Article Outline

The global cryosphere encompasses snow and ice in all its forms in the natural environment, including glaciers and ice sheets, sea ice, lake and river ice, permafrost, seasonal snow, and ice crystals in the atmosphere. Cryospheric models are mathematical and numerical descrip-tions of these componen...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Cecilia M. Bitz, Shawn J. Marshall
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Ice
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.646.9178
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~bitz/cryo_chapter.pdf
Description
Summary:The global cryosphere encompasses snow and ice in all its forms in the natural environment, including glaciers and ice sheets, sea ice, lake and river ice, permafrost, seasonal snow, and ice crystals in the atmosphere. Cryospheric models are mathematical and numerical descrip-tions of these components of the Earth system, designed to simulate snow and ice processes and feedbacks in the context of the global climate system. This entry covers all forms of ice except ice crystals in the atmosphere, which are more appropriately combined with clouds and appear in encyclopedia entry “Cloud Albedo Enhancement for Solar Radiation Man-agement ” and “Cloud System Models”. We focus on models that are appropriate for global climate modeling. There are regional climate modeling applications that include some of the