Glacier and ice sheet mass loss is now the dominant source of the global mean sea-level rise. Long seen as relatively stable features, the Earth’s ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are picking up pace, along with retreating mountain glaciers. In parallel, our capacity to monitor and model these changes has advanced and allows us to refine future projections. The past decade has seen a rapid acceleration of cryospheric changes. The storage of frozen water on land and its release over various timescales from days (snow) to centuries and millennia (ice sheets) is a key component of the hydrological cycle from the global to the regional scale, and it redefines hydrological risks and resources worldwide. The disappearing Arctic sea ice slows and amplifies the jet stream, causing extreme weather patterns southward. The cryosphere amplifies climate change through the albedo feedback-icy surfaces tend to be bright and reflect sunlight back to space, whereas melting makes the Earth darker-and through the release of greenhouse gases from thawing soils. This “big thaw” is having far-reaching consequences on the global hydroclimate system and human societies. The decreasing volume and extent of sea ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice sheets and permafrost represent strong visual indicators of climate change that resonate with the public perception of climate change. Changes in the cryosphere are the most salient signals of ongoing climate change.
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