Our Research

In November 2022, videography experts from the organization See Stories taught videomaking skills to a classroom of Chevak sixth graders in Alaska. Fifteen short videos will eventually make it the online Nunaput Atlas, which NSIDC's Exchange for Local Observations and Knowledge of the Arctic (ELOKA) program helped create.

Late June ushered in a significant shift in weather and melting for Greenland, particularly for the southern portion of the ice sheet, known as South Dome, where melting is currently on a record pace. Melting along the northern rim of the ice sheet is also greater than average.

In July 1879, the USS Jeannette left port in San Francisco en route to the North Pole. What lay at the top of the world was still shrouded in mystery. Was it a warm inland sea, a sheet of ice, or open ocean? The crew set out to find out. The majority of the crew of the USS Jeannette perished during the journey, but their memory lives on through the invaluable scientific information that they laboriously collected and returned to civilization.

The melt season for the Greenland Ice Sheet has been near-average so far, with cool conditions in northern Greenland despite warm weather in nearby Arctic Canada. A small region of the ice sheet may not be properly mapped as it shows a higher number of melt days than is likely considering the observed weather for that area.

In March 2023, NSIDC's Alan Bourgeois and Jesslyn Di Fiori headed to Fairbanks, Alaska, for the NASA SnowEx 2023 field campaign, or as they described it, “a crash course in snow science.” Their participation in this campaign provided a unique experience to participate in the creation of data.

Despite a record-breaking snowpack this winter, in May 2023 snow-covered area for the western United States was only 106 precent of average, ranking eighth in the 23-year-satellite record.