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Looking for facts and information? See About the Cryosphere.
On Thin Ice:
Expedition to a Crumbling Ice Shelf
Scientists blog from Antarctica and provide a glimpse of what it's like to do research in the field. Read their blog ...
Current Conditions
Icelights: Answers to your burning questions about ice and climate
What's hot in the news around climate and sea ice and what are scientists talking about now? Read more...
What is the Cryosphere?
When scientists talk about the cryosphere, they mean the places on Earth where water is in its solid form, frozen into ice or snow. Read more ...
When winter weather gets unusually cold, people sometimes say that the weather is Arctic. Sometimes that is true, because Arctic air often spreads southward in winter to regions well outside the Arctic Circle. Weather and climate in the far north are very different than weather and climate in the middle and lower latitudes, where most people live, but it is not always bitterly cold. Summer days can be surprisingly warm, even in tundra regions, and summer thunderstorms in the Arctic are common, sometimes setting forest fires.
Arctic tundra in the winter. Lake Myvatn, Iceland.
—Credit: Flickr/Lukás Hejtman.
Arctic tundra in the summer. Kola Pennisula, Russia.
—Credit: Flickr/A. Maksimov.
Last updated: 4 May 2020
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