Cryospheric Indices of Global Change

对全球环境变化的日益关注使人们把注意力集中在确定可用来监测世界气候和其他物理条件变化的关键变量上。科学家们认为，在变量中，季节性积雪的范围和持续时间以及冰川和冰帽内的冰量将提供准确的、容易更新的条件变化指数。该项目将从美国和苏联的一些已公布的来源收集关于这些变量的数据。还将收集遥感数据。将进行初步分析，以确定这些冰冻圈变量与其他气候、地形和陆地特征变量之间的关系。这项研究将由科罗拉多-博尔德大学的科学家和苏联科学院地理研究所合作进行。除了其他相关变量外，该项目还将汇集有关积雪和冰川波动的数据。这些数据将提供有价值的新信息，用来检验有关冰冻圈变量可能在多大程度上被用作全球环境变化指数的假设。该项目还将测试使用远程传感器收集数据的新方法，并将促进拥有共同研究兴趣的美国和苏联科学家之间的更大合作。

Increased concern about global environmental change has focused attention on the need to identify critical variables that can be used to monitor shifts in the world's climate and other physical conditions. Among the variables that scientists believe will provide accurate, easily updated indices of changing conditions are measurements of the extent and duration of seasonal snow cover and of the amounts of ice within glaciers and ice caps. This project will gather data on these variables from a number of published sources in both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. Remotely sensed data also will be gathered. Preliminary analyses will be undertaken to ascertain how these cryospheric variables correlate with other climatic, topographic, and land-characteristic variables. This research will be conducted collaboratively between scientists at the University of Colorado-Boulder and the Institute of Geography of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. This project will bring together data about snow cover and glacial fluctuations in addition to other related variables. These data will provide valuable new information with which to test hypotheses about the degree to which cryospheric variables may be used as indices of global environmental change. The project also will provide tests of new means of gathering data using remote sensors, and it will foster greater collaboration between American and Soviet scientists with common research interests.