Ice

In the 50 yrs. (years) between the third (1957–1959) and fourth International Polar Year (2007–2009), our understanding of the ice, as a material substance and geomorphic agent, has been transformed. Considered a robust frigid material in the 1950s, the ice was something to be endured, conquered, and studied. As prolonged scientific inquiry and research programs in ice-based places increased during the 1950s, our understandings of these complex material geographies significantly increased, as did the sciences of glaciology, seismology, and ice sheet dynamics. Poised on a delicate, irreversible climatic threshold, the ice is now a key indicator of environmental change and its consequences for human societies, from the glacial meltwaters of the Himalayas to the inhabited Arctic.

We live on a planet whose landscape surfaces are predominately shaped by the geomorphic action of ice, particularly that of glaciers and ice sheets. Scientists collectively refer to this ice-based environment as the cryosphere (Figure 1). Derived from the Greek word kryo for “cold” or “too cold,” it is the term that describes collectively the portions of the Earth's surface where water is in a solid form, including ice caps, snow, sea ice, ice shelves, ice sheets, glaciers, and permafrost. The cryosphere takes many forms. Topographically, these range from the high places of mountaintops and glacial cirques to the sea ice of the high Arctic and the quaternary ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. The cryosphere is now understood as an integral part of the global climate system, with important linkages and feedbacks to the stability of global climate and responses to anthropogenic-induced climate change. Warming of the major ice regions of the Arctic and Antarctic will cause vast quantities of water to be released and will affect sea-level rise and ocean current circulations.

The cryosphere is also an integral part of the weather imaginaries and a media icon of climate change. As a site of visually dramatic weather events and looming environmental catastrophe, ice-based environments have moved from the peripheries of the Western geographic imagination to the center of debates on climate change; satellite maps of ozone holes over the poles, melting Siberian permafrost, the “opening” of the Northwest Passage, the impact of melting glaciers on water supplies, ice sheet collapse, and future sea-level rise are part of the visual lexicon of climate change. Far from the historical aesthetic of “icy spaces” as sites of vigorously demanding exploration and robust masculinities, the ice is now imaged and imagined as a vulnerable materiality that exhibits the effects of climate change.