Cryospheric Indices of Global Change

对全球环境变化的日益关注， 注意需要确定关键变量， 监测世界气候和其他物理条件的变化。 在科学家认为可以提供准确的变量中， 容易更新的变化条件指数是衡量 季节性积雪的范围和持续时间以及冰的数量 在冰川和冰帽中。 该项目将收集这些数据 变量来自美国和 还将收集苏联遥感数据。 初步 将进行分析，以确定这些冰冻层变量是如何 与其它气候、地形和土地特征相关 变量 这项研究将在以下方面合作进行： 科罗拉多大学博尔德分校的科学家们和 苏联科学院地理。 该项目将汇集有关积雪和冰川的数据， 波动以及其他相关变量。 这些数据将 提供了有价值的新信息，以测试有关 在何种程度上冰冻圈变量可用作全球气候指数 环境变化 该项目还将提供新手段的测试 使用遥感器收集数据，它将促进更大的 美国和苏联科学家之间的合作， 研究兴趣。

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.