Scientists at Northern Arizona University, Arizona State University, the Arizona Geological Survey at the University of Arizona, and the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder have been awarded almost $2 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop a virtual reality teaching tool called Polar Explorer.
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Advancing knowledge of Earth's frozen regions
NSIDC manages and distributes scientific data, creates tools for data access, supports data users, performs scientific research, and educates the public about the cryosphere.
Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis
Scientific analysis of Arctic sea ice conditions plus daily imagesELOKA
Working together to understand the changing Arctic systemSnow Today
Scientific analysis of snow conditions in the Western United States plus daily imagesThe NASA DAAC at NSIDC
NASA Earth science data on snow, ice, cryosphere, and climateVisit the Cryosphere
Facts, photos and educational resources about Earth's frozen regionsGreenland Today
Daily surface melt images from NASA data, and scientific analysisNews
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) announced this week their participation in the 50x30 Coalition, a group of governments and cryosphere and emissions research institutions endorsing the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent by 2030. The Coalition’s founding members endorse the scientific consensus that failure to reach this milestone will result in temperature “overshoot,” in which emissions remain too high to hold Earth within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels, leading to major and irreversible damages to the environment. Damage may be especially harmful for highly temperature-sensitive frozen components of the Earth system, with impacts ranging from sea level rise to infrastructure damage to food insecurity.
Arctic sea ice has likely reached its maximum extent for the year, at 14.77 million square kilometers (5.70 million square miles) on March 21, 2021, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder. The 2021 maximum is tied with 2007 for seventh lowest in the 43-year satellite record.
With support from NASA, the NSIDC DAAC now offers an interactive tool called IceFlow that harmonizes and standardizes lidar data into a uniform format, allowing scientists to analyze significant changes within the cyrosphere.
Since 2006, the Exchange for Local Observations and Knowledge of the Arctic (ELOKA) program at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has worked with Indigenous organizations, community partners, and researchers across the Arctic to facilitate the collection, preservation, exchange and use of Indigenous Knowledge and community-based observations of the Arctic. This year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has renewed funding for the program with a five-year collaborative award to ELOKA, Calista Education and Culture (CEC), the Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub (AAOKH) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council to continue their work with Indigenous partners.
Events
The Latest on Snow and Ice
Arctic sea ice extent declined more slowly during August 2021 than most years in the past decade... read more
On August 14, 2021, rain was observed at the highest point on the Greenland Ice Sheet for... read more
Sea ice loss during the first half of August stalled, though ice in the Beaufort Sea is finally... read more
The Greenland Ice Sheet had two extensive melt events in the second half of July. The second... read more
The rate of Arctic sea ice loss was somewhat slow through much of July, lowering prospects for a... read more
