The NEESPI Project and the Cryosphere
Cryosphere, from the Greek word kryos, meaning frost or ice cold, is a term coined to describe all frozen water on Earth, including sea, lake, and river ice, land-based snow packs, frozen precipitation, glaciers, ice caps and sheets, permafrost, and seasonally frozen ground. The cryosphere is consequently a vital component of the planet’s climatic system, affecting surface energy, precipitation and the circulation of the oceans and atmosphere.
Snow and ice covered areas increase the Earth’s albedo, or reflectivity, and can reflect 90% of the solar radiation striking them; consequently, dwindling snow and ice cover cause more heat to be absorbed by the ground. Observation of the cryosphere can also provide information about other factors contributing to global warming. Polar regions whose soils have been frozen for as long as 40,000 years begin to thaw and release carbon in the form of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere and helping to increase global temperature levels. As well as being a major factor in creating the global climate, the cryosphere can provide an sensitive environmental factor enabling science to gauge the overall health of the planet by serving as a measure of the warming climate.
The Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative, (NEESPI), involves private, academic, and governmental agencies representing the U.S., Japan, and Northern Eurasia to study regional climatic, demographic and socioeconomic factors which are changing due to the effects of atmospheric, oceanic and land use dynamics. NASA’s Land Cover/ Land Use Change Program has supported the NEESPI program from the beginning, currently funding 26 projects, with other NASA programs either supporting or planning to support the plan. The NEESPI program is seen a regional experiment to test international co-operation in planning and executing systems to observe the Earth’s environment.
The NASA NEESPI cryosphere data system provides information on snow and ice cover, especially important for the region of Northern Eurasia which is covered with snow seasonally and which derives over half of the runoff feeding a great majority of its rivers from snow melt. Over 10 million square kilometers of the Eurasian region, mostly Russia, contains permafrost. Data on the frequency of snow and ice cover occurrence is obtained from daily charts of the Northern Hemisphere generated with NOAA. Activities such as construction, engineering, farming, water management, power generation and recreation depend on data concerning the cryosphere. The cryosphere data system thereby provides information useful on a local basis as well as a planetary one.
This entry was posted on Sunday, July 15th, 2007 at 6:01 am and is filed under Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
