From the not-so-remote cryosphere

by John D. Cox | September 02, 2009

Scientists are getting better at grasping changes taking place in the coldest regions of the planet, and as NASA's new video "Tour of the Cryosphere" illustrates, they are getting better at telling us about it.  Rather than polar bears and penguins and other exotica of the ice, we are told at the outset that what happens in these remote regions "affects the lives of everyone on earth."

This is not a message that scientists have always been very good at getting across, partly because they are, well, scientists, who usually think in technical terms, and partly because they spend a lot more time talking to each other about their methods than to the likes of you and me about their message.  I have a friend in the news business who used to listen to their jargon-filled explanations at major scientific meetings around the country and then invariably ask the same question:  "Yeah, but what does it mean to Joe Six-Pack?"

NASA is getting better at handling this kind of question.  Melting Antarctic ice sheets spill more heavy, salty water into the ocean, which sinks to the abyss and changes ocean currents that alter climate worldwide, we are told.  Seventy-five percent of the water resources in the American West depends on precipitation falling as mountain snow.  A dry winter in the Rockies can heighten wildfire danger even the following year.

Unmentioned in this brief clip are other impacts important to all of us from changes in the world of ice -- Arctic sea ice, in particular, which is shown here as of September 1. Outlined is the average since 1979.  The area of Arctic ocean covered by ice -- which has been shrinking for 50 years -- affects not only the Arctic environment but seasonal weather in the temperate regions as well. 

A study published in April combining satellite measurements of sea ice coverage and conventional atmospheric observations showed that summer sea ice coverage changes weather patterns in autumn and winter from Scandinavia to the American southwest.  And then there is the Greenland ice sheet, which holds enough fresh water to fill the Gulf of Mexico.  This is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, where the rate of melting ice in a warming world is still one of the great unknowns in climate science.

IMAGE:  National Snow and Ice Data Center