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Visualization of the ice and snow covering Earth's northern and southern polar regions Northern Hemisphere permafrost (permanently frozen ground) in purple. The polar regions, also called the frigid zones or polar zones, of Earth are Earth's polar ice caps, the regions of the planet that surround its geographical poles (the North and South Poles), lying within the polar circles.
The cryosphere is an umbrella term for those portions of Earth's surface where water is in solid form. This includes sea ice, ice on lakes or rivers, snow, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets, and frozen ground (which includes permafrost). Thus, there is a overlap with the hydrosphere. The cryosphere is an integral part of the global climate system.
The five components of the climate system all interact. They are the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the lithosphere and the biosphere. [1]: 1451 Earth's climate system is a complex system with five interacting components: the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), the cryosphere (ice and permafrost), the lithosphere (earth's upper rocky layer) and the biosphere (living things).
Sea ice is part of the Earth's biosphere. When sea water freezes, the ice is riddled with brine-filled channels which sustain sympagic organisms such as bacteria, algae, copepods and annelids, which in turn provide food for animals such as krill and specialised fish like the bald notothen , fed upon in turn by larger animals such as emperor ...
Earth's surface is very depleted in iridium, which primarily resides in Earth's core. The only significant source of the element at the surface is cosmic particles that reach Earth. During a snowball Earth, iridium would accumulate on the ice sheets, and when the ice melted the resulting layer of sediment would be rich in iridium.
the Earth's mass, its gravitational field, and its angular inertia. These are all affected by the density and dimensions of the inner layers. [20] the natural oscillation frequencies and modes of the whole Earth oscillations, when large earthquakes make the planet "ring" like a bell. These oscillations also depend strongly on the inner layers ...
Earth’s inner core, a red-hot ball of iron 1,800 miles below our feet, stopped spinning recently, and it may now be reversing directions, according to an analysis of seismic activity.
A snowflake is a single ice crystal that is large enough to fall through the Earth's atmosphere as snow. [1] [2] [3] Snow appears white in color despite being made of clear ice. This is because the many small crystal facets of the snowflakes scatter the sunlight between them. [4]