Cryospheric Sciences at NASA

Increases in ice loss from the glaciers of Antarctica, Greenland, and the rest of the Arctic are contributing to sea level rise, while similarly dramatic changes are occurring in the sea ice cover of the Arctic and Southern Oceans. Characterizing these changes and understanding the processes controlling them is required to improve our understanding of the Earth system and forecast the impacts of continued change.

The Earth’s cryosphere covers continent-sized areas in the most inaccessible and inhospitable regions of the globe. NASA’s capabilities in satellite and aircraft remote- sensing are critical tools for understanding the changes occurring there. NASA’s Cryospheric Sciences Program supports studies based on satellite and aircraft remote sensing observations to understand the factors controlling changes in the ice and its interaction with the ocean, atmosphere, solid earth, and solar radiation.

News from the Cryosphere Program

2/14/2022

While there is no cryospheric sciences solicitation in ROSES 2022, we are soliciting for a new ICESat-2 Science Team!  Proposals are due in mid October.  Read the solicitation and learn more about the dual anonymous peer review (DAPR) process here!  As was the case with our ROSES 2021 Cryospheric Sciences solicitation, we will hold two pre-proposal telecons via Webex Events later this summer to go over the solicitation in detail as well as the DAPR process.  Stay tuned for more information!

12/1/2021

Congratulations to our recently selected ROSES 2021 Cryospheric Sciences awardees!  More information about our newest PIs and the work they proposed can be found here.

6/15/2021

We recently held two town hall meetings to discuss the implementation of dual-anonymous peer review for the A.15 Cryospheric Sciences program element of ROSES-2021. In dual-anonymous peer review, not only are proposers unaware of the identity of reviewers, but the reviewers do not have explicit knowledge of the proposing teams and institutions during the scientific evaluation of the proposal.  The town halls discussed (1) the motivation for switching to dual-anonymous peer review, (2) how dual-anonymous peer reviews work, and (3) how to write proposals that are compatible with dual-anonymous peer review.

You can view the slides that were presented here, as well as a video of the town hall meeting on 6/15/2021 here.

Staff

• Headquarters
• Goddard Space Flight Center 
• Jet Propulsion Laboratory