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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 ...
The National Snow and Ice Data Center offers some of our data in the form of images. From these, we have created Google Earth files that enable you to view them on a virtual globe. Our goal is to help people better understand the cryosphere—where the world is frozen—by making our data more visible and interactive. Featured Data highlights some of our most requested data, as well as our newest Google Earth files.
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September Sea Ice Minimum and March Maximum Extents, 1979 to 2021View Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extents from 1979 through present for the months September (minimum sea ice extents) and March (maximum sea ice extents). |
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A Climate Change Tour of Cold PlacesA narrated tour of the snowy and icy regions of the world covering sea ice, glaciers, ice shelves, and permafrost. |
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Glaciers and Climate ChangeView glacier photograph pairs showing how some glaciers have changed over time.Download: Glaciers and climate change file for Google Earth (KML, 48 KB) Data Source: Glacier Photograph Collection |
Movie of sea ice extents, 1979-2008, on Google Earth
2008 sea ice extent side-by-side with 1979-2008 climatology (QuickTime, 1.6 MB)
These data and Google Earth files are available free of charge with the proper citation. Please use the following as a guide when citing these files:
National Snow and Ice Data Center. [Title of Google Earth file.] NSIDC data on Google Earth. Digital media. http://nsidc.org/data/google_earth. Accessed [date of access].
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