cryosphere, definition of

One of the interrelated components of the Earth's system, the cryosphere is frozen water in the form of snow, permanently frozen ground (permafrost), floating ice, and glaciers. Fluctuations in the volume of the cryosphere cause changes in ocean sea level, which directly impact the atmosphere and biosphere.

• South Pole has coldest winter ever, but it’s just “a blip”
  The sun has just risen on South Pole after the coldest six month period on record since 1956. The last winter there was suddenly 2.2 degrees Celsius colder than the average for the last 30 years.
• Claim: Earth’s cryosphere shrinking by 87,000 square kilometers per year
  AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION Research News WASHINGTON–The global cryosphere–all of the areas with frozen water on Earth–shrank by about 87,000 square kilometers (about 33,000 square miles), a area about the size…
• Hydroxychloroquine, a year later, 3 times higher survival rate. Trump was right.
  Photo: Whispyhistory The world faced the greatest global health crisis in one hundred years, but it’s taken a whole year to write up a small study that shows hydroxychoroquine could improve the survival rate of people on ventilators by a factor...
• Surprise: The Last Ice Age was colder than anyone thought. Blame CO2!
  We panic about the next half degree of warming (above the 1.5 we’ve already had) but the depth of the ice age was savagely cold. For years the experts told us what Earths temperature was then, but apparently they were wrong.
• 1970s Spock documentary — Climate scientists believe the next ice age may have already started
  Watch Spock in the 1970s describing how climate scientists were predicting a mile high wall of ice that could cover Canada down to Boston “in your lifetime”, and it may already have started...
• Melting of Andean Glaciers Could Cause a Continental Water Crisis in South America
  According to a study published in the journal Cryosphere, glaciers in the tropical Andes have shrunk by a whopping 30 to 50 percent since the 1970s.The researchers report that the glaciers are retreating at their fastest rate in the last 300 years as...

Related Tags: atmosphere