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Table 6.2 Areal and volumetric extent of major components of the cryosphere (Allison et al.
2001)
Component
S
I
H
Land snow cover
b
Northern Hemisphere Late January
46.5
0.002
Late August
3.9
Southern Hemisphere Late July
0.85
Early May
0.07
Sea ice
Northern Hemisphere Late March 14.0
c
0.05
Early September 6.0
c
0.02
Southern Hemisphere Late September 15.0
d
0.02
Late February 2.0
d
0.002
Permafrost (underlying the exposed land surface, excluding Antarctica and S. Hemisphere
high mountains)
Continuous
e
10.69
0.0097
0.0250
0.024
0.063
-
-
Discontinuous and Sporadic
12.10
0.0017
0.0115
0.004
0.028
-
-
Continental ice and ice shelves
East Antarcticaf
f
10.1
22.7
56.8
West Antarctica and Antarctic Peninsulaf
f
2.3
3.0
7.5
Greenland
1.8
2.6
6.6
Small Ice Caps and Mountain Glaciers
0.68
0.18
0.5
Ice Shelves
f
1.5
0.66
-
S is the area (10
6
km
2
), I is the ice volume (10
6
km
3
), H is the sea level equivalent (m)
a
a
Sea level equivalent does not equate directly with potential sea-level rise, as a correction is
required for the volume of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets that are presently below sea
level. 400,000 km
3
of ice is equivalent to 1 m of global sea level
b
Snow cover includes that on land ice, but excludes snow-covered sea ice
c
Actual ice areas, excluding open water. Ice extent ranges between approximately 7.0 and
15.4
10
6
km
2
d
Actual
×
ice area excluding open water. Ice extent ranges between approximately 3.8 and
10
6
km
2
. Southern Hemisphere sea ice is mostly seasonal and generally much thinner than
Arctic sea ice
e
Data calculated using the digital circum-arctic map of permafrost and ground-ice conditions and
the GLOBE-1 km elevation data set
f
Ice sheet data include only grounded ice. Floating ice shelves, which do not affect sea level, are
considered separately
18.8
×
North Atlantic) are also highly relevant to CliC. The other two time scales are com-
mensurate withWCRP interests, as manifest in ACSYS, GEWEX and CLIVAR. In the
space domain, cryospheric processes and phenomena need to be investigated over a
wide range of scales from meters to thousands of kilometers.
It is evident that changes in the Arctic
is climate are a result of complex inter-
actions between the cryosphere, atmosphere, ocean, and biosphere (Callaghan et al.
2011). Studying the cryosphere dynamics is of importance for many applications. In
particular, changes in cryosphere play signi
'
cant role in the socio-economic sectors
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