Questions tagged [cryosphere]

Questions regarding the area of the Earth where water is in solid form, including sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets, and permafrost.

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22 votes
5 answers
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Why is the Arctic melting, but the Antarctic doing great?

Why is the Arctic melting, but the Antarctic doing great? That's what the latest IPCC report says (p. 2-192 of the Physical Science Basis provides a time series), but it says nothing, unless I missed ...
Sergey Zolotarev's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
145 views

Can the shape and orientation of a large glacial rock deposit indicate glacial flow direction

If a rock is tapered, does the tapered point indicate the glacier direction?
Donald.ritchie's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
173 views

How deep does the frost have to go before it becomes permafrost?

Supposing you had an unusually cold winter and a region that does not normally have permafrost. How deep would the frost have to go before it was too deep for it to thaw fully over summer?
ShemSeger's user avatar
  • 625
14 votes
1 answer
5k views

Why does the frost depth increase when the surface temperature warms up?

We've had an unusual winter this year, with a late cold snap that is causing people's underground water lines to freeze. Now that the weather has warmed up quite a bit, even more people's lines are ...
ShemSeger's user avatar
  • 625
2 votes
1 answer
167 views

Where can I find a list of snow fall recording stations in my zip code?

Where can I find the locations on snow fall recording stations in a particular United States county or zip code? Is there a way that I can find an hour by hour recent history of snow fall? Hour by ...
Ted Cohen's user avatar
  • 121
6 votes
1 answer
47 views

Do icebergs have any impact on ecology?

Are icebergs neutral actors in the environment, or do they have any impact on the local ecology. Do they have any environmental impacts that might influence any part of the biosphere?
Bob516's user avatar
  • 334
6 votes
2 answers
375 views

What is the relevance of Arctic coastal erosion to the Earth's climate?

Due to global warming and Arctic amplification, Northern Hemispheric permafrost is thawing and becoming a source of carbon and many greenhouse gases, which then positively feedback to global warming ...
ouranos's user avatar
  • 637
6 votes
2 answers
141 views

Does snow melt on ice?

I looked up nearly everywhere on the internet, but couldn't find any evidence that snow wouldn't melt because of ice. When I look it up, it instead tells me how salt can melt snow. I'm NOT looking up ...
LukeyBear's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
143 views

How much of arctic ice is from snow fall versus frozen sea water?

How much of arctic ice is from snow fall versus frozen sea water? I presume arctic ice comes from both sources. Is there a way to tell how the ice was formed? In other words, if you made a core ...
Tyler Durden's user avatar
  • 1,804
29 votes
1 answer
5k views

Why does glacier ice look blue?

The color of the ice observed in glaciers, icebergs and crevasses is often blue. However, ice cubes and industrial ice blocks are perfectly transparent or white if not. So. Why does glacier ice look ...
Camilo Rada's user avatar
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6 votes
3 answers
1k views

If there's more water in the atmosphere due to global warming, how are there fewer mountain glaciers?

As I understand it, moisture condenses at mountain tops to form the mountain glaciers that provide water. The mountain topography doesn't change much in the span of a few decades, so if there's more ...
John Joe's user avatar
  • 211
5 votes
2 answers
2k views

How much of the ice on earth is floating?

How much of the ice on Earth is floating (such as icebergs, or perhaps all the ice up at the North Pole)?
jhch's user avatar
  • 151
5 votes
0 answers
44 views

Why did Hudson Bay melt so late this year?

The fear with the polar bears is that the ice-free period in the bay is getting longer, right? Did the consecutive polar vortex years from all this global weirding make the bay's winters colder? It ...
user4440's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
114 views

When does the Northern Hemisphere reach minimum land area covered by solid H2O?

What's the average day of the year when the fewest square miles of the hemisphere's land is covered by snow or ice or transitional forms like slush? Not counting anything below ground like permafrost ...
user3224's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
178 views

About moving ice bergs northwards to slow down all the melting a tiny bit. ( Clearing away navigation hazards is a side effect of this.)

I read somewhere someone someone had the idea to try to move a 'small' iceberg with giant tugboats used to move oil-rigs. I thought if an Iceberg could be moved, why not move it $NORTHWARD$ maybe ...
user128932's user avatar
22 votes
3 answers
700 views

Is there any explanation for the large amount of sea ice around Antarctica in 2014?

As can be seen from the below data, for the past year or so (2014), sea ice surrounding Antarctica has been well above normal. Currently, Antarctic sea ice is at an all-time record high for this time ...
DavePhD's user avatar
  • 5,972
9 votes
2 answers
509 views

Is the Arctic sea ice volume increasing?

According to the graph below, Arctic sea ice volume has been decreasing from 1979-2012: Though this graph from the ESA’s CryoSat satellite show that the volume of Arctic sea ice increased 50% from ...
blunders's user avatar
  • 4,601
30 votes
6 answers
6k views

How much will sea level rise if all the polar ice melts?

There are many movies about global warming, which say that melting of all polar ice would cause the whole world to suffer a huge flood. According my research (teachers, TV, Internet) people hold one ...
Poomrokc The 3years's user avatar
15 votes
1 answer
336 views

Naming convention for sea ice thickness per unit area of ice or ocean

When defining an area average of sea ice thickness, it is important to distinguish between an average taken over an ocean area $$h_1 = \sum \frac{\text{sea ice thickness (in area)}}{\text{area}_\text{...
BHF's user avatar
  • 1,681