The rapidly changing cryosphere due to climate change is creating increasingly urgent adaptation and socio-economical challenges: sea level rise, mountain and glacier collapse, land subsidence, glacial lake outbursts, and impacts on ecosystems, sustainable energy production, livelihoods and cultural heritage. Recent events in mountain regions like Nepal, Tibet, Peru and Switzerland are showing us that rapidly melting glaciers, snow and permafrost are triggering catastrophic hazards directly threatening local communities safety, vital infrastructure, livelihoods, water security, and cultural heritage. Slow-onset events like sea-level rise are affecting communities that have little to no responsibility for such impacts. Yet, fragmented communication of both scientific knowledge and the urgency to act continues to expose important bottlenecks at the interface between science, policy and society.

This session invites researchers, policymakers, government agencies, practitioners and other stakeholders working across these interfaces. We welcome examples of successful and unsuccessful engagement, alongside critical reflections on persistent gaps around cryosphere-related challenges. How can researchers engage effectively with decision-makers? What kind of knowledge or scientific input do policymakers or stakeholders need, and in what form? Where does available science fall short of what decisions require? Our aim is a space for mutual exchange and learning that builds capacity, communication and collaboration across the science-policy-society interface.

We invite contributions from across all realms of the cryosphere—including glaciers, ice sheets, permafrost, sea ice, snow, lake and river ice—and encourage perspectives on challenging and emerging topics. These may include communicating concepts such as climate overshoot and tipping points and their implications for populations to non-expert audiences, the role, potential risks and framing of geoengineering and other intervention proposals in cryosphere policy debates, countering misinformation and rebuilding trust in science, and addressing how cryospheric research can better support adaptation, resilience and long-term planning.