News & Stories

Across the globe, snow and ice play a vital role in regulating Earth’s climate and providing freshwater resources to people, plants, and animals.

As Earth’s frozen regions change rapidly, NSIDC is committed to growing its research and open access data to better understand these changes. Read about NSIDC research and its contribution to science and policy making. Check out spotlights on how to use NSIDC data, tools, and resources. Learn about how we steward data and collaborate with scientists and organizations across the world to understand how the frozen parts of Earth affect the rest of the planet and impact society.

News and stories

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Feature Story
NASA is making sure that the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) data will remain available to earth science researchers by permanently archiving the data, software, and user documentation at NSIDC.
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Spotlight
How can sea ice data from different disciplines be made accessible and usable by a broader audience? NSIDC data expert Mark Parsons and researchers from NSIDC and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are working to solve that problem with a new project called the Semantic Sea Ice Interoperability Initiative (SSIII).
Analysis - Sea Ice Today

Arctic sea ice extent declined slowly through the first three weeks of April, compared to recent years. The slow decline through March and the first few weeks of April meant that by mid-April, ice extent was at near-average levels.

Analysis - Sea Ice Today

Update, April 19, 2012: The nine-day trailing average climatology on the daily data graph has been changed to a five-day trailing average, to be consistent with the five-day trailing average for the daily data.

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Spotlight
Using data from aerial photographs and maps, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) have added 25,000 more glaciers to World Glacier Inventory (WGI), bringing the total to 132,890.