Glaciology is the study of snow and ice. A glaciologist is one who studies and analyzes the movement and physical properties of glaciers and ice. Glaciologists research characteristics of the Cryosphere that include formation, movement, and effects of other parts of the Earth System. A characteristic of their research is to analyze how glaciers and ice caps move and change due to climate change and how those changes influence the climate and surrounding environment.
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Civil engineers design, develop, and construct community projects that serve the general public such as roads, bridges, damns, tunnels, water supply systems, etc. The designs include but are not limited to many fields such as hydraulics, thermodynamics, or nuclear physics.
Sea Level Scientists are also known by several other names (marine geologist, paleoceanographer, paleoclimatologist, etc.). These professionals use natural records from the past to characterize local, regional, and global environments.
The Eyjabakkajökull Glacier is an outlet glacier of the Vatnajökull ice cap in Iceland that has been retreating since a major surge occurred in 1973. Students analyze these maps to identify the scale and rate of change of the glacier loss.
Christy Hansen is the project manager on an airborne campaign for Earth science called Operation IceBridge. IceBridge teams are all over the country. We have scientists, instrument managers, we have a data center, we have aircraft offices all over. This project flies up to nine different geophysical instruments installed on the aircraft to collect data on the changing ice sheets, the sea ice and the glaciers.
Students will watch a video on the Greenland Ice Sheet and answer questions.
Students watch the video Frozen Earth and answer the following questions that discuss how ice helps moderate the planet's temperature using NASA satellites.
This mini lesson helps students visualize how the Hydrosphere and Cryosphere interact to produce changes in land and sea ice.
This mini lesson has students explore three visualizations to see the new benchmark map scientists can use to study the extent and speed of changes to the largest ice sheet in the world.