Cryosphere

11 Key excerpts on "Cryosphere"

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  Earth Systems and Environment

  • Amrita Pandey(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Delve Publishing

    (Publisher)

  The term “Cryosphere” comes from the Greek word, “krios,” which means cold. Cryosphere As a Component of Earth’s Systems 99 Figure 5.4: Basic definition of one of the components of the Earth: The Cryo -sphere. Source: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/earth/glacier/20150316/ earth20150316.jpg Ice and snow on land are one part of the Cryosphere. This is consisting of the largest parts of the Cryosphere, the continental ice sheets which is found in regions of Greenland and Antarctica, as well as ice caps, glaciers, and areas of snow and permafrost. When continental ice flows out from the land and to the sea surface, get shelf ice. The other regions of the Cryosphere are ice which are found in water. This is consisting of the frozen parts of the ocean, for example, waters which is surrounded with the help of the Antarctica and the Arctic. It also consisting of the frozen rivers and lakes, which primarily took place in the polar areas. The components or elements of the Cryosphere play a vital role with respect to the climate of the Earth. Snow and ice reflect the heat which is coming out from the sun, assisting in controlling the temperature of the planet. Because the Polar Regions are some of the most sensitive with respect to the sudden changes in the climate, the Cryosphere may be one of the first places where the scientists are able to determine the sudden changes in climate all across the globe. Near about 2% of the water of the Earth is frozen and in the form of snow and ice, sea ice, lake and river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps and sheets, and frozen ground. Never the less, most of this ice is situated at the two poles, snow and ice can be found on all seven continents. Sea ice or Earth Systems and Environment 100 pack ice, only a few meters thick, formed from frozen seawater, floats in the ocean near the North and South Poles.

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  Global Change and Future Earth

  The Geoscience Perspective

  • Tom Beer, Jianping Li, Keith Alverson(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  PART III Future Earth and the Earth’s Fluid Environment 7 Future Earth and the Cryosphere Ian Allison, Regine Hock, Matt A. King, and Andrew N. Mackintosh 7.1 Ice and Snow on Earth The term “Cryosphere” (deriving from the Greek word kryos for frost or icy cold) is used to describe collect- ively those portions of the Earth's surface where water is in a solid form. It includes sea, lake, and river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets, and frozen ground (including permafrost). While the focus of this chapter is on geodetic issues and Future Earth, which primarily involves ice sheets and glaciers on land and their role in global mass redistribution and sea level, the Cryosphere as a whole is an integral part of the global climate system with important links and feedbacks gen- erated through its influence on surface energy and mois- ture fluxes, clouds, precipitation, hydrology, and atmospheric and oceanic circulation. The basic proper- ties that determine these roles are the high albedo of snow and ice surfaces; the latent heat involved in phase changes of ice/water; the height–mass balance feedback, which results from the great elevation of ice sheets and resultant effects on temperature and precipitation; and the insulating effect of snow cover on land and of floating ice on fresh water or seawater. Other major factors include the water volume stored in ice sheets and glaciers, the greenhouse gases locked up in perma- frost, and the delays in annual energy and water cycles due to seasonal snow and ice cover. Through these and associated feedback processes, the Cryosphere plays a significant role in global climate. Cryospheric processes therefore need to be included explicitly and correctly in climate models to project future response to global change. Change in the Cryosphere is also an important indicator of climate variability and change.

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  Understanding Global Climate Change

  Modelling the Climatic System and Human Impacts

  • Arthur P Cracknell, Costas A Varotsos(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Figure 4.8 ).

  • Seasonal snow cover, which responds rapidly to atmospheric dynamics on timescales of days and longer. In a global context, the seasonal heat storage in snow is small. The primary influence of the Cryosphere comes from the high albedo of a snow-covered surface.
  • Sea ice, which affects climate on timescales of seasons and longer. This has a similar effect on the surface heat balance as snow on land. It also tends to decouple the ocean and the atmosphere, since it inhibits the exchange of moisture and momentum. In some regions, it influences the formation of deep water masses by salt extrusion during the freezing period and by the generation of fresh water layers in the melting period.
  • Ice sheets of Greenland and the Antarctic, which can be considered as quasipermanent topographic features. They contain 80 per cent of the existing fresh water on the globe, thereby acting as long-term reservoirs in the hydrological cycle. Any change in size will therefore influence the global sea level.
  • Mountain glaciers are a small part of the Cryosphere. They also represent a freshwater reservoir and can therefore influence the sea level. They are used as an important diagnostic tool for climate change since they respond rapidly to changing environmental conditions.
  • Permafrost affects surface ecosystems and river discharges. It influences the thermohaline circulation of the ocean.

  Figure 4.8 The components of the Cryosphere. (Modified from SWIPA report 2011: Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic. (Modified from Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme - AMAP).

  The Cryosphere is an important component of the climate system (Henderson-Sellers and McGuffie KC98). This is testified to by the data in Table 4.6 , which reflect the spatial and temporal variability of the cryospheric components. As can be seen, the sea ice, land snow, and permafrost play the leading role among the cryospheric components. A typical feature of the Cryosphere is the rapid variability of its components during the course of the year. So the extent of sea ice varies from 20 × 106 km2 in September to 2.5 × 105 km2 in March in the southern hemisphere and within (15–8.4) × 106 km2

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  Human Impact on the Natural Environment

  Past, Present and Future

  • Andrew S. Goudie(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  11 The Future: The Cryosphere

  Chapter Overview

  The Cryosphere consists of ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, sea, river and lake ice, and frozen ground (permafrost). Because of its very nature ice in its various forms will be susceptible to the effects of future warming. This chapter examines what may happen to the polar ice sheets and their associated ice shelves, the glaciers of mountainous regions, the sea ice of the Arctic and Antarctic, and the great spreads of permafrost that occupy around a quarter of Earth's land surface.

  11.1 The nature of the Cryosphere

  The Cryosphere is that part of the Earth's surface or subsurface environment that is composed of water in the solid state. It includes snow, sea ice, the polar ice sheets, mountain and valley glaciers, river and lake ice, and permafrost (permanently frozen subsoil). The Cryosphere contains nearly 80% of all Earth's fresh water. Perennial ice covers about 11% of Earth's land surface and 7% of the world's oceans, while permafrost underlies about 25% of it. Seasonal snow has the largest area of any component of the global land surface; at its maximum in late winter it covers almost 50% of the land surface of the Northern Hemisphere. Because of the obvious role of temperature change in controlling the change of state of water to and from the liquid and solid states, global warming has the potential to cause very major changes in the state of the Cryosphere.

  11.2 The Polar Ice Sheets and Ice Caps

  Ice sheets are ice masses that cover more than 50,000 km2 . The Antarctic ice sheet covers a continent that is a third bigger than Europe or Canada and twice as big as Australia. It attains a thickness that can be greater than 4000 m, thereby inundating entire mountain ranges. The Greenland ice sheet only contains 8% of the world's freshwater ice (Antarctica has 91%), but nevertheless covers an area 10 times that of the British Isles. The Greenland ice fills a huge basin that is rimmed by ranges of mountains, and has depressed Earth's crust beneath. Ice caps have areas that are less than 50,000 km2

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  The Blue Planet

  An Introduction to Earth System Science

  • Brian J. Skinner, Barbara W. Murck(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Thus, nearly a third of Earth’s land area currently belongs to the cryo- sphere. Some of the frozen material in the Cryosphere crystallizes in the form of ice on the surface or in the near subsurface, in conditions of low temperature; some falls as precipitation and accumulates on the ground, where it may undergo subsequent changes (see The Basics: Snow and Ice, on page 263). Snow Earth’s perennially frozen ice caps, glaciers, and sea ice constitute the major part of the Cryosphere, but Snow (A) (B) Sea ice Ice shelves Ice sheets Glaciers and ice caps Permafrost, continuous Permafrost, discontinuous, isolated Atmosphere 1000 km 1000 km 200 m 3000 km Ice Sheet 3 km 1 km Ocean Glaciers Snow Sea ice Snow Frozen Ground Snow River and Lake Ice Snow Glaciers and Ice Caps Frozen Ground Ice Sheet Margins Ice Shelves Ice Sheets Continent 1000 km 2 m 100 m Hour Day Month Year Century Millenium 2 km FIGURE 9.1 The Cryosphere The major components of the Cryosphere, including their extent (A) and the relative timescales of their processes (B), are seasonal snow cover, sea ice, ice shelves, ice sheets, and permafrost. CHAPTER NINE • THE Cryosphere 259 as air temperature rises. The snowpack then recedes rap- idly northward during late spring, and by mid-June the remaining snow is confined mainly to high mountains and to lands bordering the cold Arctic Ocean. The Snowline If you view a high mountain at the end of the summer, just before the earliest autumn snowfall, you commonly will see a snowy zone on its upper slopes. The lower boundary of this zone is the snowline, which is defined as the lower limit of perennial snow (FIG. 9.3). Above the snowline, part of the past winter’s snow has sur- vived the warm temperatures of summer, along with snow from earlier winters that has persisted through previous summers. In detail, the snowline is an irregu- lar surface, its shape controlled both by variations in the thickness of the winter snowpack and by local topography.

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  Snow and Ice-Related Hazards, Risks, and Disasters

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 3

  Snow and Ice in the Climate System

  Atsumu Ohmura     Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (E.T.H.), Zurich, Switzerland

  Abstract

  The status of the Cryosphere at the end of the 20th century is presented with respect to their relationships to climate. Firstly, the physical condition of the earth's surface is analysed to understand how the earth alone among all planets has a favourable condition for the existence of water in all phases. Then the distributions of the four main components of the Cryosphere, the snow cover, the sea ice, the permafrost and the glaciers are interpreted in relation to the climates. The geographic distributions of the main cryospheric components are interpreted in light of the energy balance. The principle of the energy balance allows one to estimate the future changes in the Cryosphere under the on-going climate warming.

  Keywords

  Cryosphere; Energy balance; Glacier; Permafrost; Radiation; Sea ice; Snow cover

  3.1. Introduction

  The Cryosphere owes its existence mainly to the absolute energy emission of the sun, the orbit of the earth, and the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Because of the favorable combination of these three components, the Earth alone among all planets in the solar system enjoys the thermal condition that comprises a temperature range crossing the freezing/melting point of water as illustrated in Figure 3.1 . The figure indicates the temperature ranges on the earth's surface expressed as a function of the surface atmospheric pressure. Further, the figure shows the lines of the phase diagram of water separating the Pressure–Temperature field into three fields of Solid, Liquid, and Gas from the left to the right. The convergence of the S/L and L/G lines at 273.16  K and 6.11  hPa is the triple point of water. At the earth's surface, the monthly mean temperatures plotted against the surface pressure are distributed in the shape of a slightly deformed rectangle. At the sea surface, the monthly mean temperatures range between a minimum of − 37  °C, the August temperature at the two coldest regions at the sea level in the Antarctic, Belgrano, and Little America, and 35  °C, the July temperature at the hottest spot in the world, Djibouti. In the vertical dimension, the surface pressure ranges from 1041  hPa at Jericho to the estimated 300  hPa at the top of Mount Everest. The line of freezing/melting temperature cuts through the range of the Earth's surface temperature, proving the necessary condition not only for the existence of the Cryosphere on the Earth's surface but also the water in all three phases. This condition is a unique feature of the Earth, not found on other planets. This basic thermal condition of the Earth's surface extends into the lithosphere. Under the colder areas in Polar regions, the rising ground temperature crosses the pressure melting point at about 1–2 

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  Risky Futures

  Climate, Geopolitics and Local Realities in the Uncertain Circumpolar North

  • Olga Ulturgasheva, Barbara Bodenhorn, Olga Ulturgasheva, Barbara Bodenhorn(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Berghahn Books

    (Publisher)

  He ‘defines the Cryosphere – from the Greek word krios meaning icy cold – as a zone extending from the upper part of the troposphere, where ice crystals occur in clouds, to the base of the permafrost … He introduced the concept of the Cryosphere as a special part of the lithosphere, closely connected to the hydrosphere and the atmosphere. He also proposed the recognition of cryology as a separate science dealing with the solid phase of water in all its aspects, of whatever origin, and recommended that it form a part of physical geography’, AB Dobrowolski – The First Cryospheric Scientist – And the Subsequent Development of Cryospheric Science (PDF Download Available). Retrieved 23 March 2018 from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228519645_AB_Dobrowolski-the_first_cryospheric_scientist-and_the_subsequent_development_of_cryospheric_science. 3. See, for example, conferences organized with this focus: ‘High Altitudes meet High Latitudes: Globalizing Polar Issues’, https://www.mountainresearchinitiative.org/news-page-all/112-global-news/1051-high-altitudes-meet-high-latitudes-globalizing-polar-issues (last accessed 6 March 2022); ‘Vanishing Ice: Inquiring about the Past and Acting for the Future in the European Alps and the Arctic’, convened in June 2014 in the Department of Social Anthropology of Aberdeen University. 4. The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is a regional intergovernmental learning and knowledge sharing centre serving the eight regional member countries of the Hindu Kush Himalaya. See http://www.icimod.org/ (last accessed 6 March 2022). 5. This category of spirits is widespread across Inner Asia, e.g. ‘lus savdag’ can be found in the Mongolian context (see also Sneath and Turk, in press). They have also been used as the basis for claims of legal personhood of topographic features (Studley 2018). 6

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  The Cryosphere and Global Environmental Change

  • Olav Slaymaker, Richard Kelly(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Indeed, the fact that c. 5.2 (10 7 ) km 2 of the extra-polar region is affected by sea-sonal frozen ground from time to time is a better index of the importance of the Cryosphere in this region than the volumet-ric data. The case will be advanced in this book that, in the short- and medium term, changes of the Cryosphere in the extra-polar regions are the most important ones to monitor, for at least two reasons: in these regions the Cryosphere is closest to its threshold value and the anthropogenic impact is most pronounced. We will first discuss the extra-polar Cryosphere and potential effects on ocean circulation in the Arctic; then we will look at meltwater sources in the polar regions from the major ice sheets and the cumula-tive effect of these processes on global sea level changes and sea ice conditions; and finally we will look at major ecological impacts and some of the more urgent socioeconomic implications of Cryosphere change. 1.2 T HE GEOMORPHIC AND HYDROLOGIC EFFECTS OF CRYOSPHERIC CHANGE The case for the importance of the climatic roles of snow and ice has been well and comprehensively documented. The case is made in two broad ways: first, in relation to the fundamental physical properties of snow and ice that modulate energy exchanges between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere (albedo, thermal diffusivity, and latent heat as well as surface rough-ness, emissivity, and dielectric characteris-tics) and second, in relation to the concept of residence time (flux/storage) of water within the Cryosphere. Water with short residence times participates in the fast response regime of the climate system, whereas long residence time components act to modulate and introduce delays into the transient responses. Nevertheless the threat of abrupt changes in the slow response components must also be taken seriously.

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  Geocryology

  Characteristics and Use of Frozen Ground and Permafrost Landforms

  • Stuart A. Harris, Anatoli Brouchkov, Cheng Guodong(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Part I Introduction and characteristics of permafrost

  Geocryology is the science studying the effects of ground temperatures below 0°C on the surface layers of the crust of the Earth. In areas with tropical or subtropical climates, the ground remains above freezing throughout the year. In these regions, the normal geomorphological processes take place, excluding glaciations and processes unique to areas of permanently or seasonally frozen ground.

  As used in this book, the term soil refers to either the upper surface layers of the ground that have been modified by weathering and soil formation, or unweathered rock, unless otherwise indicated. When the land areas are traced towards the poles, the climate becomes sufficiently cool for the surface layers of the ground to experience temperatures below 0°C. This cooling may be temporary or short-term, lasting one or more hours, or for a few days in a year. These soils grade into seasonally-frozen soils, where the sub-zero temperatures may last for several months, and the length of the frost-free period becomes a limiting factor for the biota. Yet further towards the Poles, areas of soil are present which remain below 0°C for more than two consecutive years. These cold layers are referred to as permafrost, and the soils are said to be cryotic. The surface layers of permafrost are in quasi-equilibrium with the present-day climate (see below), but the deeper layers may have formed partly under past, colder climates, and are called relict permafrost. Glaciers are not included, and are treated as separate landforms with their own characteristic processes and resulting topography.

  In Russia, the layers of the ground undergoing temporal, seasonal, or long-term freezing are regarded as making up the cryolithozone, though this terminology is usually not used elsewhere. The depth of the frozen soil depends on the microenvironment and thermal history, and ranges from a few centimetres to hundreds of metres. Permafrost thickness increases with a decrease in the annual temperature, other factors being equal, while the depth of summer surface thaw called the active layer decreases. Temporary and seasonally frozen surface soils are usually continuously frozen in winter at the surface of the ground but they thaw in summer and are sometimes also incorrectly described as being the active layer, although they have a different ice distribution and content. Permafrost refers to the layers with temperatures below the active layer that are continuously below 0°C for more than two years. Note that it applies regardless of moisture content, or lack thereof.

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  Geocryology

  • Solange Uwera(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Delve Publishing

    (Publisher)

  GEOCRYOLOGY—DEFINITION AND CHARACTERISTICS CHAPTER 1 CONTENTS 1.1 Periglaciology ...................................................................................... 4 Geocryology 2 Geocryology is one of the essential studies that have been conducted by the scientists for many years. Different definitions and ideas regarding the concept are put forward. The following chapter gives the introduction to this concept, the definitions, early works, and the major points related. In one sentence, the definition of the word “ geocryology” can be given as the study of the frozen parts of the Earth including the soil, rocks, and the ground. This part of the study of the environment deals with the origin, existence, history, development of the frozen layers that exist on the surface of the Earth, or the crust of the Earth. There are certain phenomena and processes that are associated with the frozen, thawing rock, and soil along with the composition, properties, and the structure of the surface of the Earth. The hydrological, physiological, geophysical, and geomorphological phenomena and processes are also related. This phenomenon is associated with the thawing and freezing along with the diagenesis of frozen strata. Geocryology is also the study of the improvement and development of methods that influence different processes of freezing in the interests of transportation, construction, agriculture, and other activities in addition to the developing theories of the mentioned processes. A connection is thus created, two main directions or branches are made and are developing at a pace including the general geocryology and engineering geocryology, and each of the branches has practical significance. The study and the research of the frozen portions of the Earth have developed in an independent part of the knowledge and study. As the independent branch of the soils, frozen rocks, and ground, geocryology has been an important aspect of the environment.

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  Thinking with Soils

  Material Politics and Social Theory

  • Juan Francisco Salazar, Céline Granjou, Matthew Kearnes, Anna Krzywoszynska, Manuel Tironi, Juan Francisco Salazar, Céline Granjou, Matthew Kearnes, Anna Krzywoszynska, Manuel Tironi(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Geosocial politics in the polar regions often unfold through a logic of abduction, an anticipatory politics of preemption, precaution, and preparedness (Anderson 2010) wherein a material event, such as permafrost thaw and melting sea ice, can quickly turn into an index or a proxy for a wider assemblage of geopolitical entanglements (Dittmer et al. 2011). This is much less the case in the Antarctic than it is in the Arctic, where the dynamic instability of ice sheets, for instance, or the thawing of permafrost, become a code through which the political instability of the Arctic region can be grasped. As Bravo attests through his long-term work in the Arctic, “the melting of sea ice and other frozen states such as permafrost adds another dimension to the accelerated warming of the atmosphere caused by greenhouse gases” (2017: 27). However, as Bravo adds, “what hasn’t yet been adequately explained are the politics of frozen ecologies, and why they matter for the majority of citizens of the globe living in cities with no special interest in visiting the polar regions. Cryopolitics is the story of how the earth’s frozen states have come to matter in the age of the Anthropocene” (ibid.).

  We use the term “thermal geopolitics” as a framing device to examine how permafrost surfaces as a figure of both concern and hope in the northern polar region. Our discussion of frozen soils is attentive to what we call the everyday volumetrics of life and how it is being altered by thaw and melt. Sea ice and permafrost undergo seasonal thawing, which in many cases enables life forms to thrive and take advantage of summer light, open water, and additional moisture. Human and nonhuman communities, over millennia, have learned to work with what might be considered “normal” thermal regimes. Frozen soils are integral to “thermal geopolitics,” because the state of permafrost has shaped the scope and potential of settler colonial states such as Canada to “land” the northern fringes of the North American Arctic. Abnormal thawing poses existential challenges to not only smaller Indigenous/native settlements but also settler colonial infrastructures. In the Arctic, thawing permafrost is generative of disaster imaginaries, a new and unwelcome world where the effects of contemporary global warming are felt first. Thereafter, we turn to Antarctica, which lacks the extensive landscapes of permafrost soils whose changing dynamics cause so much fascination and trouble in the northern hemisphere, but which is, however, abundant in microbes, as well as being actively reimagined as a frontier for biological prospecting. Polar soils prove to be anything but inert companions in our interrogation of a polar geopolitics, which is being animated by thawing and warming, or what we call might call, drawing on Puig de la Bellacasa (2019), a reanimating of polar soils through science, culture, and community.

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