Results for: Snow and Ice
Notes from the Field Blog: Greenland Aquifer Expedition
March 20, 2013NASA scientists return to Greenland, not to investigate the ice but to learn more about the water trapped within the ice. Read more
In a Warming World, the Storms May Be Fewer But Stronger
March 5, 2013Extreme storms such as Hurricane Sandy, Snowmageddon, and the tornadoes of 2011 have prompted questions about whether climate change is affecting the intensity of weather. Satellites, statistics, and scientific models are teaching us a lot about what we know and don't know about severe storms. Read more
The Gravity of Water
September 12, 2012Scientists are using novel measurements of gravity to gather indispensable information about Earth’s water supplies. The GRACE mission can see water flowing underground. Read more
Greatest Hits from Landsat
July 31, 2012Landsat 1 was launched in July 1972, starting the longest continuous observation of Earth's land surfaces from space. Here are some of the memorable scientific and societal contributions from the 40-year-old program. Read more
World of Change: Columbia Glacier, Alaska
May 16, 2012Since 1980, the volume of this glacier that spills into the Prince William Sound has shrunk by half. Climate change may have nudged the process along, but mechanical forces have played the largest role in the ice loss. Read more
Looking Back on Ten Years of Aqua
May 4, 2012Launched on May 4, 2002, NASA's Aqua satellite and its six instruments have provided a decade's worth of unprecedented views of our planet. Here are a few of our favorites. Read more
Notes from the Field Blog: Pine Island Glacier 2011
December 19, 2011An international team of researchers are traveling to one of Antarctica's most active, remote and harsh spots to determine how changes in the waters circulating under an active ice sheet are causing a glacier to accelerate and drain into the sea. Read more
IceBridge: Building a Record of Earth’s Changing Ice, One Flight at a Time
November 2, 2011NASA is sending a fleet of airplanes to the ends of the Earth for the next several years to figure out how and why polar ice is changing. Read more
Notes from the Field Blog: SEAT: Satellite Era Accumulation Traverse
October 12, 2011An international team returns to West Antarctica for a second season of field work. Researchers are collecting data from snow pits, ice cores, and radar surveys to better understand snow accumulation and to improve space-based estimates of Antarctica's ice mass. Read more
Earth Matters Blog
June 14, 2011Earth is an amazing planet, and the one that matters most to us. Let's have a conversation about it. Read more
Notes from the Field Blog: Real-time Observations of Greenland’s Under-ice Environment (ROGUE)
May 9, 2011During the spring of 2011, the ROGUE project is examining the nature and cause of short-term ice velocity changes near Swiss Camp, Greenland by observing interactions between the ice sheet, the atmosphere and the bed. Read more
Notes from the Field Blog: MABEL, Spring 2011
April 6, 2011Flying on a high-altitude aircraft on the brink of space, the MABEL instrument is helping scientists to simulate measurements from NASA's next ice-observing satellite, ICESat-2. Read more
Notes from the Field Blog: Operation IceBridge: Arctic 2011
March 15, 2011NASA's Operation IceBridge mission, now flying its third annual campaign over the Arctic, is helping scientists to keep watch over polar ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice. Read more
World of Change: Collapse of the Larsen-B Ice Shelf
April 7, 2010In early 2002, scientists monitoring daily satellite images of the Antarctic Peninsula watched in amazement as almost the entire Larsen B Ice Shelf splintered and collapsed in just over one month. They had never witnessed such a large area disintegrate so rapidly. Read more
Notes from the Field Blog: The Uphill Road to Measuring Snow
February 19, 2010Not your typical weekend ski trip: scientists turn Colorado's Steamboat Mountain into an outdoor lab for tests that will improve satellite estimates of snow. Read more
World of Change: Antarctic Sea Ice
May 22, 2009Because of differences in geography and climate, Antarctica sea ice extent is larger than the Arctic’s in winter and smaller in summer. Since 1979, Antarctica’s sea ice has increased slightly, but year-to-year fluctuations are large. Read more
World of Change: Arctic Sea Ice
May 15, 2009NASA satellites have monitored Arctic sea ice since 1978. Starting in 2002, they observed a sharp decline in sea ice extent. Read more
Sea Ice
April 20, 2009Polar sea ice grows and shrinks dramatically each year, driven by seasonal cycles. Habitat for wildlife and harbinger of changing climate, sea ice offers scientists important clues about the state of our planet. Read more
Winter Camp: A Blog from the Greenland Summit
February 20, 2009Lora Koenig, a remote-sensing glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, spent three dark, frigid months supporting research at the National Science Foundation’s Greenland Summit Camp. Near the end of her stay, Koenig emailed the Earth Observatory answers to a few questions about how she wound up in Greenland and what is was like to spend the winter there. Read more
Earth Perspectives
November 24, 2008In 2008, as NASA celebrated its 50th anniversary, the Earth Observatory asked a number of Earth scientists what we have learned about our home planet by going into space. Read more
Rapid Retreat: Ice Shelf Loss along Canada's Ellesmere Coast
September 5, 2008Beginning in late July 2008, the remaining ice shelves along the northern coast of Canada's Ellesmere Island underwent rapid retreat, losing a total of 214 square kilometers (83 square miles). Read more
Disintegration: Antarctic Warming Claims Another Ice Shelf
March 26, 2008In late February 2008, the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula disintegrated, an indication of warming temperatures in the region. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites provided some of the earliest evidence of the disintegration. Read more
Greenland's Ice Island Alarm
August 27, 2007Global warming is shrinking the Greenland Ice Sheet by at least 150 billion metric tons a year. Read more
Something Under the Ice is Moving
April 23, 2007Satellites measurements of ice sheet elevation reveal a complex network of subglacial lakes in Antarctica. As water flows from lake to lake, the ice sheet above them rises and falls. Read more
Ask-A-Scientist
July 25, 2006Questions from visitors to the Earth Observatory and answers from scientists. Read more
Paleoclimatology: Explaining the Evidence
May 9, 2006Scientists' efforts to explain the paleoclimate evidence-not just the when and where of climate change, but the how and why-have produced some of the most significant theories of how the Earth's climate system works. Read more
Winds Connect Snow to Sea
February 21, 2006Explosive blooms of plant life in the Arabian Sea between 1997 and 2003 may be the result of a significant dip in snow cover thousands of miles away in Europe and Asia. Read more
Paleoclimatology: Climate Close-up
December 23, 2005Both tree rings and similar rings in ocean coral can tell scientists about rainfall and temperatures during a single growing season. Read more
Paleoclimatology: The Ice Core Record
December 19, 2005For six weeks every summer between 1989 and 1993, Alley and other scientists pushed columns of ice along the science assembly line, labeling and analyzing the snow for information about past climate Read more
Mosaic of Antarctica
December 6, 2005Researchers use MODIS images to show Antarctica like you've never seen it before. Read more
The Art of Science
October 18, 2005Astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) have many tasks, but a consistent favorite is taking photographs of Earth. Read more
Blue Marble Next Generation
October 13, 200512 months of high-resolution global true color satellite imagery. Read more
Paleoclimatology: A Record from the Deep
September 27, 2005Containing fossilized microscopic plants and animals and bits of dust swept from the continents, the layers of sludge on the ocean floor provide information for scientists trying to piece together the climates of the past. Read more
Operation Antarctica
September 15, 2005When Program Managers of the U.S. Antarctic Program had to figure out how to get supplies to research camps in Antarctica, they turned to NASA sensors for information. Read more
Out of the Crevasse Field
August 30, 2005NASA satellite data help the Antarctic Traverse Team avoid danger and beat a path to the South Pole. Read more
Time on the Shelf
July 12, 2005Twenty-five years of NASA scientists' research in Antarctica and Greenland show that even huge ice sheets can change more quickly than scientists thought, causing sea level to rise. Read more
Paleoclimatology
July 10, 2005Like detectives reconstructing a crime scene, paleoclimatologists scour the Earth for clues to understand the climates of the past and to learn how and why climate changes. Read more
Paleoclimatology: Speleothems
June 28, 2005Like detectives reconstructing a crime scene, paleoclimatologists scour the Earth for clues to understand the climates of the past and to learn how and why climate changes. Read more
Terra Turns Five
March 1, 2005In February 2000, NASA's Terra satellite began measuring Earth's vital signs with a combination of accuracy, precision, and resolution the world had never before seen. While the mission is still in the process of fulfilling its main science objectives, Terra's portfolio of achievements to date already marks the mission a resounding success. Read more
Collapse of the Kolka Glacier
September 9, 2004Russian scientists mapped Mount Kazbek in the Caucasus Mountains, site of a massive glacial collapse, and used satellite data to assess the possibility of additional dangers. Read more
Sizing Up the Earth's Glaciers
June 22, 2004Visit the worlds high mountain ranges and youll probably see less ice and snow today than you would have a few decades ago. More than 110 glaciers have disappeared from Montanas Glacier National Park over the past 150 years. Read more
GRACE Fact Sheet
March 30, 2004Launched in March 2002, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment is a five-year mission intended to produce maps of the Earth’s gravity field with unprecedented precision and resolution. Read more
Life in Icy Waters
February 10, 2004When you think of polynyas as a concentrated food source for larger organisms, then it becomes clear how important they are. Read more
Breakup of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf
January 20, 2004In the summer of 2002, graduate student Derek Mueller made an unwelcome discovery: the biggest ice shelf in the Arctic was breaking apart Read more
Dwindling Arctic Ice
November 19, 2003Since the 1970s, Arctic sea ice has been melting at the rate of 9 percent per decade. NASA researcher Josefino Comiso points to an accelerating warming trend as a primary cause and discusses how global climate change may be influencing the shrinking Arctic ice cap. Read more
Vanishing Ice
May 7, 2003Konrad Steffen arrived on the Greenland Ice Sheet for the 2002 fieldwork season and immediately observed that something significant was happening in the Arctic. Pools of water already spotted the ice sur face, and melting was occurring where it never had before. Read more
ICESat Factsheet
January 9, 2003The ICESat mission will provide multi-year elevation data needed to determine ice sheet mass balance as well as cloud property information, especially for stratospheric clouds common over polar areas. It will also provide topography and vegetation data around the globe, in addition to the polar-specific coverage over the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Read more
The Migrating Boreal Forest
August 20, 2002Using plant fossils and ice cores, scientists have put together a history of the how the boreal forest has migrated since the last ice age. That history may help scientists trying to predict how the boreal forest of today might fare in a world much warmer than the one in which we now live. Read more
Space-based Ice Sight
August 6, 2002Data from recent NASA satellite missions offer scientists new views of Antarctica, and new opportunities to understand how its enormous ice sheet might respond to future climate change. Read more
Fragment of its Former Shelf
May 28, 2002Scientists investigate the 2002 Larsen Ice Shelf breakup with the help of MODIS imagery. Read more
Scientist for a Day
April 25, 2002Elementary and secondary students and teachers in the Midwestern U.S. collect snow and cloud data at their schools to help scientists validate satellite data in a global change research study. Read more
Snow Sleuths
January 3, 2002Scientists use ground-based measurements to learn how snow looks from space. Read more
New Light on Ice Motion
November 6, 2001MODIS' unprecedented high resolution reveals clues to Antarctic topography and ice history. Read more
Frozen Soils and the Climate System
December 11, 2000While scientists have learned to interpret receding glaciers as well as changing trends in snow cover, sea ice extent, and sea level as "indicators" of climate change, they are still working to better understand the role that frozen soils play within the Earth's climate system. Read more
Disintegration of the Ninnis Glacier Tongue
December 1, 2000Many processes that shape the Earth's landscape happen too slowly to be witnessed in a human lifetime. But analysis of satellite imagery shows that the large glacier tongue of the Ninnis Glacier on the coast of East Antarctica has disintegrated, changing the shape of the coastline almost overnight. Read more
Ice and Sky
August 23, 2000The availability of the Canadian RADARSAT Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data and new algorithms allow the detection of open water in polar ice from space. Read more
Polynyas, CO2, and Diatoms in the Southern Ocean
August 7, 2000Climate models predict a dramatic shift in phytoplankton communities that live in the icy waters of the Southern Ocean. Read more
Climate Clues in the Ice
July 12, 2000Newly available upward-looking sonar shows significant decreases in sea ice thickness in recent decades. Read more
RAMPing Up
June 2, 2000International teamwork yields a high-resolution map of Antarctica. Read more
Fire and Ice
May 2, 2000The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo led to new techniques for detecting short-term climate variation. Read more
Snow and Ice Extent
February 28, 2000In December 1998, field support crews had to find a way to locate regions of sea ice dense enough to allow the U.S. Coast Guard ice breaker Polar Star to dock. Read more
Visions of a Cloudy Continent
September 24, 1999A combination of cloud-free satellite imagery and digital elevation data has revealed the face of Antarctica. Read more
90 Degrees N. 1999: NASA Demonstrates New Technology at the North Pole
May 21, 1999On a recent (April 19–May 2, 1999) trip to the Arctic, NASA personnel chose the North Pole as the site from which to demonstrate how new communications technologies and the Internet now make it possible for scientists working in very remote locations to send and receive data using NASA communications satellites. Read more
Polar Ice Fact Sheet
April 24, 1999Polar ice consists of sea ice, ice sheets, and glaciers. Extending over vast areas of the polar regions, this ice provides some early clues about climate change. Read more
At the Edge: Monitoring Glaciers to Watch Global Warming
April 14, 1999Alpine glaciers are a good indicator of climate change. If the climate is getting warmer or drier, they will shrink. If it is getting colder or wetter, they tend to grow. Read more
