the mass balance of land ice, and its implications for sea level rise
• monitoring and understanding important cryospheric processes and their relationships with other parts of the climate system
• improving the simulation of cryospheric processes in climate models