Components of the Cryosphere
This high resolution image, designed for the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, shows the extent of the regions affected by components of the cryosphere around the world. Over land, continuous permafrost is shown in a dark pink while discontinuous permafrost is shown in a lighter shade of pink. Over much of the northern hemisphere's land area, a semi-transparent white veil depicts the regions that are affected by snowfall at least one day during the perion 2000-2012. The bright green line along the southern border of this region shows the maximum snow extent while a black line across the North America, Europe and Asia shows the 50% snow extent line. Glaciers are shown as small golden dots in mountainous areas and in the far northern and southern latitudes. Over the water, ice shelves are shown around Antarctica along with sea ice surrounding the ice shelves. Sea ice is also shown at the North Pole, where the 30 year average sea ice extent is shown by a yellow outline. In addition, the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are clearly visible.
The complete image showing both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres with a legend.
The northern hemisphere
The southern hemisphere
The legend
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
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Visualizer
- Cindy Starr (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
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Scientists
- Josefino Comiso (NASA/GSFC)
- Tinjun Zhang (NSIDC Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences)
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Project support
- James W. Williams (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
- Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
Release date
This page was originally published on Friday, November 29, 2013.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:51 PM EDT.
Datasets used in this visualization
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Daily L3 6.25 km 89 GHz Brightness Temperature (Tb) [Aqua: AMSR-E]
ID: 236 -
Sea Ice Concentration (Daily L3 12.5km Tb, Sea Ice Concentration, and Snow Depth) [Aqua: AMSR-E]
ID: 237 -
Circum-Arctic Map of Permafrost and Ground-Ice Conditions
ID: 276This dataset can be found at: http://nsidc.org/data/docs/fgdc/ggd318_map_circumarctic/index.html
See all pages that use this dataset -
IMS Daily Northern Hemisphere Snow and Ice Analysis (IMS Daily Northern Hemisphere Snow and Ice Analysis - 24 km Resolution) [Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System (IMS)]
ID: 778This dataset can be found at: http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02156_ims_snow_ice_analysis/
See all pages that use this dataset
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.