Cryosphere

Cryosphere components play an important role in modulating the Earth's climate system and acts as an indicator and integrator of climate variability and change. Ice sheets continuously record the chemical and physical nature of the Earth's atmosphere and often provide climate records with seasonal, annual, decadal and centennial resolutions. In order to understand these changes better, it is essential to evaluate the climate variability from a perspective provided by the long-term proxy climate records like ice cores. Further, to retrieve more accurate and better climate information from proxy based studies, it is essential to have a sufficiently detailed and fundamental understanding on the biogeochemical processes involved in the air to snow transfers.

Considering the multiple processes influencing the cryospheric system on an inter-annual, decadal, centennial and millennial time scale, the Cryospheric Science Division at NCAOR is conducting an integrated study on glaciology, biogeochemical processes and ice core records to understand the role and response of cryosphere within the climate system in polar region and their global linkages.