3. Cryosphere#
In these lectures we are going to discuss the growth and retreat of sea ice in the polar oceans, how snow accumulates to form ice in the worlds glaciers and ice sheets, and how that ice then flows into the ocean. The waxing and waning of sea ice has a large impact on the albedo of the polar oceans, and is an important indicator of rapid climate change in the polar regions. Mountain glaciers, and at a much larger scale the polar ice sheets, store an immense quantity of fresh water. The flow of that grounded ice to the ocean, either as meltwater or through the viscous flow of ice, directly contributes to current sea level rise. In these lectures we will construct simple models of these components of the cyrosphere in order to answer questions about the rate at which ice forms and melts, and the underlying dynamics of glacial flows.