NASA Video of the Cryosphere

An anonymous reader writes "From the shrinking Arctic sea ice to retreating glaciers and collapsing Antarctic ice shelves, the cryosphere is an important and ongoing news story. NASA satellites captured these snow and ice changes worldwide to help scientists figure out what is happening. A unique global view of all of these scientific issues is presented in a new NASA video, which is being released at this meeting. The video tour takes you around the world to see what is happening through state-of-the-art animations of the latest satellite data. NASA scientist Waleed Abdalati and television producer Michael Starobin will answer questions about new cryosphere research and how the visualizations can be used to illustrate the science."

"Released at this meeting"

[WhiteBandit]

For those wondering what "this meeting" is all about (since the submitter just copied a paragraph from a press release), it is the American Geophysical Union conference [agu.org] that is held every December in San Francisco. 11,000 geoscientists from around the world meet for a week to discuss and share the latest research in the fields of geology, seismology, paleoclimatology, geophysics, among many others.

NASA has quite a few workshops and Q&A sessions this week, which you can find out here [nasa.gov]. Unfortunately, if you're not an AGU member, you'll have to pay a very hefty cost to get into the conference (upwards of $200 USD).

Other interesting news that has come out of the AGU meeting this week that you might have heard of are:

* San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth research and "nonvolcanic" tremors [eurekalert.org].
* Earth is potentially out of new farm land. [taipeitimes.com]
* New insights into the rate of ozone recovery [thestar.com].
* Southeast Asia faces another danger of a large tsunami in the next few decades [com.com]
* Cassino spots icy plumes on Saturn [xinhuanet.com]

A view from Above

[Nuffsaid]

The video is very interesting, well produced and informative, indeed. I'd like to recommend it to the many complaining about NASA's role and the usefulness of Low Earth Orbit science.

New beachfront, inland

[bobster45]

If the message is accurate and all the scientific data appears to point to this conclusion, You will see the sea rise a huge amount. Today's beachfront property will be well below the sea level and the process will make the climates throughout the Earth change so much it is hard to say today what it will be like in 100 years.

This is excellent science, yet it is a waste if it gets wrapped up in politics and the message is lost for concern with the corporate bottom line. It is time for our world's leadership

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:nobody cares?

[utuk99]

Yeah, but pet cell phones is apparently a hot button issue. We are doomed.

Re:nobody cares?

[angryGhost]

It seems slashdotters are tired of arguing about climate change.

Why is NASA working on the Cryosphere?

[Distan]

Is this a good use of our money in 2005? After all, didn't Pauly Shore do all the investigation we need back in 1996?

On the other hand, if it gets Joey Lauren Adams more screen time, then I'm all for it!

Video

[azav]

I recommend to all to spend the time to download check out the video. In college, I took one semester of Oceanography, enough to understand the science behind implications but not fully grasp the problem presented by global warming.

This video does a nice job of spelling it out.