Our Research

Melt extent in Greenland was well above average in 2014, tying for the 7th highest extent in the 35-year satellite record. Overall, climate patterns favored intense west coast and northwest ice sheet melting, with relatively cool conditions in the southeast.

In 1996, NSIDC received ninety-nine canisters of ungainly film rolls. Each stored hundreds of photographs, most of sea ice, but also glaciers, land, snow cover, and coastlines dating as far back as 1962. The photographs, part of the U.S. Navy-initiated Project Birdseye, offered never before seen images of the Arctic.

When ice shelves retreat, the brakes are lifted and glaciers begin to accelerate. “The Antarctic Peninsula is a natural laboratory, a kind of glimpse into the future of Antarctica,” says Ted Scambos, lead researcher at NSIDC.

NSIDC researcher Shari Gearheard collaborates with Inuit hunters and Elders, and seven other editors, to document Inuit knowledge in a book, "The Meaning of Ice: People and Sea Ice in Three Arctic Communities." The book recently won the 2014 William Mills Prize for Non-Fiction Polar Books, awarded by the Polar Libraries Colloquy.