cryosphere

noun

cryo·​sphere ˈkrī-ō-ˌsfir 

plural cryospheres

: the part of the earth's surface characterized by the presence of frozen water

The cryosphere consists of mountain glaciers and continental ice sheets, seasonal snow and ice cover on land, and sea ice.

—Raymond S. Bradley

The third component of the climate system, after the atmosphere and oceans, is the cryosphere—extensive ice fields of Antarctica and Greenland plus other stretches of continental snow and ice and sea ice.

—Stephen H. Schneider

also : a region that is part of the earth's cryosphere

We know that sea levels are rising because of thermal expansion of the ocean as well as the disintegration and the melting of the cryospheres of the world's glaciers.

—Elizabeth Rush

cryospheric

ˌkrī-ō-ˈsfir-ik 

-ˈsfer-

adjective

cryospheric changes

cryospheric science

Examples of cryosphere in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Various earlier reports have found that the cryosphere — regions on Earth covered by snow and ice — are among the worst affected by climate change. —Sibi Arasu, USA TODAY, 21 June 2023

With two billion people in Asia reliant on the water that glaciers and snow here hold, the consequences of losing this cryosphere are too vast to contemplate. —Kathleen Magramo, CNN, 20 June 2023

Other studies that use different methods to measure the ice sheet have found consistent ice losses, Brooke Medley, a NASA cryosphere scientist, told USA TODAY in an email. —Kate S. Petersen, USA TODAY, 24 Mar. 2023

As the ramifications of climate change are intensely associated with the cryosphere, a concerted effort to build a scientific understanding of these regions—high mountains and the Arctic and the Antarctic has been prioritised by many nations, including India. —Sulagna Chattopadhyay, Quartz, 15 Dec. 2021

The report says human activities, principally through greenhouse emissions, have unequivocally caused global warming, driving widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere. —Nicole Fallert, USA TODAY, 21 Mar. 2023

Eleven of these are current or planned satellites that monitor the cryosphere remotely. —Tom Yulsman, Discover Magazine, 28 Mar. 2013

Cryosat-2 is so named because its decade-long mission is to study the cryosphere, the scientific name for the parts of the world covered in ice. —Andrew Moseman, Discover Magazine, 9 Apr. 2010

In mid-April, despite a day length that is four hours longer than Miami’s, middle Alaska is still a part of the cryosphere. —Ned Rozell, Anchorage Daily News, 16 Apr. 2022

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Word History

Etymology

cryo- + -sphere, after Polish kryosfera

Note: The Polish term was introduced by the geophysicist and meteorologist Antoni Bolesław Dobrowolski (1872-1954) in Historja naturalna lodu (Warsaw, 1923), p. ii: "… lód tworzy naprawdę powłokę globu, składem nadzwyczaj jednostajną, wyglądem nadzwyczaj urozmaiconą. Ta powłoka lodowa—kryosfera—wchodzi w stosunki ścisle, określone i osobliwe z hidrosferą, z litosferą, z atmosferą." ("… the ice comprises in truth a global envelope, extremely uniform in composition, extremely diverse in appearance. This envelope of ice—the cryosphere—enters into a close, definite and peculiar relationship with the hydrosphere, lithosphere and atmosphere.")

First Known Use

1935, in the meaning defined above