TS.6.2.2 Snow, Ice and Frozen Ground

Robust Findings:

The amount of ice on the Earth is decreasing. There has been widespread retreat of mountain glaciers since the end of the 19th century. The rate of mass loss from glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet is increasing. {4.5, 4.6}

The extent of NH snow cover has declined. Seasonal river and lake ice duration has decreased over the past 150 years. {4.2, 4.3}

Since 1978, annual mean arctic sea ice extent has been declining and summer minimum arctic ice extent has decreased. {4.4}

Ice thinning occurred in the Antarctic Peninsula and Amundsen shelf ice during the 1990s. Tributary glaciers have accelerated and complete breakup of the Larsen B Ice Shelf occurred in 2002. {4.6}

Temperature at the top of the permafrost layer has increased by up to 3°C since the 1980s in the Arctic. The maximum extent of seasonally frozen ground has decreased by about 7% in the NH since 1900, and its maximum depth has decreased by about 0.3 m in Eurasia since the mid-20th century. {4.7}

Key Uncertainties:

There is no global compilation of in situ snow data prior to 1960. Well-calibrated snow water equivalent data are not available for the satellite era. {4.2}

There are insufficient data to draw any conclusions about trends in the thickness of antarctic sea ice. {4.4}

Uncertainties in estimates of glacier mass loss arise from limited global inventory data, incomplete area-volume relationships and imbalance in geographic coverage. {4.5}

Mass balance estimates for ice shelves and ice sheets, especially for Antarctica, are limited by calibration and validation of changes detected by satellite altimetry and gravity measurements. {4.6}

Limited knowledge of basal processes and of ice shelf dynamics leads to large uncertainties in the understanding of ice flow processes and ice sheet stability. {4.6}