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NSIDC Scientific Expeditions
Scientists blog from Antarctica and provide a glimpse of what it's like to do research in the field. 
What's hot in the news around climate and sea ice and what are scientists talking about now? 
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.
NSIDC Home
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 images.jpg)
ELOKA
Working together to understand the changing Arctic system
Snow Today
Scientific analysis of snow conditions in the Western United States plus daily images
The NASA DAAC at NSIDC
NASA Earth science data on snow, ice, cryosphere, and climate
Visit the Cryosphere
Facts, photos and educational resources about Earth's frozen regions
Greenland Today
Daily surface melt images from NASA data, and scientific analysisNews
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.
QGreenland, an open-source mapping tool that aids in the discovery and teaching about Greenland, is now available from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and its partners. This free geographic information systems (GIS) tool allows for the exploration of data on Greenland’s ocean, land, ice sheet, biology, communities and more, and can be used by a diverse range of users to examine the data available about Greenland’s landscape, ecosystem and communities. QGreenland is the first GIS data-viewing tool of its kind to focus on Greenland.
Events
The Latest on Snow and Ice
The spring decline in Arctic sea ice extent continued at varying rates through the month of... read more
With the exception of the northern and southern Antarctic Peninsula, the Antarctic melt season... read more
The seasonal maximum extent of Arctic sea ice has passed, and with the passing of the vernal... read more
