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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).
Global surface temperature (GST) is the average temperature of Earth's surface. More precisely, it is the weighted average of the temperatures over the ocean and land. The former is also called sea surface temperature and the latter is called surface air temperature. Temperature data comes mainly from weather stations and satellites.
Glaciology is the study of the cryosphere, including glaciers and coverage of the Earth by ice and snow. Concerns of glaciology include access to glacial freshwater, mitigation of glacial hazards, obtaining resources that exist beneath frozen land, and addressing the effects of climate change on the cryosphere. [27]
Depending on temperature and pressure, at least nineteen phases (packing geometries) can exist. The most common phase transition to ice I h occurs when liquid water is cooled below 0 °C (273.15 K, 32 °F) at standard atmospheric pressure. When water is cooled rapidly , up to three types of amorphous ice can form. Interstellar ice is ...
Clouds, however, which cover about half of the planet's surface, have an average emissivity of about 0.5 [17] (which must be reduced by the fourth power of the ratio of cloud absolute temperature to average surface absolute temperature) and an average cloud temperature of about 258 K (−15 °C; 5 °F). [18]
An example is the 2-metre temperature, which is the standard height for near-surface observations of air temperature. This temperature is not directly predicted from the model but is deduced from surface and lowest-model-layer temperatures. Other software is used for creating plots and animations.
The Society for Low Temperature Biology was founded in 1964 and became a registered charity in 2003 [23] with the purpose of promoting research into the effects of low temperatures on all types of organisms and their constituent cells, tissues, and organs. As of 2006, the society had around 130 (mostly British and European) members and holds at ...