CR – Cryospheric Sciences
Programme Group Chair: Daniel Farinotti
- CR1 – The State of the Cryosphere: Past, Present, Future
- CR2 – lce sheets, ice shelves and glaciers
- CR3 – Sea, Lake and River Ice
- CR4 – Frozen ground, debris-covered glaciers and geomorphology
- CR5 – Snow and ice: properties, processes, hazards
- CR6 – Instrumental and paleo-archive observations, analyses, and data-driven methods in the cryospheric sciences
- CR7 – The Cryosphere in the Earth system: interdisciplinary topics
- CR8 – Short Courses (SC)
CR1 – The State of the Cryosphere: Past, Present, Future
Sub-Programme Group Scientific Officers: Christina Draeger, Violaine Coulon
Glaciers and ice caps around the globe are responding rapidly to climate change, with significant consequences for the environment and society. Advancing our understanding of glacier change requires an integrated approach that combines field observations, remote sensing, modelling, and emerging technologies to quantify glacier evolution, improve process understanding, and project future change. At the same time, glacier retreat is driving a wide range of environmental and societal impacts, including contributions to sea-level rise, changes to meltwater availability and resource security, evolving and cascading hazards, and consequences for downstream ecosystems and communities. Changes to glaciers also feed into socio-cultural pressures that modify the ways in which people interact with and benefit from polar and mountain environments.
This session welcomes contributions spanning all aspects of glacier and ice cap research, from observations and modelling of glacier processes, dynamics, and mass balance to studies of past, present, and future glacier change and its environmental and societal impacts. We encourage contributions that explore innovative and integrated approaches to glacier monitoring and modelling, including emerging datasets, data assimilation, machine learning, and other new technologies. We particularly welcome research that spans disciplinary boundaries, linking glaciology with climate science, hydrology, ecology, hazards, risk, and resilience. Contributions addressing communication beyond the scientific community, co-production of knowledge, and strategies to support mitigation, adaptation, and decision-making in glacierized regions are also encouraged.
The increasing availability of remotely sensed observations, combined with advances in computational capacity, is driving modelling and observational glacier studies towards increasingly large spatial scales. Such large-scale perspectives are of particular relevance, as they impact cross-country policy decisions and shape public discourse. Glaciers play a key role in present-day sea-level rise, seasonal water availability, natural hazards susceptibility and in touristic attractiveness. To tackle the spatial challenge, AI-informed techniques have become of particular interest in terms of computational feasibility, both for data processing and modelling.
This session focuses on advances in observing and modelling mountain glaciers and ice caps at the regional to global scale. We invite both observation- and modelling-based contributions, which may include, but are not limited to, the following topics:
• Observation and modelling results that reveal previously underappreciated regional differences in glacier changes or in their dynamics.
• Large-scale impact studies, including glacier contribution to sea level change, susceptibility to natural hazards or changes in water availability from glacierised regions.
• Advances in large-scale modelling (reconciling machine learning (ML) with classical approaches, including physical processes, improving/extending strategies for data assimilation/inverse approaches, refining climatic downscaling, increasing representativeness, etc.)
• Advances in large-scale monitoring (ML-boosted monitoring and interpretation, multi-sensor homogenisation, meta-analysis of ground-based data, process inferences, etc.)
• Development and dissemination of regional to global glacier datasets.
Long-term, large-scale monitoring using multiple observation techniques is necessary to establish historic glacier distributions and their changes over time. Such observations – ranging from seasonal mass balances of individual glaciers to decadal volume changes within entire regions – are vital to understanding underlying processes and projecting future changes. We thus invite contributions targeting all aspects of glacier monitoring (e.g., of area, length, volume, temperature, velocity, mass), as well as method comparisons and uncertainty assessments.
The evolution of glaciers, ice caps, and ice sheets can have a profound impact on the Earth system. Ice mass growth and decay results in the fluctuation of sea levels, alteration of global air and ocean circulation patterns, sculpting of the landscape, and reorganisation of continental drainage. Landforms and sediments provide important information about the dimensions, distribution, and dynamics of former ice masses. This record can be used to understand ice dynamics, reconstruct climate, and refine our understanding of the future response of ice masses to variations in climate. The glacial geological record is also often compared with observations of the modern-day processes at work on Earth. The aim of this session is to bring together researchers focused on reconstructing past glaciations and understanding glacial processes at all spatial scales and from all parts of the world. We welcome studies of all relevant aspects, for example (i) glacial landforms and sediments, (ii) glacial reconstructions and chronologies, (iii) glaciologic and climatic interpretations, and (iv) numerical modelling. While the focus of the session will be Quaternary glaciations, studies from any geological period are encouraged to fully address the diversity of the topic.
The behaviour of ice sheets, ice shelves, and glaciers is strongly influenced by the geology, structure, and evolving boundary conditions of the solid Earth beneath and around them. From mantle dynamics and crustal architecture to subglacial topography, geothermal heat flux, and basement geology, these boundary conditions influence ice-sheet and ice-shelf dynamics and their response to climate change. However, their representation in the numerical models used to project future sea-level rise remains subject to significant uncertainties. Growing amounts of geological and geophysical data from Antarctica, Greenland, and other ice-covered regions have improved our understanding of these solid Earth–ice interactions, yet many connections between geological boundary conditions and ice-sheet, ice-shelf, and glacier behaviour remain poorly constrained. This session seeks to bring together research spanning mantle-to-crustal-scale processes, tectonic and geodynamic controls (e.g., rifting, uplift, exhumation), and surface and subglacial boundary conditions (e.g., subglacial topography, sub-ice shelf bathymetry, geothermal heat flux, subglacial geology, basal sediment and water distribution) that together provide critical constraints on ice behaviour.
This session aims to link deep Earth processes with the boundary conditions that govern ice-sheet and ice-shelf behaviour, thus aiming to foster dialogue across the solid Earth, geodynamics, and cryosphere communities and to explore implications for past, present, and future ice stability. While we anticipate particular interest in the Cenozoic evolution of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, contributions addressing older glacial events and the deeper-time geological drivers of glaciation are equally welcome. Contributions addressing solid Earth-ice interactions across a range of spatial and temporal scales are encouraged, and we invite studies using geophysical measurements, geological and geochronology data, and/or numerical geodynamic/landscape-evolution/ice-sheet modelling approaches.
Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs)—the sudden release of water from lakes dammed by moraines, ice, or bedrock—are among the most dynamic perturbations of Earth’s surface. Their geomorphic signatures can persist for hundreds to thousands of years, while recent events in mountainous regions have demonstrated their potential to cause damage and loss of life when floods reach downstream communities that may be unprepared. Major uncertainties remain in understanding where and when GLOFs occur, how they are triggered and propagate, how landscapes respond, and how these processes may change in the future.
This session explores links between glacial-lake evolution, outburst-flood processes, geomorphic legacies, and societal impacts, with the aim of advancing our understanding of landscape evolution and future hazard and risk. We particularly welcome contributions using sedimentary and geochronological evidence to reconstruct paleo-lakes and paleo-GLOFs, constrain their magnitude and frequency, quantify sediment fluxes, and investigate how outburst floods establish, reorganise, or abandon drainage systems. Contributions addressing the processes controlling GLOF initiation are also encouraged, including ice–lake interactions, dam failure, and triggering and preconditioning mechanisms. A particular focus is the changing abundance and size of glacial lakes, and potential feedbacks on GLOF frequency and magnitude, as well as downstream geomorphic and ecological impacts. We invite studies examining the role of anthropogenic climate warming in GLOF activity, as well as approaches for incorporating dynamically evolving lake populations into flood, hazard, and risk models. We therefore welcome new insights from field observations, remote sensing, and process-based modelling that can improve lake monitoring, early warning, risk management, and assessments of downstream vulnerability.
This session seeks to cover the full breadth of glacial-lake research, spanning paleo-lake and paleo-flood reconstruction, state-of-the-art glacial-lake mapping and remote sensing, field observations, process-based modelling, and assessments of the geomorphological, hydraulic, and ecological impacts of GLOFs. We therefore aim to synthesize studies connecting observations across timescales and spatial scales, from individual lake and flood processes to regional and global changes, in order to provide new perspectives on the future evolution of glacial lakes and GLOF hazards.
Recent changes across the Antarctic atmosphere–ocean–cryosphere system have been profound, and projections suggest that many of these changes will continue or even accelerate. These changes arise from interactions spanning scales from turbulent boundary-layer exchange and individual weather systems to basin-scale ocean circulation and large-scale atmospheric variability. These components are often studied separately, despite forming connected physical pathways. Large-scale circulation and storm tracks modulate cyclones, katabatic winds and air-mass intrusions; atmospheric heat, moisture and momentum fluxes affect sea-ice formation, drift, export and polynya activity; sea-ice changes modify air–sea exchange, ocean stratification, mixing and continental-shelf circulation; and ocean heat and freshwater exchanges influence ice-shelf basal melting, cavity circulation and downstream climate feedbacks. Resolving these multiscale pathways is essential for understanding recent Antarctic change and improving future projections.
We invite contributions based on in situ observations, field campaigns, satellite remote sensing, reanalyses, theory, process studies, regional coupled models and Earth system models. Topics include multiscale atmospheric forcing of sea ice, polynyas and ice shelves; interactions among katabatic winds, cyclones, large-scale circulation and surface fluxes; feedbacks from leads and open water to the atmospheric boundary layer; sea-ice–wave–ice-shelf interactions; upper-ocean buoyancy forcing, stratification and convection; continental-shelf circulation, dense-water formation and export; ice-shelf meltwater and coupled feedbacks; and emergent behaviour under future climate change. We particularly encourage studies that connect two or more components through testable physical mechanisms, quantify interactions across weather-to-climate scales, assess observational or modelling uncertainties, or identify priorities for future observing systems and coupled-model development.
The marine-grounded basins of East Antarctica hold many metres of sea level potential. Some of their outlet glaciers are exhibiting signs of thinning and retreat, and in one case, an ice shelf has collapsed. Projections of the region's future have reduced confidence due to uncertain boundary conditions, among other factors. The understanding of regional natural climate variability remains low, and uncertainty on basin ice-mass balance is high. Change in this basin will impact sea level, ocean circulation, and regional marine ecosystems. This session will focus on evidence from the past, observations from the present, and new projections to, together, advance our understanding of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet's future. The session expects to receive work presenting existing and newly collected data from regions of East Antarctica where the ice sheet is grounded below sea level. Topics of interest include holistic studies on processes regulating ice dynamics, like subglacial hydrology, ice sheet grounding, ice shelf melt, ice shelf cavity regime transition, water stratification and circulation, dense water production and sea ice change. Data and models aimed at reconstructing ice mass and subglacial topography changes as well as continental margin and ocean circulation at regional scale are also included in this session, as ice-ocean-bedrock interactions strongly depend on the evolution of the basin’s geological boundary conditions.
CR2 – lce sheets, ice shelves and glaciers
Sub-Programme Group Scientific Officers: Violaine Coulon, Christina Draeger
Accurately capturing the glacial surface mass balance (SMB) and surface energy budget (SEB) is essential to reconstruct the past and reliably project the future mass change of glaciers, ice sheets and ice shelves, and their contribution to global sea level and freshwater supply. Changes in accumulation and surface melt affect glacier mass balance through fluctuations in equilibrium line altitude, snow/ice albedo and extent, surface elevation, rain and meltwater retention in firn. However, adequately accounting for all glacial surface processes and for their associated feedbacks over various spatiotemporal scales remains challenging. Combining observations and simulations across scales is thus crucial to better understand the SMB of glaciers, ice sheets and ice shelves.
We invite observational and model-based presentations on past reconstructions and future projections of the SMB and SEB over glaciers, ice sheets and ice shelves. We promote research that identifies drivers and further explores changes in rain/snow accumulation and redistribution, meltwater production, retention and refreezing in firn, and subsequent surface runoff, sublimation and blowing snow erosion. We welcome studies using global/regional climate models, SMB-SEB and positive degree day (PDD) models, or machine learning techniques that enhance our understanding of glacial surface processes from local to regional scales. Works combining SMB models with in-situ or remote sensing observations to quantify glacial mass change are also encouraged.
Ice sheets play an active role in the climate system by amplifying, pacing, and potentially driving global climate change over a wide range of time scales. The impact of interactions between ice sheets and climate include changes in atmospheric and ocean temperatures and circulation, global biogeochemical cycles, the global hydrological cycle, vegetation, sea level, and land-surface albedo, which in turn cause additional feedbacks in the climate system. This session will present data and modelling results that examine ice sheet interactions with other components of the climate system over several time scales. Among other topics, issues to be addressed in this session include ice sheet-climate interactions from glacial-interglacial to millennial and centennial time scales, the role of ice sheets in Cenozoic global cooling and the mid-Pleistocene transition, reconstructions of past ice sheets and sea level, the current and future evolution of the ice sheets, and the role of ice sheets in abrupt climate change.
Dynamic subglacial, supraglacial and englacial water networks play a key role in the flow and stability of glaciers and ice sheets. The accumulation of meltwater on the surface of ice shelves has been hypothesized as a potential mechanism controlling ice-shelf stability, with ice-shelf collapse triggering substantial increases in discharge of grounded ice. Observations and modelling also suggest that complex hydrological networks occur at the base of glaciers and ice sheets and these systems play a prominent role in controlling the flow of grounded ice. This session tackles the urgent need to better understand the fundamental processes involved in glacial hydrology that need to be addressed in order to accurately predict future ice-sheet evolution and mass loss, and ultimately the contribution to sea-level rise.
We seek contributions from both the observational and modelling communities relating to any area of ice-sheet, ice-shelf, or glacier hydrology. This includes but is not limited to: surface hydrology, melt lake and river formation; meltwater processes within the ice and firn; basal hydrology; subglacial lakes; impacts of meltwater on ice-sheet stability and flow; incorporation of any of these processes into large-scale climate and ice-sheet models.
This session welcomes a broad range of contributions on the modelling of glaciers and ice sheets, spanning methodological and applied studies, with an emphasis on their use in practice. We particularly encourage contributions on ice dynamics and higher-order mechanical models, data assimilation and inversion, uncertainty quantification, and the representation of coupled Earth-system processes within glacier and ice-sheet models.
Contributions addressing key physical processes and parameterizations, including basal processes, grounding line and calving dynamics, ice-ocean interactions, and novel constitutive relationships, are especially welcome. We also encourage applications of machine learning, differentiable programming, surrogate modelling, and other data driven methods to glacier and ice-sheet modelling.
Applications may address glaciers and ice sheets in both past and present climates, with specific interest in rapid ice dynamic change, ice streams and outlet glaciers, grounding line migration, glacier and ice sheet response to changing environmental forcing, and projections of future evolution and sea-level contribution. Model intercomparison, benchmarking, verification, and studies exploring model sensitivity and uncertainty are also strongly encouraged.
The session aims to bring together researchers developing modelling approaches and those applying them to observations and societally relevant questions, fostering exchange between the modelling and observational communities.
The ice-ocean boundary is an important interface in global climate system, both due to the ocean’s ability to impact ice sheet mass balance and the cryosphere’s influence on global ocean circulation. Processes at the ice-ocean interface play a crucial role in the dynamics of tidewater glaciers and ice shelves, and associated fjord and cavity circulation. However, a complete understanding and accurate representation of these processes in models remains a major challenge and a source of uncertainty for projections of ice mass loss and sea-level rise. Recent work to understand ice-ocean interactions has led to significant progress in theory, idealised models, and coupled ice-ocean models. New observations of processes such as seawater intrusion at grounding lines and channelised ice-shelf melting can provide further insights into our understanding of this important climate interface. These continued efforts are essential for improving projections of future sea-level rise contributions and freshwater fluxes from the Earth’s cryosphere under climate change.
In this session we aim to bring together the most up to date work on ice-ocean interactions across all latitudes, covering in-situ observations, remote-sensing, modelling and theory. We seek a bi-directional perspective, investigating both the impact of the ocean on the cryosphere and vice-versa, from small scale physical processes to global impacts. Topics for submission include but are not limited to: coupled ice-ocean models, ice shelf cavity and fjord circulation, ice mélange, subglacial meltwater plumes, basal and submarine melting and freshwater fluxes into the ocean. New observational datasets and methodologies are encouraged.
We welcome and encourage submissions from groups who are underrepresented in the cryosphere community and will endeavour to provide reasonable adjustments to any presenter who requires them.
Ice sheets and the surrounding polar oceans and atmosphere form a tightly coupled system whose evolution is central to global sea level, ocean circulation, and the overall climate. This session focuses on the interactions of ice shelves and tidewater glaciers with the ocean, atmosphere, and sea ice on the continental shelves around Greenland, Antarctica, and the Arctic. We welcome contributions addressing any scale and aspect of this physical system or of any of its approximations, simplifications, or analogs. This session aims to bridge observational, laboratory, theoretical, modeling, and data-science perspectives to improve understanding of ice-ocean-atmosphere interactions and their relevance in the climate system. We welcome work from both polar regions or any other planets and across disciplines, including fluid and solid mechanics, glaciology, oceanography, or atmospheric and climate sciences.
We propose an interactive PICO session format to encourage in-person dialog and random human interactions with the hope of fostering in-depth discussions and future scientific collaborations.
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are the primary sources of uncertainty in sea-level projections through 2100 and beyond. This session focuses on recent progress in ice-sheet modelling and its implications for sea-level rise across timescales – from paleo-climates to future projections.
We invite contributions linked to international coordinated ice-sheet modelling efforts, such as the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP7 (ISMIP7), the Tipping Points Modelling Intercomparison Project (TIPMIP), the Paleo Ice Sheet Modelling Intercomparison Project (PaleoISMIP), and other model intercomparison projects. Together, these initiatives aim to advance our understanding of ice-sheet trajectories across timescales by projecting the ice-sheet contributions to sea level over the coming decades and centuries, systematically assessing the long-term ice-sheet stability and tipping risks, and investigating the ice-sheet response to past, warmer than pre-industrial climates.
We welcome multi-model and single-model analyses of simulations following the coordinated protocols, as well as following other approaches. We particularly encourage submissions that explore and quantify uncertainties in the past and future ice-sheet evolution, including those arising from model physics, parameterizations, and climate forcing. Studies disentangling the role of initialization approaches, and the sensitivity of ice-sheet trajectories to initial conditions are highly welcome. We also seek contributions that examine coupled ice sheet-climate interactions, including feedback processes between the ice sheets, atmosphere, and ocean, and their impact on ice-sheet stability and sea-level rise. Through this session, we aim to foster collaboration and advance a more robust, community-based understanding of the past and future ice-sheet trajectories.
This session seeks advances in the mathematical and numerical foundations of physics-based models of glaciers and ice sheets. We welcome new numerical methods and discretization frameworks, as well as mathematical analysis of the underlying continuum equations, including results on well-posedness and solution behavior. Contributions on the analysis of numerical methods, including consistency, stability, convergence, accuracy, and robustness, are particularly encouraged.
We welcome advances in solvers, computational libraries, and coupling techniques. Methodological advancements for the treatment of challenging components and boundaries, such as grounding lines, calving fronts, subglacial hydrology, and ice–ocean interactions, along with inverse problem methodology, are aligned with the session's scope. Theoretical and methodological developments in machine learning, including new architectures for glaciological applications, are also welcome, as are contributions that connect mathematical analysis to practical glacier and ice-sheet simulation.
Ice rheology and basal sliding properties are among the primary modulators for glacier and ice sheet’s response to climate change -- yet they are also among the least-well constrained. This session invites lab, theory, field, and modelling studies that pertain directly to improving our understanding of ice rheology and basal sliding, alongside quantification of error terms inherent to their imperfect understanding.
Examples of the type of work we look forward to platforming include laboratory, field, and computational studies regarding the following: ice rheology (constraints on Glen’s flow law parameters, damage, anisotropy, the influence of impurities and water content, and indeed alternative formulations for representing ice rheology), basal sliding over a diverse range of bed properties, snapshot/transient methods for deriving ice rheology and basal sliding relationships, and sensitivity/error quantification studies considering what happens when we turn these dials. Extensions to the influence of hydrology on basal sliding are explicitly welcome.
We hope to use this session to promote conversations for practitioners within and between these two strands, to bridge the different communities working on those topics, and to foster the generation of ideas that advance progress to better quantify and reduce uncertainties.
The increasing availability of in-situ and remote sensing observations provides new opportunities to constrain glacier and ice sheet models and improve the representation of model parameters and states. In this session, we aim to bring together researchers who develop observational products and those developing new approaches in calibration, inverse modelling and data assimilation to better inform models and uncertainties in the predictions.
We invite studies developing direct and indirect observations, including, but not limited to, mass balance, surface elevation, ice thickness, velocity, glacier geometry, transient snowlines, albedo, snow cover, and firn properties. We also welcome contributions on model calibration, parameter estimation and inverse modelling, including optimisation, Bayesian methods, automatic differentiation and multi-objective approaches. Contributions on data assimilation and state estimation, including ensemble, particle-filter and variational methods as well as machine-learning-assisted approaches, are also encouraged. We also welcome studies addressing observational, parameter and model uncertainties and their propagation through calibration and data assimilation.
The Antarctic Ice Sheet is a critical component of the global climate system, and its margins are particularly vulnerable to atmospheric and oceanic forcing. The retreat and dynamic instability of these margins pose one of the largest uncertainties in future sea-level rise projections. Understanding the past and future evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet requires an approach that brings together direct observations, paleo-environmental reconstructions, and numerical modeling.
This session invites contributions focusing on understanding the dynamics of Antarctic ice sheet margins through data and models across various timescales, from paleo and Holocene retreat to near- and long-term future projections. To bridge the gaps between empirical data and physical models, we strongly encourage (1) field studies incorporating different empirical datasets that help constrain numerical models, (2) modeling-based studies that help interpret observations and paleo reconstructions, and (3) combined studies involving data-model comparisons over different timescales.
Topics of interest include processes driving grounding line migration across timescales; reconstructions of past ice margin retreat/advance from marine and terrestrial geological archives; observations or reconstructions of ice dynamics and mass balance changes; the identification of tipping points and conditions, and projections of future ice-sheet contributions to global sea-level rise. By bringing together observation and modeling, this session aims to foster cross-disciplinary discussions and improve our predictive capability regarding the fate of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.
As glaciers retreat globally under climate warming, ice-marginal lakes are expanding rapidly in both number and area, and an increasing number of glaciers and ice sheet margins now terminate in freshwater. The presence of a lake alters glacier boundary conditions by enabling calving and subaqueous melt, which can destabilize glacier termini, modify ice motion, and decouple glacier retreat from direct climatic forcing. However, the physical processes governing lake-terminating systems and their representation in numerical models remain poorly constrained compared with marine-terminating systems.
This session aims to advance our understanding of the interactions between glaciers and ice-marginal lakes across diverse spatial and temporal scales. We invite contributions addressing, but not limited to: (1) the dynamics of lake-terminating glaciers, including calving, frontal ablation, subaqueous melt, flotation, and terminus stability, (2) the dynamic response of glaciers to lake-level changes and drainage events, including the filling and draining of ice-marginal lakes and their effects on basal conditions, ice velocity, and terminus position, and (3) the transition from land- to lake-terminating conditions (or vice versa) and its effects on glacier dynamics.
We invite contributions based on field observations, remote sensing, numerical modelling, laboratory experiments, and theoretical framework, covering mountain glaciers, ice caps, and ice sheet margins across all glaciated regions. Studies comparing lake-terminating and marine-terminating systems, and palaeo perspectives on ice-lake interaction are also encouraged.
CR3 – Sea, Lake and River Ice
Sub-Programme Group Scientific Officers: Lettie Roach, Falk M. Oraschewski
Significant reductions in Arctic sea ice extent, concentration and thickness have been consistently observed over recent decades. Whilst Antarctic sea ice extent remained relatively stable until 2016-2017, the subsequent period has been characterised by a marked decline and increased interannual variability, including several years of exceptionally low sea ice extent. These recent changes have raised questions about the mechanisms driving Antarctic sea ice variability and the extent to which the post-2016 decline represents a persistent shift or enhanced variability. Climate projections suggest continued reductions in sea ice cover at both poles, with the Arctic becoming seasonally ice-free during the latter half of this century.
The scientific community is investing considerable effort in consolidating our current knowledge of the physical and bio-geochemical properties of sea ice, improving our understanding of poorly understood sea ice processes, and forecasting future changes in sea ice cover, including through initiatives such as CMIP6.
In this session, we invite contributions addressing all aspects of sea ice science and sea ice–climate interactions in both the Arctic and Southern Ocean, including snow and sea ice thermodynamics and dynamics, sea ice–atmosphere and sea ice–ocean interactions, sea ice biological and chemical processes, remote sensing and field studies, related laboratory studies, and modelling. Contributions addressing emerging processes, feedbacks and their implications for sea ice and the wider climate system are particularly welcome.
In recent years, sea ice has displayed behaviour previously unseen in the satellite record. This fast-changing sea-ice cover calls for adapting and improving our modelling approaches and mathematical techniques to simulate its behaviour and its interaction with the atmosphere and the ocean, both in terms of dynamics and thermodynamics.
Sea ice is governed by a variety of small-scale processes that affect its large-scale evolution. Modelling this nonlinear coupled multidimensional system remains a major challenge, because (1) we still lack the understanding of the physics governing sea-ice dynamics and thermodynamics, (2) observations to conduct model evaluation are scarce, and (3) the numerical approximation and the simulation become more difficult and computationally expensive at higher resolution.
Recently, several new modelling approaches have been developed and refined to address these issues. These include but are not limited to new rheologies, discrete element models, advanced subgrid parameterizations, the representation of wave-ice interactions, sophisticated data assimilation schemes, and machine learning techniques for hybrid simulation, emulation, and downscaling. Moreover, novel in-situ observations and the growing availability and quality of sea-ice remote-sensing data bring new opportunities for improving sea-ice models.
This session aims to bring together researchers working on the development of sea-ice models, from small to large scales and for a wide range of applications such as idealised experiments, operational predictions, or climate simulations, to discuss current advances and challenges ahead.
The Arctic Ocean is transitioning from a perennial to an increasingly seasonal sea-ice cover, implying an emerging new Arctic. However, major uncertainties remain regarding (1) when, where and how ice-free conditions will emerge, (2) the physical mechanisms governing the timing, pace, and regional expression of this transition, (3) whether the first ice-free summer will mark a persistent new regime, and (4) how predictable this transition is.
This session explores climate predictability across different timescales, ranging from short-term forecasts to centennial projections, including sub-seasonal to multidecadal predictions. The aim is to better understand and predict the emerging Arctic sea-ice regime, including but not limited to ice-free summers. In particular, we want to explore how the sources and limits of sea-ice predictability evolve as the Arctic warms and transitions toward a new regime. This session also targets the studies of both the drivers and effects of a new Arctic sea-ice regime, such as but not limited to the analysis of sea ice - atmosphere - ocean interactions, the connection to the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans, the regional Arctic climate, and Arctic marine heatwaves.
We welcome contributions that make use of a range of tools, including dynamical and statistical models, machine learning, causal methods, hybrid approaches, and process-based diagnostics using observations.
River and lake ice are key components of cold-region freshwater systems. Their seasonal formation, growth, movement and decay influence river hydraulics and flood risk, lake heat budgets and mixing, sediment transport, ecosystems, infrastructure, hydropower, winter transportation and public safety. In rivers, frazil production, ice transport, accumulation and ice-jam formation can modify flow conditions and water levels. In lakes, the timing, duration, thickness and properties of ice cover control exchanges of heat, light and momentum between water and atmosphere.
Freshwater ice processes result from interactions among atmospheric forcing, hydrology, hydraulics, thermodynamics, ice mechanics and snow conditions. Climate-driven changes in air temperature, precipitation, snow cover, discharge and water temperature are altering freeze-up, ice-cover development and breakup, creating new challenges for prediction and risk assessment.
Modelling freshwater ice remains difficult because processes are strongly coupled, span multiple spatial and temporal scales, and differ between rivers and lakes. Model development and evaluation are further limited by sparse observations of ice thickness, concentration, velocity, roughness, snow-on-ice conditions, ice extent, thermal structure and ice jams, introducing uncertainty into calibration, validation and forecasting.
Recent advances in observations and computation provide new opportunities, including 1D, 2D and 3D models; thermodynamic and dynamic ice models; coupled atmosphere–hydrology–hydraulics–ice and lake-ice frameworks; data assimilation; uncertainty analysis; and machine learning. In-situ sensors, cameras, UAVs and remote sensing, including optical and radar imagery and satellite altimetry, also improve characterization of ice conditions and model evaluation.
This session invites contributions on river- and lake-ice processes, observations and modelling, including ice formation, growth, decay and breakup; freeze-up and breakup phenology; snow–ice interactions; frazil production and transport; ice jams and ice-induced flooding; lake-ice thickness, extent, thermal dynamics and stability; interactions among ice, flow, temperature, sediment and ecosystems; model development, coupling, calibration and validation; data assimilation, uncertainty quantification, probabilistic forecasting and machine learning; and operational applications for water management, infrastructure safety, hydropower and climate adaptation.
This session focuses on recent developments and research on ocean data assimilation. Data assimilation is essential for ocean forecasting, reanalysis, and climate studies. By optimally combining numerical simulations with various observations, data assimilation provides a dynamically consistent and comprehensive estimate of the present and past ocean state. This session invites abstract submissions on developments of data assimilation for the physical ocean together with coupled components such as sea ice, marine ecosystems, land-sea interface and atmosphere for ensuring consistency with other parts of the Earth system. The session also focuses on impact of the assimilation and deployment of novel space-borne and in-situ observations such as autonomous platforms, wide-swath satellite tracks, and deep in-situ observations and biogeochemistry profilers.
Beyond state estimation, this session also welcomes contributions in parameter estimation, uncertainty quantification, and hybrid machine learning and data assimilation methods focused on the ocean.
CR4 – Frozen ground, debris-covered glaciers and geomorphology
Sub-Programme Group Scientific Officers: Samuel Weber, Cristina Pérez-Guillén
Recent studies show widespread warming of permafrost and indicate that the Arctic has warmed up to four times faster than the global average. Increasing temperatures initiate a wide range of landscape and environmental changes, including gradual and abrupt permafrost thaw, vegetation changes, and changes in hydrological and fire regimes. Interdisciplinary efforts are needed to further investigate developments in Arctic, boreal, and high-latitude permafrost regions and to better understand the processes and impacts of ongoing changes.
This session is intended as a forum for scientists involved in state-of-the-art research on permafrost disturbance dynamics, associated processes, and impacts. We welcome contributions concerning studies on different scales, from local studies including field observations, near-surface geophysics, and drone measurements, to regional and circumpolar analyses supported by remote sensing techniques and modelling approaches. We encourage submissions targeted at dynamic permafrost disturbance processes, including thermokarst, coastal erosion, anthropogenic impacts, hydrology, mass movements, sediment fluxes, biogeochemical cycling and associated fluxes.
This session seeks abstracts on (1) novel observations of permafrost disturbance-related phenomena; (2) the impact of permafrost changes on the natural and human environment; and (3) advances and new developments in measurement, modelling, parametrization, and understanding of permafrost-related processes.
We particularly encourage contributions that (a) identify processes related to disturbances and environmental changes in permafrost regions; (b) present novel measurement and monitoring approaches; (c) outline new strategies to improve process understanding; (d) come from or interface with neighbouring fields of science or apply innovative technologies and methods; and (e) investigate model validation, model uncertainty, and scaling issues of diverse processes.
Mountain permafrost is degrading worldwide, and the consequences are becoming increasingly visible: destabilizing rock slopes that fail as large landslides or rock-ice avalanches, thawing ice-rich terrain that feeds sudden and destructive debris flows, and ground subsidence that threatens high-mountain infrastructure. Recent catastrophic events in mountain regions around the globe have shown how these processes can cascade across the landscape, affecting water resources, ecosystems, settlements, and tourism. Yet much of this change remains hidden below the surface – making the monitoring and understanding of mountain permafrost systems more important than ever.
This session brings together the full breadth of mountain permafrost and periglacial research, from the high Arctic through continental mountain ranges (e.g., Alps, Andes, Tibetan Plateau, Scandes) to the arid unglaciated areas of Antarctica. We welcome studies of ice-rich and ice-poor landforms alike, including rock glaciers, talus slopes, plateaus, ice-cored moraines, steep rock walls, and thermokarst terrain.
We particularly encourage contributions that advance the understanding of processes at slope to regional scales, and studies that combine multiple methods or introduce newly developed approaches. Contributions may include, among others:
- geophysical measurements and analysis (e.g., ERT, SRT, DAS, EM, IP, GPR, TLS);
- in-situ monitoring (e.g., ground temperatures, discharge, kinematics, GNSS);
- remote sensing (e.g., optical, thermal, InSAR, UAV surveys);
- numerical modeling of past, present and future processes and scenarios;
- early warning systems and hazard assessment;
- machine learning and AI applications for permafrost data analysis;
- long-term monitoring series and the characterization of new permafrost sites with state-of-the-art methods.
Our goal is to improve the understanding of how mountain permafrost responds to climate change, and to provide a meeting point for the international mountain permafrost community – fostering exchange, joint research developments, and new collaborations across disciplines.
Early-career scientists are warmly encouraged to submit their work to this session.
Debris-covered glaciers are found everywhere on Earth (and on other planets) and are becoming more widespread with climate warming. Understanding the effects of supraglacial debris on glacier mass balance and dynamics, and the geomorphic processes that govern debris supply, transport, and landscape evolution, is therefore required to explore the evolution of debris-covered glaciers and improve projections of global changes in glacier volumes and their downstream impacts. We invite the vibrant community of researchers working on debris-covered glaciers to share their most recent advances in this session. We welcome submissions on all aspects of debris-covered glacier research including but not limited to: the dynamics of debris-covered glaciers, glacier surface energy and mass balance, surface processes such as ice cliffs and supraglacial ponds, supraglacial debris properties, debris-covered glacier hydrology, interactions with slope processes and surrounding geomorphology, landscape evolution linked to debris-covered glaciers, and the influence of supraglacial debris on near-surface meteorology. Methodological developments for studying debris-covered glaciers are also welcome, including; novel field observation techniques, remote sensing analyses at local or global scales, and glacier models or machine-learning approaches applied to debris-covered glaciers.
Rapid retreat of glaciers and icesheets in the Arctic is exposing increasingly extensive ice-free land margins. These unique environments are at the distinct interface between active glacial systems and their surrounding landscapes: they are geomorphologically inherited from past and ongoing deglaciation yet remain dynamically coupled to the ice masses they border, through meltwater, sediment, and permafrost degradation. This proximity distinguishes them from more distal periglacial or paraglacial settings and drives a characteristic, but still poorly integrated, suite of surface processes, including permafrost thaw and associated ground instability, coastal erosion and progradation, vegetation and surface change, fluvial and glacio-fluvial sediment transport, relative sea-level change, and natural hazards such as landslides and glacial lake outburst floods. These transforming landscapes also represent spaces where local communities pursue traditional livelihoods and practices.
This session invites contributions addressing any of these processes, individually or in combination, within ice-free land margins across the Arctic, spanning the full transition zone from the ice margin to the coast, including, but not limited to, Greenland, Svalbard, Iceland and Canada. We welcome studies using field observations, remote sensing, geochronology, numerical modelling, or process-based approaches, at timescales ranging from contemporary monitoring to Holocene reconstruction. We particularly encourage contributions that examine linkages between processes (e.g. how permafrost thaw modulates sediment delivery to coasts, or how deglaciation history conditions present-day landscape sensitivity), and comparative studies across regions. By bringing together researchers working on different processes within this shared setting, the session aims to build a more integrated understanding of how these environments are responding, and will continue to respond, to sustained ice-mass loss.
Present-day glacial and periglacial processes in cold regions, i.e. arctic and alpine environments, provide modern analogues to processes and climatic changes that took place during the Pleistocene, including gradual retreat or collapse of ice sheets and mountain glaciers, thawing and shrinking of lowland permafrost and the location and evolution of rock glaciers. Current geomorphological and glaciological changes in mid-latitude mountain ranges could also serve as a proxy for future changes in high-latitude regions within a context of climate change. Examples are speed-up or disintegration of creeping permafrost features or the relictification of rock glaciers. Rock glaciers are highly relevant in various fields of research, such as geomorphology, hydrology, geohazards, paleo-permafrost and climate impact studies. Despite their significance, their complex interactions with environmental variables and the impact of climate change on their evolution remain incompletely understood.
For our session we invite contributions that either:
1. investigate present-day glacial and/or periglacial landforms, sediments and processes to describe the current state, to reconstruct past environmental conditions and to predict future scenarios in cold regions; or
2. have a Quaternary focus and aim at enhancing our understanding of past glacial, periglacial and paraglacial processes, also through the application of dating techniques; or
3. discuss innovative methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches, aiming to improve the understanding of past and/or present processes and to assess future rock glacier evolution.
Case studies that use a multi-disciplinary approach (e.g. ranging from observations to modelling, from geophysical to remote sensing methodologies, from site-specific to regional studies in diverse geographic regions of the World) and/or that highlight the interaction between the glacial, periglacial and paraglacial cryospheric components in cold regions are particularly welcome.
Glaciers cover roughly 10 percent of the Earth’s surface and help shape landscapes and relief in high latitude regions and many mountain ranges. Subglacial processes, such as sliding, create material that shapes the landscape. Debris that falls upon the ice, or is entrained in it, is advected down glacier to where it melts out, creating moraines. Existing sediment below the glacier can be mobilized by pressurized subglacial water and is then transported in proglacial rivers or deposited in lakes or fjords. Global glacial retreat is increasingly producing new ice-free areas in various geomorphological settings, from high-mountain valleys to coastal lowlands. The associated losses include decreased provision of meltwater in summer, reduced surface albedo and associated cooling effects, and in some cases increased natural hazards resulting from paraglacial geomorphic processes. However, there may be potential benefits, such as carbon storage in the vegetation, soil development and enlargement of pasture lands in now-exposed glacial sediments. An integrated, multi-disciplinary projection of the future properties and value of deglaciated valleys remains elusive but is necessary as we prepare for an uncertain future under climate change.
This session aims to improve understanding of glacier dynamics, surface processes, soil and plant development in glacial and deglaciating environments, and their interactions. We therefore invite contributions using experiments, modeling, laboratory, field observations and archives or remote sensing methods, or a combination thereof, that evaluate glacial processes, surface processes, soil development, ecological processes and their feedbacks. We welcome submissions that address these processes across a wide range of timescales, from sub-daily to multi-millennial, including those focused on these dynamics during past climate variations. Additionally, we are interested in studies that are focused on diverse glaciated environments from small alpine glaciers to ice sheets, improve methodology, are multidisciplinary or from previously understudied mountain regions – including in the global south. Research that addresses the changes that occur as climate warms and how these processes interact with other aspects of the Earth system, including glacier dynamics, is of particular interest for this session.
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CR5 – Snow and ice: properties, processes, hazards
Sub-Programme Group Scientific Officers: Cristina Pérez-Guillén, Samuel Weber
Although snow may evoke pleasant childhood memories for many, it can also pose various hazards. Some common hazards associated with snowfall and accumulation include (1) disruption of traffic lines due to snow accumulations or bad visibility, (2) damage to infrastructure, such as buildings or power lines, from snow loads or snow creep, (3) flooding due to rapid snowmelt and rain-on-snow events, and (4) snow avalanches that can damage infrastructure or cause loss of life. In all these cases, the presence and accumulation of snow are key factors contributing to the hazards, and it is essential to recognise the impact these hazards can have to better predict their occurrence and mitigate their risks.
The aim of this session is thus to improve our understanding of processes responsible for snow and avalanche hazards and share solutions to monitor and mitigate their impact. We welcome contributions from novel field, laboratory, and numerical studies as well as specific case studies. Topics relevant to snow and avalanche hazards include, but are not limited to, monitoring and predicting snowfall, drifting or blowing snow, meteorological driving factors, snow cover simulations, snow mechanics, avalanche formation and dynamics, avalanche forecasting, and risk mitigation measures such as technical protection measures or nature-based solutions like protective forests.
Photonics is a powerful field for monitoring a wide range of processes, from atomic spectroscopy and microscopy to satellite monitoring and medical imaging. Many optical technologies have also been used to monitor snow and ice and their properties, including absorption, scattering, albedo, density, algae, pollutants, and melting. While some of these are well-established techniques, others have undergone significant recent developments, and their application to snow and ice could provide new insights. These include spectroscopy, Hyperspectral, satellite and UAV imaging, diffuse optics, Raman spectroscopy, Fluorescence, microscopy, OCT, to name a few and provide various information ranging from spectral composition, visible-NIR-SWIR imaging, surface characterization, chlorophyll activation, water percolation, crystal structure, etc. Rapid advances in laser and detection technology through miniaturisation and lower cost are further creating new opportunities in many of these fields, while the development of multimodal optical measurement platforms offers opportunities to monitor multiple parameters through cross-disciplinary approaches. This session therefore aims to bring together researchers from diverse photonic disciplines to explore how light can be used to measure snow and its components, and to identify complementary information that can be obtained through interdisciplinary collaboration.
Snow cover characteristics (e.g., spatial distribution, surface and internal physical properties) are continuously evolving over a wide range of scales due to meteorological conditions, such as precipitation, wind, and radiation.
Most processes occurring in the snow cover depend on the vertical and horizontal distribution of its physical properties, which are primarily controlled by the microstructure of snow (e.g., density and specific surface area). In turn, snow metamorphism changes the microstructure, leading to feedback loops that affect the snow cover on coarser scales. This can have far-reaching implications for a wide range of applications, including snow hydrology, weather forecasting, climate modelling, avalanche hazard forecasting, and the remote sensing of snow. The characterization of snow thus demands synergistic investigations of the hierarchy of processes across the scales, ranging from explicit microstructure-based studies to sub-grid parameterizations for unresolved processes in large-scale phenomena (e.g., albedo and drifting snow).
This session is therefore devoted to modelling and measuring snow processes across scales. The aim is to gather researchers from various disciplines to share their expertise on snow processes in seasonal and perennial snowpacks. We invite contributions ranging from “small” scales, as encountered in microstructure studies, over “intermediate” scales typically relevant for 1D snowpack models, up to “coarse” scales, that typically emerge for spatially distributed modelling over mountainous or polar snow- and ice-covered regions. Specifically, we welcome contributions reporting results from field, laboratory, and numerical studies of the physical and chemical evolution of snowpacks. We also welcome contributions reporting statistical or dynamic downscaling methods of atmospheric driving data, assimilation of in-situ and remotely sensed observations, representation of sub-grid processes in coarse-scale models, and evaluation of model performance and associated uncertainties.
Water in the snowpack and in glaciers represents an important component of the hydrological cycle in many regions of the world and is crucial to sustaining life during dry seasons. Predicted impacts of climate change in catchments with snow and/or glacier cover (i.e., shifts from snowfall to rainfall, modified total precipitation amounts, earlier snowmelt, and shrinking glacier cover) will affect water resources availability for environmental and anthropogenic uses at multiple scales, with implications for energy production, agriculture, drinking water provision, as well as for water water management and ecosystems.
Runoff generation in catchments that feature snow or ice profoundly differs from purely rainfed catchments. Yet, our knowledge of snow/ice accumulation and melt, meltwater flowpaths, meltwater contribution to runoff, and the evolution of these catchments' hydrological regime in a changing climate, remain highly uncertain. This is due to both limited availability and inherently high spatial variability of hydrological and meteorological data.
This session welcomes contributions on the following topics (but is not limited to these):
- Experimental research on the physical processes determining snow and ice melt runoff and their potential implementation in hydrological models;
- Development of novel strategies for snow and ice melt runoff modelling in diverse and/or changing climatic and land-cover conditions, including glacier retreat
- Evaluation of remote-sensing or in-situ snow products and application for snow and glacier melt runoff calibration, data assimilation, streamflow forecasting or quantification of the physical properties of snow and ice
- Studies exploring glacier and snow meltwater through stable water isotopes, including experimental investigations and development of isotope-enabled snow and hydrological models
- Studies addressing the impact of climate change and/or extreme events, e.g., droughts, on the water cycle of snow and glacier affected catchments
- Studies targeting snowpack, snowmelt, glacier, ice melt or runoff time series reconstruction or reanalysis over long periods to fill data gaps
Recent years have seen extraordinarily large events and disasters originating from the high-mountain cryosphere in the Himalaya and beyond. Some of those events in the last five years include the 2021 Melamchi debris flow in Nepal, the 2021 rock-ice avalanche in Chamoli, Uttarakhand, India, or the 2023 South Lhonak GLOF, Sikkim, India.
The most devastating was the 26 August 2026 Rasuwa disaster in Nepal. A very large rock slope failure occurred on the northern slopes of Langtang Lirung (7240 m asl), together with the overlying glacier with an estimated failure volume of 110 to 130 million m3; it produced a rock-ice avalanche that rushed into the Lendhe valley and gradually transformed into a debris flood that devastated the Bhote-Koshi and Trishuli valleys on a length of more than 100 km, through Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading, Gorkha, and Chitwan districts and across the border into Gyirong County, Tibet Autonomous Region. The path of destruction down the valleys is far beyond any historical monsoon-type flood. More than 1,500 people have confirmed dead, around 5,000 are missing, many have been injured, and large number of infrastructures have been damaged or lost. About 10% of Nepal’s hydropower production was wiped away. Total estimated loss as per preliminary estimate is USD 2.7 Billion (6.7% of Nepal’s GDP) and estimated cost for re-building is USD 4.8 Billion (11.8% of Nepal’s GDP).
In this context, understanding the processes behind increasing cases of cryosphere-originated disasters risks in the Himalayan region in South Asia, assessing hazards and residual risks, and identifying ways forward to minimize future risk is critical to support resilient development and planning of societies in the Himalayan region and beyond.
This session aims to bring together the various multi-disciplinary research that has been conducted in the weeks and months after the disaster. It includes but is not limited to aspects such as pre-disaster development in the source area, conditioning and potential preparatory or triggering factors of the initial rock slope failure, attribution to climate change, flow processes and dynamics of the avalanche and debris flood, landscape impact and longer term change, loss and damage estimates, implications for hazard and risk analysis in the region and related recommendations.
We also invite contributions on analysis of other recent large events in the region that can foster insights into the above outlined aspects.
CR6 – Instrumental and paleo-archive observations, analyses, and data-driven methods in the cryospheric sciences
Sub-Programme Group Scientific Officers: Falk M. Oraschewski, Lettie Roach
Machine learning (ML) is increasingly advancing cryospheric science, offering new ways to extract information from the rapidly growing volume of satellite, airborne, and in situ observations and to accelerate numerical modeling. Deep learning has proven particularly effective for computer vision tasks such as calving front detection, glacier outline delineation, mapping of permafrost landforms, sea ice classification, and snow cover mapping. Beyond image analysis, ML-based emulators can reproduce the behavior of computationally expensive physical models. This enables large ensembles and the inversion of poorly constrained parameters. Hybrid and physics-informed approaches further promise to combine the flexibility of data-driven methods with physical consistency. More recently, foundation models pretrained on large Earth observation archives have raised expectations of strong transferability across regions and sensors, particularly for applications where labeled training data are scarce. However, their benefit for cryospheric applications has yet to be demonstrated, as they have not consistently outperformed task-specific architectures trained from scratch. Systematic evaluation on shared benchmark datasets is therefore essential to measure real progress. We invite contributions on all aspects of machine learning for the cryosphere, including but not limited to computer vision and remote sensing, model emulation and hybrid modeling, benchmark datasets, as well as trust and interpretability. We also welcome critical perspectives, such as barriers to adoption, computational costs, and cases where ML approaches did not outperform physics-based methods.
Earth’s cryosphere demonstrates itself in many shapes and forms, but we use similar geophysical and in-situ methods to study its wide spectrum: from ice-sheets and glaciers, to firn and snow, sea ice, permafrost, and en-glacial and subglacial environments.
In this session, we welcome contributions related to all methods in cryospheric measurements, including: advances in radioglaciology, active and passive seismology, geoelectrics, acoustic sounding, fibre-optic sensing, GNSS reflectometry, signal attenuation, and time delay techniques, cosmic ray neutron sensing, ROV and drone applications, and electromagnetic methods. Contributions can include field applications, new approaches in geophysical or in-situ survey techniques, or theoretical advances in data analysis processing or inversion. Case studies from all parts of the cryosphere, including snow and firn, alpine glaciers, ice sheets, glacial and periglacial environments, alpine and arctic permafrost as well as rock glaciers, or sea ice, are highly welcome.
This session will give you an opportunity to step out of your research focus of a single cryosphere type and to share experiences in the application, processing, analysis, and interpretation of different geophysical and in-situ techniques in these highly complex environments. This session has been running for over a decade and always produces lively and informative discussion. We have a successful history of PICO and other short-style presentations - submit here if you want a guaranteed short oral!
Remote sensing in the ‘Big Data’ era is characterised by the availability of petabytes of satellite data, facilitating observations of the cryosphere at increasingly high temporal and spatial scales. These datasets are invaluable for understanding past and contemporary changes to the cryosphere, which is particularly crucial as climate change continues and extreme events become increasingly frequent.
To fully utilise the wealth of satellite data available, the last decade has seen reliance on new approaches for accessing, processing, interpreting, and distributing results from large-scale datasets. These approaches include:
• new technologies for data access including cloud-optimised datasets;
• cloud geoprocessing platforms and on-demand data products;
• data fusion methods that combine coincident satellite observations and assimilate them into numerical and physical models;
• machine- and deep-learning approaches;
• large-scale, automated data pipelines to understand and monitor entire ice sheets, ice shelves, or glaciated and snow-covered regions;
• and a widespread philosophy of open data and software sharing to enable rapid dissemination of new approaches.
This session seeks contributions from anyone working on remote sensing of any element of the cryosphere. In particular, we welcome submissions from those researching the cryosphere using large-scale remote sensing data pipelines, machine and deep learning, cloud processing, open-source code/data, and other contemporary approaches.
Recent advances in sensing technology have resulted in the development of a range of ground-based methods which can “sense” cryospheric environments at high spatial (millimetre to centimetre scale) and temporal (minutes to hours) resolutions. Such close-range sensors can be used to observe rapidly evolving processes (e.g. iceberg calving, glacial lake outburst floods, supraglacial lake drainage events, snow accumulation/melting) as well as cryospheric environments at small spatial scales (e.g. small glaciers, glacierets, snow patches, rock glaciers). Such processes and environments cannot be observed using satellite Earth Observation techniques due to their coarse spatial resolution and long revisit times. In particular, close-range sensors are flexible in their deployment in the field and can observe cryospheric phenomenon from a range of viewing angles which is particularly beneficial in environments with complex topography, which are commonplace across the cryosphere. Close-range sensors are therefore critical for improving process understanding but also for monitoring cryospheric hazards and the development of hazard warning systems.
In this session, we welcome contributions related to a variety of close-range sensing methods, including, but not limited to, uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), radar, time-lapse photography, TLS and LiDAR. Contributions may include field-based applications, laboratory experiments, development of new systems (e.g. payloads, sensors), novel sensing networks, and new approaches related to the processing and analysis of these data. We strongly welcome case studies from all parts of the cryosphere, including glaciers (both land-based or calving), ice sheets, snow and firn, glacial and periglacial environments, and sea ice. The focus of this session will be to share experiences of developing and applying close-range sensors for cryospheric research in order to showcase the latest developments in this evolving field of research.
Laboratory experiments enable us to isolate, reproduce, and investigate cryospheric processes and to develop and test new measurement techniques under controlled conditions. By complementing field studies, remote sensing, and numerical modeling, they provide a powerful approach to address pressing and complex questions about the fate of the cryosphere.
This session explores both the strengths and unique challenges of this laboratory approach, from experimental design and practical implementation to translating findings to the field. We welcome laboratory studies covering all components of the cryosphere on Earth and other planetary bodies, such as permafrost, sea ice, snow, and glaciers. We invite contributions across methods and scales, from microscale to large-scale experiments, such as physical analogue experiments, mechanical testing, tomography, and the development and testing of new measurement methods. This includes testing of materials, infrastructure, in situ sensors, and technologies for engineering applications. We encourage studies explicitly linking laboratory experiments with field observations, numerical modeling, and remote sensing.
By bringing together researchers working across different cryospheric disciplines and at different experimental scales, this session will provide a unique opportunity to discuss the methods, strengths, and challenges of laboratory approaches.
Rapid change in contemporary ice sheets and glaciers pose a major challenge for predicting future sea-level rise, in large part because many key processes operate beyond the range of modern observations. Palaeo glaciology provides critical natural experiments for exploring these processes, yet the palaeo and modern glaciology communities often use different data, modelling approaches, and forums for knowledge exchange. This session aims to bridge that divide by bringing together researchers working on modern and palaeo glaciology to explore shared processes, transferable methods, and common uncertainties. We welcome contributions that integrate geological and geophysical observations, numerical modelling, model-data comparison, and theory across temporal scales. Particular emphasis is placed on insights into marine ice sheet instability, surface mass balance, ice-water interactions, ice stream dynamics, and solid Earth processes. By fostering dialogue across communities, this session seeks to strengthen physically grounded projections of future glacial change.
Marine sedimentary archives provide crucial information about past climate conditions and biogeochemical processes in the polar oceans. These records help constrain the range and underlying mechanisms of natural environmental variability and provide an essential long-term context for understanding ongoing changes at high latitudes. This session invites contributions focused on reconstructing Quaternary polar environments from marine sediment archives, as well as methodological developments that expand and refine the proxy toolbox available for studying these records. We welcome a broad range of approaches, including, but not limited to, sedimentology, micropaleontology, organic and inorganic geochemistry, isotope geochemistry, and sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA).
The over half-century since the first deep ice core drilling at Camp Century, Greenland, has seen increased spatial coverage of polar ice cores, as well as extensive development in methods of ice sample extraction, analysis and interpretation. Growth and innovation continue as we address pressing scientific questions surrounding past climate dynamics, environmental variability and glaciological phenomena. New challenges include the retrieval of old, highly thinned ice, interpretation of altered chemical signals, and the integration of chemical proxies into earth system models. We invite contributions reporting the state-of-the-art in ice coring science, including drilling and processing, dating, analytical techniques, results and interpretations of ice core records from polar ice sheets and mid- and low-latitude glaciers, remote and autonomous methods of surveying ice stratigraphy, proxy system modelling and related earth system modelling. We encourage submissions from early career researchers from across the broad international ice core science community. Contributions from on-going projects focusing on old and/or deep ice including, Green2Ice, COLDEX and Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice are very welcome.
Fibre-optic based techniques enable highly precise point and distributed sensing of the full ground motion wavefield including translation, rotation and strain, as well as environmental parameters such as temperature at scales and with a degree of coverage previously unattainable with conventional geophysical sensors. Considerable improvements in optical and atom interferometry enable new concepts for inertial rotation, translational displacement and acceleration sensing. Laser reflectometry and polarisation analysis on commercial fibre-optic cables allow, for the first time, spatially dense and temporally continuous sensing of the ocean’s floor, successfully detecting a variety of signals including microseisms, local and teleseismic earthquakes, volcanic events and ocean dynamics. A significant breakthrough in the use of fibre-optic sensing techniques came from the new ability to interrogate already existing telecommunication cables to high temporal and spatial precision across a wide range of environments. Applications based on this new type of data are numerous, including seismic source and wavefield characterisation with single point observations in harsh environments such as active volcanoes and the seafloor, ambient seismic noise interferometry, earthquake and tsunami early warning, and infrastructure stability monitoring.
We welcome contributions on developments in instrumental and theoretical advances, applications and processing with fibre-optic point and/or distributed multi-sensing techniques, light polarisation and transmission analyses, using standard telecommunication and/or engineered fibre-optic cables. We seek studies on theoretical, instrumental, observation and advanced processing across all solid earth fields, including seismology, volcanology, glaciology, geodesy, geophysics, natural hazards, oceanography, urban environment, geothermal applications, laboratory studies, large-scale field tests, planetary exploration, gravitational wave detection and fundamental physics. We encourage contributions on data analysis techniques, novel applications, machine learning, data management, instrumental performance and comparison as well as new experimental, field, laboratory, and modelling studies in fibre-optic sensing studies.
Imaging the Earth’s surface and reconstructing its topography to study the landscape and (sub-)surface processes have advanced rapidly over the past two decades, sometimes separately within different geoscientific disciplines. Developments in satellite, airborne, uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV), and ground-based sensing, alongside advances in photogrammetry, Structure-from-Motion (SfM), LiDAR, computer vision, and automated processing, have transformed our ability to reconstruct and monitor the Earth’s surface in 2D, 3D, and 4D (time series).
The spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions of current measurements offer the opportunity to study the surface evolution from local to regional scale at unprecedented detail. Equipped with optimized workflows, either digitizing analogue data, such as historical aerial photographs, or processing near-continuous records of topographic change, geoscientists now have a variety of tools to better understand our rapidly changing environment and disentangle anthropogenic from natural drivers.
Yet, challenges still exist at both methodological and application levels. How can reliable data be acquired in harsh, remote, or non-ideal environments? How can observations from different time periods, scales, and platforms be reconstructed, co-registered, and compared? How should measurement precision, systematic errors, and uncertainty be quantified and propagated into estimates of surface change? And how can computer-vision, machine-learning, and automation extract meaningful information from large and complex 3D and 4D datasets?
In this session, we invite contributions from across the geosciences (e.g., geomorphology, glaciology, volcanology, hydrology, soil sciences) on the opportunities, limitations, and challenges of surface imaging, topographic reconstruction, and change analysis across diverse environments.
We especially welcome contributions addressing (1) novel data acquisition in complex, remote, or rapidly changing environments; (2) image and point-cloud processing, including image matching, reconstruction, co-registration, and correction of sensor distortions; (3) precision and uncertainty assessment, including systematic errors; (4) construction and analysis of multitemporal and 4D datasets, from historical records to high-frequency and near-continuous observations; (5) automated processing, analysis, and information extraction from large and complex datasets; and (6) innovative applications in geosciences.
Water shapes the Earth system in all its states: liquid in aquifers, soils, peatlands, rivers, lakes, and oceans; ice in glaciers and permafrost; and vapor in geothermal, hydrothermal, and volcanic systems. Its phase, distribution and movement influence the mechanical properties of the subsurface and are therefore imprinted on how seismic waves propagate. This makes seismology a powerful, non-invasive tool to quantify where water is stored, how it moves, and how it changes phase, across scales from pores to catchments, from the near surface to the deep crust, and from hours to decades.
This session focuses on seismic approaches that image and monitor water, and translate seismic observables into hydrological, cryospheric and fluid-related information. We welcome theoretical, laboratory and field contributions using active and passive methods, including ambient noise, velocity changes, attenuation, dense nodal arrays and distributed acoustic sensing. Themes include groundwater storage and aquifer dynamics, soil moisture and the critical zone, peatland water tables and gas content, glacial hydrology and subglacial and englacial drainage, permafrost and freeze-thaw cycles, crustal fluids in geothermal reservoirs and in hydrothermal systems at volcanoes, and the role of changing hydrological conditions in preconditioning mass movements and other geohazards.
We especially encourage interdisciplinary studies that integrate seismic results with hydrological models, in-situ measurements and remote sensing. Our aim is to bring together seismologists, hydrologists, cryosphere scientists and researchers studying geothermal and volcanic fluids to build a quantitative, physically grounded picture of water in the Earth system.
The MacGyver session focuses on novel sensors made, or data sources unlocked, by scientists. All geoscientists are invited to present:
- new sensor systems, using technologies in novel or unintended ways,
- new data storage or transmission solutions sending data from the field with LoRa, WIFI, GSM, or any other nifty approach,
- started initiatives (e.g., Open-Sensing.org) that facilitate the creation and sharing of novel sensors, data acquisition and transmission systems.
Connected a sensor to an Arduino or Raspberri Pi? Used the new Lidar in the new iPhone to measure something relevant for hydrology? 3D printed an automated water quality sampler? Or build a Cloud Storage system from Open Source Components? Show it!
New methods in hydrology, plant physiology, seismology, remote sensing, ecology, etc. are all welcome. Bring prototypes and demonstrations to make this the most exciting Poster Only (!) session of the General Assembly.
This session is co-sponsered by MOXXI, the working group on novel observational methods of the IAHS.
Sitting under a tree, you feel the spark of an idea, and suddenly everything falls into place. The following days and tests confirm: you have made a magnificent discovery — so the classical story of scientific genius goes…
But science as a human activity is error-prone, and might be more adequately described as "trial and error". Handling mistakes and setbacks is therefore a key skill of scientists. Yet, we publish only those parts of our research that did work. That is also because a study may have better chances to be accepted for scientific publication if it confirms an accepted theory or reaches a positive result (publication bias). Conversely, the cases that fail in their test of a new method or idea often end up in a drawer (which is why publication bias is also sometimes called the "file drawer effect"). This is potentially a waste of time and resources within our community, as other scientists may set about testing the same idea or model setup without being aware of previous failed attempts.
Thus, we want to turn the story around, and ask you to share 1) those ideas that seemed magnificent but turned out not to be, and 2) the errors, bugs, and mistakes in your work that made the scientific road bumpy. In the spirit of open science and in an interdisciplinary setting, we want to bring the BUGS out of the drawers and into the spotlight. What ideas were torn down or did not work, and what concepts survived in the ashes or were robust despite errors?
We explicitly solicit Blunders, Unexpected Glitches, and Surprises (BUGS) from modeling and field or lab experiments and from all disciplines of the Geosciences.
In a friendly atmosphere, we will learn from each other’s mistakes, understand the impact of errors and abandoned paths on our work, give each other ideas for shared problems, and generate new insights for our science or scientific practice.
Here are some ideas for contributions that we would love to see:
- Ideas that sounded good at first, but turned out to not work.
- Results that presented themselves as great in the first place but turned out to be caused by a bug or measurement error.
- Errors and slip-ups that resulted in insights.
- Failed experiments and negative results.
- Obstacles and dead ends you found and would like to warn others about.
For inspiration, see the collection of BUGS - ranging from clay bricks to atmospheric temperature extremes - at https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU25/session/52496
CR7 – The Cryosphere in the Earth system: interdisciplinary topics
Sub-Programme Group Scientific Officers: Thomas Mölg, Daniel Farinotti
The year 2027 marks two important milestones for EGU’s cryospheric sciences community: the 25th anniversary of the EGU Division on Cryospheric Sciences and the 20th anniversary of the journal “The Cryosphere”. This special session celebrates these anniversaries by bringing together the cryospheric community to reflect on the scientific progress achieved over the past quarter century and to anticipate the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
Distinguished scientists representing the Division's core scientific themes—including mountain glaciers, ice sheets, sea ice, snow, permafrost, emerging observational and modelling techniques, as well as interdisciplinary linkages—will provide forward-looking perspectives on the evolution of their respective fields. The presentations will highlight transformative discoveries, identify paradigm shifts, and pinpoint unresolved questions as well as scientific priorities that are expected to shape cryospheric research over the coming decades.
The session will also celebrate two decades of “The Cryosphere”, reflecting on the role that the journal has played in advancing the discipline and fostering an open, international scientific community.
By combining scientific retrospection with a strong emphasis on future directions, this session aims to stimulate discussion across traditional disciplinary boundaries, and provide the opportunity for the cryospheric community to come together and assess where the field stands today and where it might be heading over the next 25 years.
Please note that the session will have invited speakers only, i.e. is not open for regular abstract submissions.
Rapid changes across the global cryosphere, including snow cover, glaciers, ice sheets, and permafrost, are reshaping the Earth system. These changes affect climate, sea level, hydrology, freshwater resources, ecosystems, and communities from mountain regions to polar coasts. Reducing uncertainties in future projections and supporting adaptation requires stronger integration of observations across scales with advanced modelling approaches.
This session invites contributions that improve understanding of snow, inland ice, and permafrost dynamics by bridging observations (satellite, airborne, and in situ) with numerical models, including ice-flow, hydrological, regional and global climate models, and AI-based emulators. We particularly encourage studies exploring interactions within the Cryosphere-Atmosphere-Hydrosphere system and translating scientific advances into actionable knowledge for climate resilience.
We welcome abstracts addressing:
- Data-Model Integration: Improved representation of snow, ice, and permafrost processes through assimilation of Earth observation, remote sensing, and field data into models.
- Coupled System Dynamics: Physical and geochemical Cryosphere-Atmosphere-Hydrosphere interactions and feedbacks across glaciated and snow-fed catchments, critical cold spots, and polar regions.
- Earth System Impacts: Effects of changing snow regimes, land ice loss, and permafrost degradation on water resources, ecosystems, ocean circulation, and sea-level rise.
- Methodological Innovation: Novel modelling tools, machine learning frameworks, and AI approaches that connect cryosphere observations and prediction.
- Upscaling and Global Initiatives: Studies linking local observations with regional and global models, including contributions to CMIP, ISMIP, CORDEX, Copernicus, and other international climate assessments.
Contributions associated with Horizon Europe projects such as LIQUIDICE, CryoSCOPE, ICELINK, and SnowPI, as well as other relevant international initiatives, are strongly encouraged.
By bringing together observational, modelling, and impact-focused perspectives, this session aims to strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration, improve predictive capabilities, and provide robust evidence for climate adaptation across the cryospheric sciences.
To address societal concerns over rising sea levels, associated extreme events, and their impacts on coastal communities, ecosystems, and the global economy, it is essential to understand the drivers and contributions to these changes. This session responds to this need by inviting research from the international sea level community that advances knowledge of past, present, and future changes in global and regional sea levels, extreme events, and coastal impacts.
The session focuses on studies that explore the physical mechanisms of sea level rise and variability, as well as the underlying drivers, across timescales ranging from paleo records to high-frequency phenomena to long-term projections, using observations and/or model simulations. Research on linkages between sea level variability, heat and freshwater content, ocean dynamics, ice-sheet and glacier mass loss, land subsidence, and terrestrial water storage is welcome. We encourage studies addressing future sea level changes, including high-end projections from rapid ice-sheet mass loss, and those assessing short-, medium-, and long-term coastal impacts and their broader implications.
Northeast Greenland occupies an important position within the Arctic, linking the Greenland Ice Sheet and ice-free terrestrial landscapes with the Arctic Ocean and Greenland Sea. Geologically and environmentally, the region has undergone major change associated with the opening and deepening of Fram Strait, the onset and intensification of Arctic–Atlantic water exchange, the early formation of ephemeral glaciers, the later build-up of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and its repeated expansion and retreat throughout the Quaternary. Ice-core records from EGRIP provide insights into past climate and ice-sheet dynamics, while observations of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream and its outlet glaciers reveal ongoing changes in one of the ice sheet's major drainage systems. Under ongoing anthropogenically forced warming, Northeast Greenland is particularly sensitive to Arctic amplification, resulting in rapid changes across its terrestrial, cryospheric, marine and atmospheric systems. Understanding these changes, their interactions and their future trajectories requires integration across disciplines and timescales.
We invite contributions from marine, cryospheric, terrestrial and atmospheric research focused on Northeast Greenland, extending from eastern North Greenland to northern East Greenland. Studies that improve our understanding of the region across geological timescales through the present and into the future, using geological and palaeoenvironmental archives, ice-core records, contemporary observations, process studies, remote sensing and numerical modelling, are all invited. We particularly encourage studies that explore connections among systems, including the dynamics and evolution of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream, ice-sheet–ocean interactions, atmospheric and oceanic forcing, freshwater and sediment fluxes, ocean circulation and sea ice, long-term landscape evolution and its interactions with glaciation, permafrost dynamics, and terrestrial and marine ecosystem change.
The Arctic plays a vital role in the Earth's climate system through complex interactions among the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere. Its sea ice cover reflects most of the incoming solar radiation and regulates the surface energy balance. Freshwater and heat fluxes associated with river runoff, the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet as well as the formation and melting of sea ice can influence deep-water formation in the North Atlantic and hence the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Additionally, the meridional temperature gradient between low and high latitudes drives large-scale atmospheric circulation. In the meantime, Arctic permafrost and peatlands store vast amounts of carbon, and the region is home to unique and vulnerable ecosystems.
However, anthropogenic climate change is warming the Arctic nearly four times faster than the global average in recent decades. Numerous feedbacks amplify this Arctic warming, known as Arctic amplification, and modulate the response of climate. The resulting changes are affecting Arctic ecosystems and potentially also influence remote regions through atmospheric and oceanic teleconnections.
Past warm climates act as natural laboratories and provide valuable information for the understanding of key processes and feedbacks involved in Arctic changes, establishing a basis for constraining future Arctic projections. Climate models on the other hand, project that the Arctic Ocean could become nearly ice-free during summers within the next few decades. Nevertheless, substantial uncertainties remain regarding the future Arctic evolution, potential variation of its influence on the global climate system and its ecosystem responses under continued warming. The ERC synergy grant i2B (Into the Blue) aims to address these research gaps by an integrative approach, combining paleoclimate evidence, modern observations, and numerical modelling.
Building on this interdisciplinary perspective, this session brings together studies that explore Arctic processes and their wider implications across different climate states. Therefore, we welcome contributions from all career stages investigating the Arctic mechanisms, impacts and interconnections across past, present, and future warm climate states from observational, proxy, or modelling perspectives.
The Arctic region has undergone rapid and often abrupt changes over the past decades. Sea ice has become thinner, more mobile, and more prone to sudden breakup. Extreme temperature events have also become routine, with 2023 recording the warmest Arctic summer so far. The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the global average, driving ice sheet melt, sea ice retreat in the Kara and Laptev Seas, permafrost thaw, glacier loss, and wildfire activity. Consequently, the exposed ocean is increasingly prone to eddies, extreme events, and low-frequency climate oscillations and more susceptible to abrupt transitions in water mass structure and atmospheric circulation. Together with rising freshwater volumes, increased coastal runoff from Siberia and Greenland, and stronger exchange with the Atlantic and Pacific, these shifts are drastically reshaping the region's already fragile ecosystems.
Projections point to a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean by mid-century. This raises pressing questions: What might the future Arctic Ocean look like? How do Arctic changes interact with, and respond to, conditions at lower latitudes? What mechanisms drive the ongoing loss of sea ice, and how might they evolve in an increasingly ice-free system? Where should observational, remote sensing, and modeling efforts focus next?
This session invites contributions spanning the recent past, present, and future of the Arctic and subarctic oceans. We welcome studies of ocean-atmosphere-sea ice interactions; ocean eddies, extremes, and climate oscillations; the processes and feedbacks driving trends, transitions, and abrupt shifts in the Arctic system; small-scale dynamics, internal waves, and mixing; the sources and downstream impacts of freshwater change, including subarctic deep convection; and the broader coupling between the Arctic and global ocean circulation. Cross-disciplinary submissions are especially encouraged, particularly those connecting physical, cryospheric, biogeochemical, and ecological processes, as well as their links to terrestrial systems.
We welcome discussions on the future of Arctic Ocean observation, remote sensing, and modeling strategies (including the upcoming CMIP7 cycle) and on ways to validate and improve models against observations. Submissions drawing on recent field programs such as MOSAiC, the Nansen Legacy Project, and the Synoptic Arctic Survey are welcome, as are contributions from those planning the upcoming International Polar Year 2032-33.
The concept of Earth as the sole body in the Solar System with liquid water that can harbor microbial life has been overturned by the discovery of multiple 'ocean worlds'. The Solar System is home to several planetary bodies with subsurface oceans of liquid water, including icy satellites such as Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Enceladus, Titan and Triton, as well as dwarf planets like Pluto, and chief among these ocean worlds, the Earth. Furthermore, new icy and ocean worlds are being continuously discovered in other planetary systems as well. Like Earth, the exploration of these oceans includes both aspects of planetary evolution and habitability. The geodynamic role of oceans in planetary evolution is thus a crucial aspect of understanding not only planet formation, but the onset of biological activity as well. In what ways can the oceans of Earth serve as analogs for other oceans of the Solar System? What instrumentation can be implemented on the Earth now to further our understanding of these ocean worlds, and what technological advances might we expect in future exploration of subsurface liquid water environments beyond Earth?
This session focuses on analog sites, laboratory simulation, modeling, instrumentation and mission proposals. Coordination between Earth, marine and planetary science communities is encouraged, as well as emphasis on upcoming (e.g. JUICE and Dragonfly) and proposed missions (e.g. Enceladus Orbilander). Analog sites might encompass either geological or biological themes in the broader frame of habitability. Interfaces of ice-water (e.g. underside of floating ice shelfs and subglacial lakes), clathrate-water (e.g. ocean floor sediments, veins/fractures/faults, layered horizons and atmosphere particulates), seafloor-ocean, and rock-ice (i.e. glaciers) are of particular curiosity. Instrumentation includes sensors, buoys, submersibles, drilling and coring, as well as satellite instrumentation (e.g. spectrometers, magnetometers and gravimeters).
Mountains cover approximately one quarter of the earth’s land surface, and a significant fraction of the world’s population lives within them, in their vicinity, and downstream of them. Orography critically affects weather and climate processes across all scales and, in connection with factors such as land-cover heterogeneity, is responsible for high spatial variability in mountain weather and climate. This session showcases research that contributes to improving our understanding of weather and climate processes in mountain and high-elevation areas around the globe, as well as their modification induced by global environmental change, including studies connected to the TEAMx research programme.
We invite theoretical, modeling and observational contributions that address the influence of mountains on the atmosphere from meteorological to climate time scales, including terrain-induced flows, orographic gravity waves, orographic precipitation, land-atmosphere exchange over mountains, forecasting and predictability of mountain weather, and the interaction of mountain weather and climate with the terrestrial cryosphere.
Furthermore, we invite studies that investigate climate processes and climate change in mountain areas based on monitoring and modeling activities, including in particular contributions that address the interdisciplinary objectives of the Elevation-Dependent Climate Change (EDCC) working group of the Mountain Research Initiative, as well as the application and development of high-resolution (kilometer-scale) climate models over complex mountainous terrain, such as advances in model design, challenges, and observational gaps needed for robust model evaluation and improvement.
Climate modeling is pushing the frontier towards increasingly complex, high-resolution earth system models (ESMs). At the same time, nonlinearities and emergent phenomena in the climate system are often studied by means of conceptual models, which offer qualitative understanding and permit theoretical approaches. Recent advancements in statistical and physical emulators – ranging from reduced-complexity climate models to machine learning-based techniques – are enabling rapid and computationally efficient assessments of climate trajectories, impacts, and risks.
Between these approaches, a persistent “gap between simulation and understanding” (Held 2005) challenges our ability to transfer insights from conceptual models to reality, and to distill the physical mechanisms underlying the behavior of complex (climate) models. This calls for a concerted effort to learn from the entire model hierarchy, understanding the differences and similarities across its various levels of complexity, to increase confidence in climate projections.
In this session, we invite contributions from all subfields of climate science that showcase how different modeling approaches advance our understanding of the Earth system and its components, and/or highlight inconsistencies in the model hierarchy. We also welcome studies exploring a single modeling approach, as we aim to encourage exchange between researchers working on different rungs of the model complexity ladder. Contributions may employ dynamical systems models, physics-based low-order models, explainable machine learning, Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs), simplified or idealized setups of ESMs (radiative-convective equilibrium, single-column models, aquaplanets, slab-ocean models, idealized geography, etc.), full ESMs or standalone models of components of the Earth system, and km-scale models.
Processes and phenomena of interest include, but are not limited to:
* Earth system response to climate forcing
* Tipping behavior and critical transitions
* (Coupled) modes of climate variability
* Extremes and predictability
Monitoring high-latitude regions, active volcanic areas, high-altitude alpine zones, and extreme terrestrial analogues poses severe logistical and technological challenges. Severe thermal ranges, high electromagnetic interference, strict weight and power constraints, and remote accessibility demand highly resilient instrumentation and innovative operational workflows.
This session brings together researchers, engineers, and platform developers to explore cutting-edge technological advancements designed for environmental observation in extreme contexts. Primary focus is given to autonomous and unmanned platforms, such as tailored UAVs, USVs, and rovers, equipped with specialized geophysical and remote sensing payloads including thermal cameras, magnetometers, LiDAR, and ground-penetrating radar optimized for terrain-following and harsh operating conditions.
The session also addresses developments in ruggedized sensing hardware, low-power miniaturized electronics, and multi-platform data fusion methodologies that integrate satellite imagery, airborne surveys, and in-situ sensor networks. Furthermore, emphasis is placed on field-testing campaigns in terrestrial analogue environments that serve to benchmark instruments for future planetary exploration missions, as well as edge-computing and machine learning workflows for real-time data inversion and rapid anomaly detection in remote deployments. Submissions spanning sensor design, field calibration, campaign results, and integrated geophysical modeling are welcome.
Thermal remote sensing is an increasingly established technique employing passive sensors to deriveEarth’s surface properties from the radiation emitted in the Thermal Infrared (TIR) domain. Its main focus is the thermal state of an object or surface, together with the associated surface temperature and emissivity. These properties are relevant across geological, environmental, climatic, agricultural, biological, and engineering applications.
Recent technological advances have driven the development of TIR remote sensing: satellite sensors and data infrastructure systems can now acquire and manage large volumes of high-fidelity TIR data at a wide range of spatial and temporal resolutions. Besides airborne and ground-based systems, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are increasingly used as versatile platforms that combine high spatial resolution with flexible temporal revisit. Together with a growing catalogue of current and upcoming missions, this makes it a timely moment to take stock of where the field stands.
This session addresses established and emerging research directions in TIR remote sensing and discusses the community's upcoming challenges. We welcome contributions on new frontiers, case studies, and data-integration analysis related to:
• Geosciences: volcanoes, hydrothermal systems, geothermal potential, mineral exploration, rare earths, cryosphere.
• Climate, Urban Systems, and Ecosystems: urban heat islands, global warming impacts, ecosystem stress, forest health, fire risk assessment, water management.
• Agriculture and Precision Farming: crop stress monitoring, irrigation management, soil analysis and pest/disease monitoring.
• Technological and Methodological Innovations: new sensors for satellite, airborne, UAS and in-situ platforms, multi-platform and/or multi-sensor data integration, Cal/Val activities.
• Data Processing and Infrastructure: approaches for managing and processing large TIR datasets, data fusion techniques, advanced algorithms for atmospheric correction and temperature and emissivity separation.
Multi-disciplinary studies and contributions from Early Career Scientists are especially welcome.
Invited Speaker: Sabine Chabrillat, Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences (GFZ).
In recent years, technologies based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as image processing, smart sensors, and intelligent inversion, have garnered significant attention from researchers in the geosciences community. These technologies offer the promise of transitioning geosciences from qualitative to quantitative analysis, unlocking new insights and capabilities previously thought unattainable.
One of the key reasons for the growing popularity of AI in geosciences is its unparalleled ability to efficiently analyze vast datasets within remarkably short timeframes. This capability empowers scientists and researchers to tackle some of the most intricate and challenging issues in fields like Geophysics, Seismology, Hydrology, Planetary Science, Remote Sensing, and Disaster Risk Reduction.
As we stand on the cusp of a new era in geosciences, the integration of artificial intelligence promises to deliver more accurate estimations, efficient predictions, and innovative solutions. By leveraging algorithms and machine learning, AI empowers geoscientists to uncover intricate patterns and relationships within complex data sources, ultimately advancing our understanding of the Earth's dynamic systems. In essence, artificial intelligence has become an indispensable tool in the pursuit of quantitative precision and deeper insights in the fascinating world of geosciences.
For this reason, aim of this session is to explore new advances and approaches of AI in Geosciences.
CR8 – Short Courses (SC)
Sub-Programme Group Scientific Officers: Daniel Farinotti, Thomas Mölg