The NOAA@NSIDC project added more than 35,000 photographs to the CIRES' National Snow and Ice Data Center in FY09
In 2008, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) added new products to our online data offerings, which total more than 600 datasets. NSIDC also played a leading role in International Polar Year (IPY) data management through several ongoing projects:
- Discovery, Access, and Delivery of Data for IPY
- The IPY Data and Information Service
- The Exchange for Local Observations and Knowledge of the Arctic
- Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service
Researchers using NSIDC data products are assessing and monitoring changes in the cryosphere that may have profound effects on society. NSIDC scientists and staff help explain the importance of studying the cryosphere through lectures, interviews with journalists, educational presentations, and by providing online content.
Like many organizations, NSIDC is evolving its data discovery interfaces, collaboration tools, and mapping services. During 2008, NSIDC began rebuilding its public-facing cyberinfrastructure to enable these capabilities across any number of datasets and specific requirements. The Searchlight project is building a general-purpose search and discovery tool that enables users to perform first-level analysis directly on our site; NSIDC demonstrated a proofof- concept product at the 2008 Fall American Geophysical Union meeting. Using the same infrastructure, NSIDC’s Services and Analysis for the Greenland Environment project addresses a specific science need: understanding Greenland’s contribution to global sea-level rise through comparison and analysis of variables such as temperature, albedo, melt, ice velocity, and surface elevation.
Research at NSIDC Includes Activities Related to the Cryosphere
- Ice Sheets and Glaciers: Glacier and ice sheet mass balance are key variables in the monitoring of sea-level rise. NSIDC scientists continued to update a map of Antarctica and have been documenting glacier movement rates in critical parts of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets.
- Sea Ice: Sea ice is both a driver and indicator of climate change. The Sea Ice Index, developed by NSIDC to meet a need for tracking changes in real time, has followed declines in Arctic sea ice extent and area during recent years.
- Permafrost and Frozen Ground: Changes in the extent of permafrost and frozen ground are important climate change responses that impact communities, terrestrial ecology, and the infrastructure of northern lands. The carbon tied up in permafrost and frozen ground could affect the global carbon balance. Scientists at NSIDC are integrating in situ data with numerical models to refine predictions of frozen ground extent.
- Snow Cover and Snow Hydrology: The extent and variability of seasonal snow cover are important parameters in climate and hydrologic systems, due to effects on energy and moisture budgets. During the past several decades, visible-band and passive microwave satellite imagery of the Northern Hemisphere has allowed NSIDC scientists to perform trend analyses, and to determine the response of snow cover to a changing climate.
- Climate Change in the Cryosphere: Scientists working with near real-time monitoring of snow, sea ice, and vegetation under the Study of Environmental Arctic Change program are making progress toward documenting that change, using approaches such as the Sea Ice Index.
- Impacts of Changes on Arctic Peoples: The impacts of changes on Arctic peoples are being recognized and incorporated into research projects. An NSIDC scientist has been living in a community in northeast Canada, documenting the observations of, and impacts on, local people.
NSIDC Programs and Projects
NOAA@NSIDC
This NOAA project at NSIDC operates in cooperation with the NOAA National Geophysical Data Center and Arctic Research Office to extend the NOAA National Data Center catalog of cryospheric data and information products, with an emphasis on in situ data, data rescue, and datasets from operational communities. During 2008, NOAA@NSIDC added information for more than 35,000 glaciers to the World Glacier Inventory. The Glacier Photograph Collection nearly doubled in size, and now includes more than 10,000 high-resolution photographs of glaciers worldwide.
The Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC)
The NSIDC DAAC provides access to NASA’s Earth Observing System satellite data, ancillary in situ measurements, baseline data, model results, and algorithms relating to cryospheric and polar processes. The DAAC is an integral part of multiagency-funded efforts at NSIDC to provide snow and ice data, information management services, and user support. In FY09, the NSIDC DAAC distributed 83.5 terabytes of data.
Antarctic Glaciological Data Center (AGDC)
The National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs funds AGDC to archive and distribute glaciological and cryospheric-system data obtained by the U.S. Antarctic Program. AGDC facilitates data exchange and preservation of both new and historic datasets.
Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS)
GLIMS, a cooperative project with more than 50 institutions worldwide, is designed to map and monitor the world’s glaciers, primarily using satellite data from the NASA Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer instrument. More than 82,000 glaciers are now entered in the GLIMS database.
Roger G. Barry Resource Office for Cryospheric Studies (ROCS)
ROCS offers unique collections related to the cryosphere. Its information center holds more than 44,000 monographs, serials, journal articles, reprints, videos, maps, atlases, and CD-ROMs. This archive specializes in analog science data and scientific materials, including thousands of maps, photographs, prints, expedition journals, and more items of interest to those researching the history of science or studying past climate
