Our Research

For the first time, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Arctic Report Card will include observations and voices from Indigenous groups at the front lines of climate change in Alaska.

Low winter snow cover, springtime heat waves, and a sunny summer led to a large runoff of meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet in 2019, primarily from its western side.

What defines a glacier? What are the world’s three largest glaciers? What are the largest glaciers in each region of the world? As often as the rapidly changing cryosphere is making headlines, from stories on dwindling Arctic sea ice to thawing permafrost to melting ice sheets, one would think the answers to these questions would be obvious and easy to find.

In 2009, Shari Fox of NSIDC, along with hunters, Elders, and research partners in Clyde River, created the Silalirijiit Project, linking Inuit knowledge with climate science and environmental modeling to better understand how weather patterns are changing in the Clyde River area.

Sea ice trends are most apparent through data visualization. In 2012, NSIDC software developers launched a data tool called Charctic, which allows users to interact with sea ice data and clearly see sea ice decline. This is the story of how Charctic came to be and how it continues to influence science and the public.

From 1980 to 2010, a young researcher used the sea ice concentration data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) to forecast the arrival of Alaska's Chinook Salmon in the Yukon River.