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By European Space Agency
Global warming is driving the rapid melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, contributing to global sea level rise and disrupting weather patterns worldwide. Because of this, precise measurements of its changing shape are of critical importance for adapting to climate change.
Now, scientists have delivered the first measurements of the Greenland Ice Sheet’s changing shape using data from ESA's CryoSat and NASA's ICESat-2 ice missions.
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:04:04 English Paxi explores ice
Join Paxi on an adventure to the North and South poles, to learn more about ice and its role in keeping Earth cool.
Italian Paxi osserva il ghiaccio
Unisciti a Paxi in un'avventura ai poli Nord e Sud, per saperne di più sul ghiaccio e sul suo ruolo nel mantenere la Terra fresca.
German Paxi erforscht das Eis
Begleiten Sie Paxi auf ein Abenteuer zum Nord- und Südpol, um mehr über Eis und seine Rolle bei der Kühlung der Erde zu erfahren.
French Paxi explore la glace
Rejoignez Paxi dans une aventure aux pôles Nord et Sud, pour en savoir plus sur la glace et son rôle dans le refroidissement de la Terre.
Spanish Paxi explora el hielo
Únete a Paxi en una aventura a los polos Norte y Sur, para aprender más sobre el hielo y su papel en mantener la Tierra fría.
Portuguese Paxi explora o gelo
Junte-se a Paxi numa aventura aos pólos Norte e Sul, para aprender mais sobre o gelo e o seu papel na manutenção da Terra fresca.
Greek Ο Πάξι εξερευνά τον πάγο
Ελάτε μαζί με τον Paxi σε μια περιπέτεια στο Βόρειο και το Νότιο Πόλο, για να μάθετε περισσότερα για τον πάγο και το ρόλο του στη διατήρηση της ψύξης της Γης.
Polish Paxi bada lód
Dołącz do Paxi podczas przygody na biegunie północnym i południowym, aby dowiedzieć się więcej o lodzie i jego roli w chłodzeniu Ziemi.
Swedish Paxi utforskar is
Följ med Paxi på ett äventyr till Nord- och Sydpolen för att lära dig mer om is och dess roll för att hålla jorden sval.
Norwegian Paxi utforsker is
Bli med Paxi på et eventyr til Nord- og Sydpolen for å lære mer om is og dens rolle i å holde jorden kjølig.
Danish Paxi udforsker is
Tag med Paxi på eventyr til Nord- og Sydpolen for at lære mere om is og dens rolle i at holde Jorden kølig.
Romanian Paxi explorează gheață
Alăturați-vă lui Paxi într-o aventură la polii Nord și Sud, pentru a afla mai multe despre gheață și rolul său în menținerea Pământului rece.
Finnish Paxi tutkii jäätä
Lähde Paxin mukaan seikkailulle pohjois- ja etelänavoille ja opi lisää jäästä ja sen roolista maapallon viileänä pitämisessä.
Estonian Paxi avastab jääd
Liitu Paxiga seiklusel põhja- ja lõunapoolusele, et õppida rohkem jääst ja selle rollist Maa jahedana hoidmisel.
Czech Paxi zkoumá led
Vydejte se s Paxi na dobrodružnou výpravu na severní a jižní pól, abyste se dozvěděli více o ledu a jeho úloze při udržování chladu na Zemi.
Dutch Paxi onderzoekt ijs
Ga mee met Paxi op avontuur naar de Noord- en Zuidpool om meer te leren over ijs en de rol die ijs speelt bij het koel houden van de aarde.
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By NASA
The Fresh Eyes on Ice team receives the C. Peter Magrath exemplary project award from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. H. Buurman Congratulations to the Fresh Eyes on Ice project, which received a C. Peter Magrath exemplary project award from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities! The award recognizes programs that demonstrate how colleges and universities have redesigned their learning, discovery, and engagement missions to deepen their partnerships and achieve broader impacts in their communities.
“Thank you to all of you for making this project what it is.” said Fresh Eyes on Ice project lead Research Professor Katie Spellman from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “We couldn’t do it without you.”
Fresh Eyes on Ice tracks changes in the timing and thickness of ice throughout Alaska and the circumpolar north. You can get involved by downloading the GLOBE Observer app and taking photos of ice conditions using the GLOBE Land Cover protocol.
Fresh Eyes on Ice is supported by the Navigating the New Arctic Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation and the NASA Citizen Science for Earth Systems Program.
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Last Updated Dec 05, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Coastal locations, such as Drakes Bay on the Point Reyes peninsula in Northern California, are increasingly vulnerable to sea level rise.NOAA/NMFS/WCR/CCO The information will help people who live in coastal areas prepare for impacts caused by rising sea levels.
Earth’s ocean is rising, disrupting livelihoods and infrastructure in coastal communities around the world. Agencies and organizations are working to prepare people as their world changes around them, and NASA information is helping these efforts.
The agency’s global data is now available in the sea level section of the Earth Information Center. NASA developed the global sea level change website in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense, the World Bank, the U.S. Department of State, and the United Nations Development Programme.
The site includes information on projected sea level rise through the year 2150 for coastlines around the world, as well as estimates of how much flooding a coastal community or region can expect to see in the next 30 years. The projections come from data collected by NASA and its partners and from computer models of ice sheets and the ocean, as well as the latest sea level assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and other sources.
“NASA innovates for the benefit of humanity. Our cutting-edge instruments and data-driven information tools help communities and organizations respond to natural hazards and extreme weather, and inform critical coastal infrastructure planning decisions,” said Karen St. Germain, director of the Earth science division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Information to Action
International organizations such as the World Bank will use the data from the global sea level change site for tasks including the creation of Climate Risk Profiles for countries especially vulnerable to sea level rise.
The Defense Department will continue to incorporate sea level rise data into its plans to anticipate and respond to hazards posed to its facilities by the effects of rising oceans. Similarly, the State Department uses the information for activities ranging from disaster preparedness to long-term adaptation planning to supporting partners around the world in related efforts.
“We are at a moment of truth in our fight against the climate crisis. The science is unequivocal and must serve as the bedrock upon which decision-making is built. With many communities around the world already facing severe impacts from sea-level rise, this new resource provides a vital tool to help them protect lives and livelihoods. It also illustrates what is at stake between a 1.5-degree-Celsius world and a current-policies trajectory for all coastal communities worldwide,” said Assistant Secretary-General Selwin Hart, special adviser to the United Nations secretary-general on climate action and just transition.
Rising Faster
NASA-led data analyses have revealed that between 1970 and 2023, 96% of countries with coastlines have experienced sea level rise. The rate of that global rise has also accelerated, more than doubling from 0.08 inches (0.21 centimeters) per year in 1993 to about 0.18 inches (0.45 centimeters) per year in 2023.
As the rate of sea level rise increases, millions of people could face the related effects sooner than previously projected, including larger storm surges, more saltwater intrusion into groundwater, and additional high-tide flood days — also known as nuisance floods or sunny day floods.
“This new platform shows the timing of future floods and the magnitude of rising waters in all coastal countries worldwide, connecting science and physics to impacts on people’s livelihoods and safety,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, director of the ocean physics program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Data released earlier this year found that Pacific Island nations will experience at least 6 inches (15 centimeters) of sea level rise in the next 30 years. The number of high-tide flood days will increase by an order of magnitude for nearly all Pacific Island nations by the 2050s.
“The data is clear: Sea levels are rising around the world, and they’re rising faster and faster,” said Ben Hamlington, a sea level researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and head of the agency’s sea level change science team. “Having the best information to make decisions about how to plan for rising seas is more crucial than ever.”
To explore the global sea level change site:
https://earth.gov/sealevel
News Media Contacts
Karen Fox / Elizabeth Vlock
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov
Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874
jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Nov 13, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Researchers think meltwater beneath Martian ice could support microbial life.
The white material seen within this Martian gully is believed to be dusty water ice. Scientists believe this kind of ice could be an excellent place to look for microbial life on Mars today. This image, showing part of a region called Dao Vallis, was captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009.NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona These holes, captured on Alaska’s Matanuska Glacier in 2012, are formed by cryoconite — dust particles that melt into the ice over time, eventually forming small pockets of water below the glacier’s surface. Scientists believe similar pockets of water could form within dusty water ice on Mars.Kimberly Casey CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 While actual evidence for life on Mars has never been found, a new NASA study proposes microbes could find a potential home beneath frozen water on the planet’s surface.
Through computer modeling, the study’s authors have shown that the amount of sunlight that can shine through water ice would be enough for photosynthesis to occur in shallow pools of meltwater below the surface of that ice. Similar pools of water that form within ice on Earth have been found to teem with life, including algae, fungi, and microscopic cyanobacteria, all of which derive energy from photosynthesis.
“If we’re trying to find life anywhere in the universe today, Martian ice exposures are probably one of the most accessible places we should be looking,” said the paper’s lead author, Aditya Khuller of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Mars has two kinds of ice: frozen water and frozen carbon dioxide. For their paper, published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, Khuller and colleagues looked at water ice, large amounts of which formed from snow mixed with dust that fell on the surface during a series of Martian ice ages in the past million years. That ancient snow has since solidified into ice, still peppered with specks of dust.
Although dust particles may obscure light in deeper layers of the ice, they are key to explaining how subsurface pools of water could form within ice when exposed to the Sun: Dark dust absorbs more sunlight than the surrounding ice, potentially causing the ice to warm up and melt up to a few feet below the surface.
The white edges along these gullies in Mars’ Terra Sirenum are believed to be dusty water ice. Scientists think meltwater could form beneath the surface of this kind of ice, providing a place for possible photosynthesis. This is an enhanced-color image; the blue color would not actually be perceptible to the human eye.NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Mars scientists are divided about whether ice can actually melt when exposed to the Martian surface. That’s due to the planet’s thin, dry atmosphere, where water ice is believed to sublimate — turn directly into gas — the way dry ice does on Earth. But the atmospheric effects that make melting difficult on the Martian surface wouldn’t apply below the surface of a dusty snowpack or glacier.
Thriving Microcosms
On Earth, dust within ice can create what are called cryoconite holes — small cavities that form in ice when particles of windblown dust (called cryoconite) land there, absorb sunlight, and melt farther into the ice each summer. Eventually, as these dust particles travel farther from the Sun’s rays, they stop sinking, but they still generate enough warmth to create a pocket of meltwater around them. The pockets can nourish a thriving ecosystem for simple lifeforms..
“This is a common phenomenon on Earth,” said co-author Phil Christensen of Arizona State University in Tempe, referring to ice melting from within. “Dense snow and ice can melt from the inside out, letting in sunlight that warms it like a greenhouse, rather than melting from the top down.”
Christensen has studied ice on Mars for decades. He leads operations for a heat-sensitive camera called THEMIS (Thermal Emission Imaging System) aboard NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter. In past research, Christensen and Gary Clow of the University of Colorado Boulder used modeling to demonstrate how liquid water could form within dusty snowpack on the Red Planet. That work, in turn, provided a foundation for the new paper focused on whether photosynthesis could be possible on Mars.
In 2021, Christensen and Khuller co-authored a paper on the discovery of dusty water ice exposed within gullies on Mars, proposing that many Martian gullies form by erosion caused by the ice melting to form liquid water.
This new paper suggests that dusty ice lets in enough light for photosynthesis to occur as deep as 9 feet (3 meters) below the surface. In this scenario, the upper layers of ice prevent the shallow subsurface pools of water from evaporating while also providing protection from harmful radiation. That’s important, because unlike Earth, Mars lacks a protective magnetic field to shield it from both the Sun and radioactive cosmic ray particles zipping around space.
The study authors say the water ice that would be most likely to form subsurface pools would exist in Mars’ tropics, between 30 degrees and 60 degrees latitude, in both the northern and southern hemispheres.
Khuller next hopes to re-create some of Mars’ dusty ice in a lab to study it up close. Meanwhile, he and other scientists are beginning to map out the most likely spots on Mars to look for shallow meltwater — locations that could be scientific targets for possible human and robotic missions in the future.
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Oct 17, 2024 Related Terms
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