In this web-based, interactive story, Tutangiaq (Too-tang-geye-ack - nicknamed 2T), a Canada Goose, flies across Alaska looking for his family. As he flies, he tells children about the fascinating 49th state. Children learn how Alaska was purchased from the Russians, and other facts about the state. They can also compare the size of Alaska to other states. 2T takes a flight across the volcanic chain in Alaska and helps the students to interactively explore how scientists monitor volcanoes from satellite images in near-real time. At the coast, the bird also meets his Walrus friend who shows him how the sea ice edge has receded and gives an example of an adverse effect on marine life. Finally, 2T arrives in Fairbanks where children use satellite imagery to help 2T find and unite with his family.

This video segment adapted from NOVA explains why ice sheets move. To find out how fast they move, scientists carve a tunnel through a glacier.

Within Antarctic ice sheets are fast-moving streams of ice. This video segment adapted from NOVA hypothesizes about how ice streams are the result of warming at the end of the last ice age.

The Bering Sea Climate website contains time series data that measures climate and ecosystem status in the Bering Sea. The site presents data, metadata, and graphics by allowing the user to select categories and then click a button for the desired function. Data can be displayed as a list, a time series plot, or in terms of recent trends, relevance, and correlation. Measured parameters include weather, oceanographic and climate data, sea ice data, and fisheries and other biological data. The site also offers professional essays about the Bering Sea ecosystem and industry reports on climatic conditions and trends for the North Pacific in general and the Bering Sea in particular. Further information is available through links to additional data resources, communication, organizations, maps, ecosystem information, and a photo gallery. This resource is part of the Using Data collection. http://serc.carleton.edu/usingdata/

A thick chunk of Arctic sea ice the size of two states has disappeared. Is it global warming or normal causes? For more information visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/earth/earth20071001/

This animation shows the daily sea ice surface temperature over the northern hemisphere from September 2002 through May 2003. The sea ice surface temperature was measured by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite. Since this instrument cannot take measurements through clouds or in the dark, in dark or cloud-covered regions or areas with suspect data quality, the prior days value is retained until a valid data reading is obtained. The color of the sea ice indicates the sea ice surface temperature.

This site from SERC's Starting Point features Gallery Walk questions about glaciers. The questions examine glacial features, crops on outwash plains, the relationship between albedo and temperature, the relationship between worldwide glacier ice volume and sea level, and glacier mass balance. The questions are organized according to the cognitive level at which students are engaged, using Bloom's Taxonomy.

Iceberg B-15A, in Antarctica's McMurdo Sound, is as large as Long Island, NY (3,000 square kilometers or 1,200 square miles) and is the largest fragment of a much larger iceberg that broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. Iceberg B-15A has trapped sea ice in McMurdo Sound, and the ice build-up presents significant problems for Antarctic penguins, which must now swim great distances to reach open waters and food. These images were taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASAs Aqua and Terra satellites between 2004-11-09 and 2005-01-17.

Shot in Wide-Screen

This site discusses the mission of ICESat, the benchmark Earth Observing System satellite intended to measure ice sheet mass balance, cloud and aerosol heights, topography, and vegetative cover. Questions of particular interest to the mission include: is sea level is rising?; are the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets growing or shrinking?; are ice sheets are capable of causing large, rapid changes in sea level?; and will the ice sheets melt or grow in a warmer climate? Datasets, imagery, and pictures of the launch are included.

In this interactive activity adapted from Texas A&M University, a block of melting ice simulates ice shelves and ice sheets and their differing effects on global sea level.

A comprehensive analysis of all the components of the climate system (atmosphere, ocean, ice sheets, etc) and of all the interactions between them is out of the scope of any course or book. We have thus chosen here to provide only a brief overview of the processes that rule the behaviour of those different components. More detailed descriptions are provided in meteorology, oceanography and glaciology courses for instance. Our first goal here is rather to provide enough information on the interactions between the different elements of the climate system and on the dominant feedbacks to allow the student to analyse the variability of the climate and its response to a perturbation. By this mean, the reader should be able to understand the dominant causes of past climate changes and to critically evaluate the projections of the climate change over the next centuries or millennia.

Because of the complexity of the climate system, many analyses devoted to a quantitative estimate of climate change or climate variability rely on the use of comprehensive three-dimensional numerical models. However, simple models are also widely used to underline clearly the fundamental properties of the climate. Our second goal is thus to give the student the bases to understand how climate model are built and how they could be used to make quantitative estimate of climate variability and climate change as well as to illustrate how models could be used to understand the most important concepts of climate science.

This digital textbook was reviewed for its alignment with California content standards.

In this video adapted from the International Institute for Sustainable Development, an Inuit community collaborates with Western scientists studying climate change. Inuit observations are recorded and included in the data collection process, expanding the scientists' understanding of changes in the area.

Since measurements of Jakobshavn Isbrae were first taken in 1850, the glacier has gradually receded, finally coming to rest at a certain point for the past 5 decades. However, from 1997 to 2003, the glacier has begun to recede again, this time almost doubling in speed. The finding is important for many reasons. For starters, as more ice moves from glaciers on land into the ocean, it raises sea levels. Jakobshavn Isbrae is Greenlands largest outlet glacier, draining 6.5 percent of Greenlands ice sheet area. The ice streams speed-up and near-doubling of ice flow from land into the ocean has increased the rate of sea level rise by about .06 millimeters (about .002 inches) per year, or roughly 4 percent of the 20th century rate of sea level increase. This animation shows a time-lapse sequence of the ice flowing toward the ocean. In recent years, even ice that has traditionally remained in place is now being pulled down to the edge of land.

Since measurements of Jakobshavn Isbrae were first taken in 1850, the glacier has gradually receded, finally coming to rest at a certain point for the past 5 decades. However, from 1997 to 2003, the glacier has begun to recede again, this time almost doubling in speed. The finding is important for many reasons. For starters, as more ice moves from glaciers on land into the ocean, it raises sea levels. Jakobshavn Isbrae is Greenlands largest outlet glacier, draining 6.5 percent of Greenlands ice sheet area. The ice streams speed-up and near-doubling of ice flow from land into the ocean has increased the rate of sea level rise by about .06 millimeters (about .002 inches) per year, or roughly 4 percent of the 20th century rate of sea level increase. This animation shows the recession for three years, from 2001 through 2003. The line of recession shows the place where the glacier meets the ocean and where pieces calve off and flow away from land toward open water.

The Larsen ice shelf at the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula experienced a dramatic collapse between January 31 and March 7, 2002. First, melt ponds appeared on the ice shelf during these summer months (seen in blue on the shelf), then a minor collapse of about 800 square kilometers occurred. Finally, a 2600 square kilometer collapse took place, leaving thousands of sliver icebergs and berg fragments where the shelf formerly lay. Brownish streaks within the floating chunks mark areas where rocks and morainal debris are exposed from the former underside and interior of the shelf. These images were acquired by the MODIS instrument on the Terra satellite.

Part of the ongoing research into polar ice trends encompasses evaluation from sophisticated computer models. At the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University, run by NASAs sibling agency, NOAA, researchers modeled a 5,000 year period to see how polar ice might behave over time depending on several different variables. This visualization shows a 120-year slice of that complete model, essentially offering a research window on to experimental processes that require longer time frames than human lifetimes. According to the model shown here, projecting a period from 1940 to 2060, there is evidence to suggest human factors have had a measurable effect on Arctic ice decreases.

During the last few decades, the permanent snow and ice on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro has almost completely disappeared, at the rate of about a foot and a half of glacial ice lost per year. This loss is primarily due to increasing average annual temperatures in the region, and scientists are speculating that the glaciers could be completely gone from Kilimanjaro by the year 2015. This ice cap formed more that 11,000 years ago, and 80% of the ice fields have been lost in only the last century. The shrinkage is illustrated here in Landsat images from 1993, 2000, and 2002, with the 1993 image showing a significant ice cap and the more recent images showing only small glaciers and snow regions remaining.

This interactive resource adapted from NOVA Online features a collection of images that show what would happen to selected coastlines around the world if the Antarctic Ice Sheet melted.