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WEBNASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC) Open access cryosphere and related geophysical data from NASA Earth-observing satellite missions, airborne campaigns, and field observations. Explore NASA data at NSIDC.
Sea Ice Today - National Snow and Ice Data Center
WEBSince 2007, the Arctic sea ice minimum has dropped below 5 million square kilometers (1.93 million square miles) every year, except in 2009, 2013, and 2014, when extent barely crossed the 5 million square kilometer mark. Such low extents would have been hard to imagine in the 1990s, when extent ...
Glacier Quick Facts - National Snow and Ice Data Center
WEBA glacier is an accumulation of ice and snow that slowly flows over land. Alpine glaciers are frozen rivers of ice, slowly flowing under their own weight down mountainsides and into valleys. Ice sheets exist only on Greenland and Antarctica, and they spread out in broad domes in multiple directions. A group of people explore the Perito Moreno ...
Arctic Weather and Climate | National Snow and Ice Data Center
WEBNear the ocean, a maritime climate prevails. In coastal Alaska, along with Iceland and Scandinavia, the winters are stormy and wet, with snow and rainfall reaching 60 centimeters (24 inches) to 125 centimeters (49 inches) each year. Summers in the coastal regions tend to be cool and cloudy; average temperatures hover around 10 °C (50 °F).
Arctic Weather and Climate - National Snow and Ice Data Center
WEBArctic temperatures are higher in summer, when there is more sunlight, and lower in winter, when the region is dark. Scientists also use temperature for monitoring changes in climate. Long-term measurements of air temperatures over many years are important for scientists to track climate change.
Glaciers - National Snow and Ice Data Center
WEBA glacier is an accumulation of ice and snow that slowly flows over land. At higher elevations, more snow typically falls than melts, adding to its mass. Eventually, the surplus of built-up ice begins to flow downhill. At lower elevations, there is usually a higher rate of melt or icebergs break off that removes ice mass.
Quick Facts About Snow - National Snow and Ice Data Center
WEBSnow acts like a scrubbing brush as it falls through the atmosphere. So, the longer the snow falls, the cleaner the air, and also the snow. That being said, never eat plowed snow, which contains snow, dirt, and chemicals like magnesium chloride. Also, it takes a lot of energy for the body to melt the snow into water, actually dehydrating a person.
Snow Today - National Snow and Ice Data Center
WEBJun 5, 2024 · Snow Today is a NASA-funded research project that examines where snow is present, where it has snowed recently, and how much water is in the snow, while also comparing between snow today, snow yesterday, snow last year, and snow over the last few decades. You can find the following resources on …
Ice Sheet Quick Facts - National Snow and Ice Data Center
WEBIce sheets are much larger than glaciers. An ice sheet is a mass of glacial land ice, extending more than 50,000 square kilometers (20,000 square miles). Ice sheets can cover underlying canyons and mountain ranges. During the last ice age, ice sheets also covered much of North America and Scandinavia. Now, Earth has two ice sheets: one covers ...
Science of Glaciers - National Snow and Ice Data Center
WEBGlaciers move by internal deformation of the ice, and by sliding over the rocks and sediments at the base. The weight of overlying snow, firn, and ice, and the pressure exerted by upstream and downstream ice deforms glacier ice, in a phenomenon known as creep. A glacier may slide on a thin layer of water at its base.