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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.
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.
This kind of ice may contain large air pockets under a thin surface layer, which makes it particularly hazardous to walk across it. [70] Another dangerous form of rotten ice to traverse on foot is candle ice, which develops in columns perpendicular to the surface of a lake. Because it lacks a firm horizontal structure, a person who has fallen ...
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).
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]
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.
Plate motion based on Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite data from NASA JPL. Each red dot is a measuring point and vectors show direction and magnitude of motion. Tectonic plates are able to move because of the relative density of oceanic lithosphere and the relative weakness of the asthenosphere.
Projected global surface temperature changes relative to 1850–1900, based on CMIP6 multi-model mean changes. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report defines global mean surface temperature (GMST) as the "estimated global average of near-surface air temperatures over land and sea ice, and sea surface temperature (SST) over ice-free ocean regions, with changes normally expressed as departures from a ...