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于监测世界气候和其他物理条件变化的关键变量的必要性上。科学家们相信，能够提供准确、易于更新的气候变化指数的变量包括对季节性积雪覆盖范围和持续时间的测量，以及对冰川和冰帽内冰量的测量。该项目将从美国和苏联公布的一些资源中收集有关这些变量的数据，遥感数据也将被收集。将进行初步分析，以确定这些冰冻圈变量如何与其他气候、地形和土地特征变量相关联。这项研究将由科罗拉多大学博尔德分校和苏联科学院地理研究所的科学家合作进行。该项目将汇集有关积雪和冰川波动以及其他相关变量的数据。这些数据将提供有价值的新信息，用以检验关于冰冻圈变量可作为全球环境变化指数的程度的假设。该项目还将为使用遥感器收集数据的新方法提供测试，并将促进具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.