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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).
The primary observing systems contributing to the GCOS are the WMO Integrated Global Observing System (WIGOS), [1] the Global Cryosphere Watch (GCW), [2] and the World Hydrological Cycle Observing System (WHYCOS), [3] and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission-led Global Ocean Observing System . A number of other domain-based and cross ...
The term that collectively describes all of the parts of the Earth's surface where water is in frozen form is the cryosphere. Ice is an important component of the global climate, particularly in regard to the water cycle. Glaciers and snowpacks are an important storage mechanism for fresh water; over time, they may sublimate or melt.
Greenland ice sheet as seen from space. An ice sheet is a body of ice which covers a land area of continental size - meaning that it exceeds 50,000 km 2. [4] The currently existing two ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica have a much greater area than this minimum definition, measuring at 1.7 million km 2 and 14 million km 2, respectively.
It may be taken as the collective name for the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, and the atmosphere. [1] The different collectives of the geosphere are able to exchange different mass and/or energy fluxes (the measurable amount of change). The exchange of these fluxes affects the balance of the different spheres of the geosphere.
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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.