SnowPI

SnowPI: Polar Snow, Permafrost, and Inland Ice in a changing world

“Illuminating how snow, permafrost, ice sheets, and glaciers are transforming in a changing climate — and what this means for Earth’s future”

The effects of present-day climate change are clearly visible in the frozen parts of our planet, where ongoing glacier melt, accelerating ice sheet retreat, permafrost thaw and declining snow extent are well documented. This is especially evident in the polar regions which are warming faster than the rest of the world which will have global and regional impacts. Here, climate adaptation remains challenging, partly due to uncertainties in climate projections arising from insufficient understanding and model representation of snow, glaciers, ice sheets, and permafrost, and their interactions with the atmosphere and ocean. Snow plays a central role in modulating the cryosphere’s response to climate change. Yet, snowpack and snow processes remain poorly understood, observed, and modelled.

Objectives/Mission

SnowPI will assess the regional impacts and global repercussions of the changing terrestrial polar cryosphere. Snow plays a central role in the terrestrial cryosphere’s response to climate change which motivates SnowPI to advance our understanding, and ability to observe and model the key snow processes shown on the right.

SnowPI will advance our understanding of, and ability to observe, study, and project changes in the frozen terrestrial surface through the lens of snow. SnowPI will achieve this by exploiting emerging technologies, latest scientific discoveries, state-of-the-art models, in-situ and remotely sensed observations alongside its novel observations and model advances. Uniquely, SnowPI will also pursue a novel approach to developing climate information in support of adaptation strategies in the polar regions. This approach follows two converging pathways to deliver climate information in support of climate adaptation that can exploit emerging scientific and model advances more swiftly than traditional approaches. The contributions from SnowPI will include 1) new knowledge and improved capabilities to model and observe changes in snow, glaciers, ice sheets, and permafrost; and 2) state-of-the-art assessments of regional and global impacts of the changing cryosphere to support climate adaptation strategies. Combined, these results benefit a wide range of actors both within and beyond the polar regions by improving their capability to respond to the impacts of climate change.