Cryospheric Sciences

The Arctic’s Blind Spot: Why Satellites Struggle Where Ice Meets the Coast

Monojit Saha June 12, 2026

Figure 1. My first time on sea ice - Churchill, Manitoba [Credit: Julienne Stroeve]

The first time I stood on sea ice, I could not tell which direction the coast was. A community member named Bryan could. That gap in situational awareness, between what a trained remote sensing scientist could read from the landscape and what a local hunter understood instinctively, turned out to mirror almost exactly the gap in our satellite data: ICESat-2 produces reliable freeboard across the c ...[Read More]

What Lies Beneath an Ice Shelf

Yingpu Xiahou, Craig Stevens and Christina Hulbe May 22, 2026

an orange, rugged large tent is in an arctic landscape. researchers in cold-eather gear gather at the mouth of the tent.

Hot-water drilling operations at the HWD2 site on the central Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica, where a borehole was created to access the ocean beneath the ice. [Credit: Craig Stevens/ESNZ]

Beneath Antarctica’s largest ice shelf lies a hidden ocean—dark, cold, and almost impossible to reach. Scientists drilled through hundreds of metres of ice to access it, revealing a world that plays a crucial role in how ice shelves melt. Years later, we had the chance to explore this unseen environment—not in the field, but through the data that the expedition left behind. Antarctica’s ice shelf ...[Read More]

Dialogues between glaciers and humans

Ugo Nanni May 15, 2026

against a blue, muted sky a saxophone layer in a beanie plays a song

Torben Snekkestad playing his saxophone in the Tellbreen icecave. Svalbard, March 2025. Credits E. Le Cornec and C. Reymond. CC BY-NC-ND.

At the edge of the world, a voice tries to make itself heard, a whisper slipping between the threads of an unstable reality. In the remote lands of Svalbard, a few hundred miles from the North Pole, lie millennia-old entities, relics of a disappearing species. They murmur in a language that humans today no longer know how to decipher. And yet, it is in this deafness to the voices around them that ...[Read More]

What’s up at EGU26?

The Chief Editors April 24, 2026

[Credit: Kai Boggild (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)]

In this week’s post, we share the Cryosphere division highlights at EGU26 with you. If it’s your first time at EGU, they might be a great starting point to get to know other division members and if you are already an EGU expert, these events are always a nice opportunity to reconnect with old friends. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ ...[Read More]

From Finland to Switzerland: A Campervan Journey for Snow Research

Maiju Ylönen April 17, 2026

a scientist lays on the grass with a dog in the sun. Its a casual setting with camping equipment scattered around them

On a hiking lunch in the Austrian mountains (Photo credit: Ilari Kangas)

Traveling by land within Europe is relatively easy, and for me it’s also a conscious choice to push back against the fast pace of modern travel and the normalization of flying. I chose to drive a van instead of taking the train mainly because of my dog, and because finding pet-friendly accommodation during the high season was challenging. I’m visiting the Snow Hydrology research group in WSL Insti ...[Read More]

Classroom on Ice: The Patagonian Icefield Research Program

Javier Norambuena, José Zambrano, Paula Silva, Andres Cruz and Christina Draeger March 27, 2026

a group of students and staff in hi-vis rain gear pick theri way along a rocky slope towards a glacier

The students and faculty on their way to Bernal glacier. [Credits: Dr. Gwenn Flowers]

An isolated fjord at the edge of the Southern Patagonia Icefield. A small cluster of tents pitched beside Bernal Glacier. Fourteen days without roads, cell reception, or routine – only creaking ice fronts, restless wind, the constant murmur of meltwater, unrelenting rain, and a team of fellow adventurers as companions. The Patagonia Icefield Research Program (PIRP) is an immersive classroom where ...[Read More]

Memories from the Field – The Vastness of the Greenland Ice Sheet

Mirjam Paasch March 16, 2026

Below a clear blue sky, ridges of ice undulate towards the horizon in stripes of white, blue, and black.

A view on the Greenland Ice Sheet close to Kangerlussuaq [Credit: Mirjam Paasch - July 2025].

I remember the day very well. It was the first time we drove up to the glacial ice from our base station in Kangerlussuaq (Western Greenland), where we had patiently been waiting for two days for the weather to clear. I took this photo during a three-week fieldwork campaign in July of 2025 as part of the Deep Purple project. As part of the project, we were in the field to collect glacial ice-alg ...[Read More]

IGS: A Home for the Global Cryosphere

Allen Pope February 27, 2026

[Credit: Allen Pope, IGS]

Like many glaciologists (in the broad sense – as in, cryospheric researchers, not just those who study glaciers!), my professional “home” has been the International Glaciological Society (IGS) ever since grad school; My first conference was an IGS branch meeting, I found my postdoc by networking at an IGS symposium, I have published work in IGS journals, and IGS has supported many community activi ...[Read More]

Peak glacier extinction in the mid-twenty-first century

Lander Van Tricht February 13, 2026

Fig 1: Ice cave at the Morteratsch glacier. These caves show the disintegration of glacier fronts. [Credit: Jonas van Breedam]

Have you ever wondered how many glaciers will still exist in the future? Or how many glaciers we might lose each year in the coming decades? In our new study (Van Tricht et al., 2025), we shift the focus of glacier modelling from ice volume to individual glaciers. Because every glacier, no matter how small, can matter. Not necessarily for global sea-level rise, but for landscapes, ecosystems, cult ...[Read More]

How Citizen Scientists mapped Arctic Permafrost

Pauline Walz and Oliver Fritz January 30, 2026

Fig 1: Aerial view of an Arctic landscape near Aklavik, NWT, Canada. The characteristic polygon patterns on the Earth’s surface reveal the presence of permafrost in the soil. (Credit: UndercoverEisAgenten)

Cryosphere scientists know it well; the Arctic doesn’t give up its secrets easily. This is especially true when it comes to exploring permafrost -– frozen soils that store centuries of history underground. Keeping an eye on the state of permafrost is more important than ever, as widespread permafrost thaw is a direct result of rising global temperatures. However, monitoring the vast Arctic is not ...[Read More]