Scientists are getting better at grasping changes taking place in the coldest regions of the planet, and as NASA's new video "Tour of the Cryosphere" illustrates, they are getting better at telling us about it.  Melting Antarctic ice sheets spill more heavy, salty water into the ocean, which sinks to the abyss and changes ocean currents that alter climate worldwide, we are told.  Seventy-five percent of the water resources in the American West depends on precipitation falling as mountain snow.  A dry winter in the Rockies can heighten wildfire danger even the following year.

This is not a message that scientists have always been very good at getting across, partly because they are, well, scientists, who usually think in technical terms, and partly because they spend a lot more time talking to each other about their methods than to the likes of you and me about their message.  I have a friend in the news business who used to listen to their jargon-filled explanations at major scientific meetings around the country and then invariably ask the same question:  "Yeah, but what does it mean to Joe Six-Pack?"

A study published in April combining satellite measurements of sea ice coverage and conventional atmospheric observations showed that summer sea ice coverage changes weather patterns in autumn and winter from Scandinavia to the American southwest.  And then there is the Greenland ice sheet, which holds enough fresh water to fill the Gulf of Mexico.  This is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, where the rate of melting ice in a warming world is still one of the great unknowns in climate science.  Read the full story “From the not-so-remote cryosphere By John D Cox”

Emissions, Transport, and Chemistry Downwind of Oil Extraction Facilities in the Alaskan Arctic – NOAA Earth System Research Lab

NOAA and U.S. Coast Guard Hunt for Alaskan Methane and Carbon Dioxide Sources – NOAA Earth System Research Lab