22,987 datasets

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

Given the imminent threat posed by rising sea levels across much of the globe, there is a critical need to better understand past, present, and future Antarctic ice mass change and the resulting solid Earth deformation. The latter process is referred to as glacial isostatic adjustment. A key parameter that determines the rate of this deformation is the viscosity of the deforming material. To date,

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

In the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDV), the permanently ice-covered lakes are unusual aquatic environments that are home to unique communities of microbes. Mats of photosynthetic microbes grow on the floors of these lakes and are an important part of the ecosystems in MDV environments. They experience extreme seasonality that includes the challenge of months of winter darkness. Mats cannot photosynthesi

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

Use and reuse of long-term ecological data is needed for understanding how biological communities are responding to a changing world. In marine environments, key data includes large-scale patterns such as El Niño, ocean conditions such as sea surface temperature and winds, and biological data such as the distribution and abundance of food resources and marine wildlife. These core data are often co

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

Nontechnical Understanding the subsurface structure near the South Pole will answer some of the most exciting scientific questions in Antarctic Earth Science, ranging from the origin of the high subglacial mountains and the southernmost volcanic rocks to the existence of nearby subglacial lakes. However, it has been difficult to answer these questions since the area is remote and the ice cover is

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

The current, rapid melting of Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica and its ongoing contribution to sea-level rise are of broad societal concern for their potential to impact coastal communities around the globe. Sea-level rise more than three meters due to the eventual collapse of this glacier and its neighbors could displace millions. The results of this research will help to project the future behavio

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

Global sea levels have fluctuated dramatically in the past and are expected to continue doing so in the future. It is crucial to be able to forecast future global sea level as a significant portion of the world’s population and built environment is located along vulnerable coastlines. The most crucial uncertainty in predicting future sea level rests with the behavior of the great ice sheets, parti

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

The chemistry of fossil diatoms (a type of plankton), specifically their nitrogen and silicon composition, reflects past changes in surface water nutrients and uptake by plants. Changes in sedimentary diatom nitrogen and silicon values from the Southern Ocean record to what degree ocean biology consumed nutrients in the surface ocean through time. These records have been interpreted to document ch

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

Diatoms are microscopic algae that live in oceans and other aquatic environments. Different diatom species thrive in different conditions, and so diatom fossils can be used as historical records of ocean environments, including the availability of nutrients such as nitrogen and silicon that are important components of ocean ecosystems. This RAPID proposal aims to understand how environmental condi

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

This is a project jointly funded by the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Geosciences (NSF/GEO) and the National Environment Research Council (NERC) of the United Kingdom (UK) via the NSF/GEO-NERC Lead Agency Opportunity. This Lead Agency Opportunity allows a single joint US/UK proposal to be submitted and peer-reviewed by the Agency whose investigator has the largest proportion of the

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · Text

Reconstructing and predicting the response of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to climate change is a major challenge facing the Earth Science community. Computer models of ice sheet behavior are central to addressing this challenge. In this project we tested and improved ice-sheet models by comparing model predictions of past ice extent to the geologic record in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica. This innova

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

This project will advance the understanding of causes and implications of recent extreme sea ice variability in the Antarctic through development of a research and logistical partnership with New Zealand. We focus on the Ross Sea as an area of strategic interest for the US and New Zealand, a major locus of recent variability, and as a key area of significance to global ocean circulation and intact

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

The Arctic and Antarctic are unique for the upper atmospheric research as these polar regions affect significantly the dynamics of planetary atmospheric circulations. Like the oceans, Earth's atmosphere experiences planet-wide gravitational tides caused by the Moon. In addition to planetary atmospheric waves of various scale caused by Earth's rotation, the largest amplitude of upward-propagating,

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

Understanding climate change on Earth requires significant insight on geochemical and geobiological cycles in both polar regions and many environments in between. Methane is a major focus because of its substantial sediment loading and its high atmospheric heat absorption as a greenhouse gas. While the Arctic has been the primary climate change focus for studies on methane, the Antarctic’s Ross Se

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

Part 1: Non-technical summary Trait differences between males and females are widespread across the animal kingdom. Because these traits often lead to trade-offs that affect reproductive success and survival, understanding them is a fundamental question in biology. Leopard seals are large predators in the Southern Ocean and an extreme example of female-biased dimorphism in mammals, where females a

NASA Earthdata CMR + National Center for Atmospheric Research2026 · Array ·

This dataset includes HadISST1 and HadSST2 from U.K. Hadley Centre. HadISST1 is a unique combination of monthly globally-complete fields of SST and sea ice concentration on a 1 degree latitude-longitude grid from 1870 to date, and HadSST2 is a monthly global field of SST on a 5-degree latitude-longitude grid from 1850 to date, neither interpolated nor variance adjusted. The data may also be obtain

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

The Antarctic ice sheet contains the world’s largest amount of fresh water and has the potential to become the greatest contributor to future global sea level rise. The dominant mechanism by which Antarctica currently loses mass is ice discharge, where ice on the continent flows into the ocean. Ice shelves are floating extensions of land ice that surround 75% of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and restrai

NASA Earthdata CMR2026 · collection

The West Antarctic coastline is changing rapidly: it is thinning, losing mass, and buttressing ice shelves that are critical for future stability of the ice sheet are retreating. Despite observed change caused by ice-ocean-atmosphere interactions perturbed by both internal and forced climate processes (e.g., tropical Pacific Ocean variability, ozone depletion, greenhouse gas warming), there are fe

NASA Earthdata CMR2025 · collection

Antarctica habitats are unlike any others found on the planet with extreme combined variations in cold, salinity, moisture content and light availability. Soils and sediments from the Antarctic McMurdo Dry Valley’s region harbor unique microorganisms that can cope with multiple extreme conditions, however, how extremophile microbes specifically function or respond to change in these extreme habita

NASA Earthdata CMR2025 · Array · NetCDF

The glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica, such as Thwaites and Pine Island Glaciers, are rapidly retreating and contributing to sea level rise. There is evidence that the current stage of retreat began in the mid-20th century before the start of the observational record, making it difficult to understand the cause of glacier change. While modeling studies suggest that anthropo

NASA Earthdata CMR2025 · Archive

Many Antarctic glaciers are discharging ice to the sea and contributing to global sea-level rise at an accelerating pace. However, future rates of ice discharged remain uncertain in part because of incomplete characterization of processes occurring at the ice-bed interface. In particular, ice-bed interface processes depend sensitively on the subglacial effective pressure, N (overburden pressure mi

NASA Earthdata CMR2025 · collection

Oceanographic processes in the Pacific sector of coastal Antarctica exhibit global interactions, including contribution of Antarctic ice-sheets to sea level rise, changes in the Earth's radiative balance, air/sea gas exchange through sea-ice variability, deep water formation, and Southern Ocean biological productivity. Atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (GCMs) are useful tools for underst

NASA Earthdata CMR2025 · collection

The Polar Geospatial Center (PGC) at the University of Minnesota (UMN) supports scientific research in the polar regions. The PGC distributes high-resolution optical imagery, made available via the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, to U.S. Government-funded polar scientists. Its wide array of services includes satellite imagery, topographic maps and educational content. The PGC’s activities

NASA Earthdata CMR2025 · collection

Understanding the origins and nature of heat available at the base of the cryosphere is essential in deciphering the extent and residence time of the ice in Antarctica and its oceans. Constraints on parameters that control ice-sheet stability, response of the crust to ice loading and unloading, and the effects of volcanism and heat from Earth’s interior on overlying ice is of broad interest to the

NASA Earthdata CMR2025 · collection

This project explores the hidden world of microbes living inside planktonic animals called pteropods (“sea butterflies”)—specifically Limacina rangii, a key part of the Antarctic marine food web. These small, shelled planktonic snails help move energy and carbon through the ocean and are especially important in waters around the rapidly warming Western Antarctic Peninsula and the Ross Sea. Recent

NASA Earthdata CMR2025 · collection

Sea-level changes are actively damaging coastal communities, ecosystems, and infrastructure. Glacier mass loss is a key uncertainty in determining how much sea-level rise will occur in the near future. Among the key unknowns in glacier science is how fast does ice slide across the land. The presence and pressure of water at the base of glaciers influences their sliding speed, which affects the res