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The 700,000 square kilometers of glaciers and ice sheets in the world make up 10% of Earth's total land area and are located on every continent except Australia. Glaciers typically develop when old accumulations of snow in mountains transform to ice. The ice builds up layer after layer, year after year, and flow into valleys. As glaciers age, the size of their crystals increase, some growing to be bigger than a baseball. There are also flat, glacial ice sheets more than 50,000 square kilometers in size that previously covered approximately 30% of the ocean and 30% of all land. Today, only two such dome-shaped "ice caps" remain in Greenland and Antarctica.

Scientists and decision-makers study glaciers and ice sheets because they are important sources of water and aquatic nutrients, are greatly affected by and influence weather, shape land, can pose a hazard to communities, and contribute to sea-level rise and the health of ocean environments. Researchers can rely on NASA’s glacier and ice sheet data to accurately measure their size and determine how these massive ice giants affect our world. One major source of glacier data are the twin Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites measuring the movements of mass within and between Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land, and ice sheets.

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An ASTER image showing part of the San Quintín Glacier, the largest in southern Chile’s Northern Patagonia Icefield.
GLIMS Database Advances Glacier Monitoring from Space
The Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) Glacier Database provides timely data on more than 200,000 glaciers around the world.
Location of NASA ICESat-2 (ATL13) data (Inland Water Product) from April 25, 2023 over Lake Powell, Utah, United States, viewed in OpenAltimetry.
Laser Altimetry Applications for a Changing World: Working with ICESat-2 Sea Ice Data
This is the final webinar in a four-part series to explore NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation-2 (ICESat-2) platform and the related data, tools, and applications.
image of icebridge data
Explore, Discover, and Access Snow and Ice Data with NSIDC DAAC
Join us for a tour of enhanced data product landing pages, new user resources, data visualization tools, and a Jupyter Notebook tutorial to access cryospheric data at NASA's National Snow and Ice Data Center DAAC.
An image of Antarctica from OpenAltimetry showing the satellite tracks and data-acquisition points along the continent's surface.
Data Tool in Focus: OpenAltimetry
OpenAltimetry lets users explore changes on Earth’s surface around the globe and over time, and all they need is a web browser.
Discover and Visualize Glaciers and Ice Sheets Data
NASA data help us understand Earth's changing systems in more detail than ever before, and visualizations bring these data to life, making Earth science concepts accessible, beautiful, and impactful.
Data visualization is a powerful tool for analysis, trend and pattern recognition, and communication. Our resources help you find world-class data visualizations to complement and enhance your research. We also have tools and tutorials to help you translate glaciers and ice sheets data into compelling visuals.
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An animation of ASTER and Sentinel-2 imagery shows the retreat of the Upsala Glacier in Argentina between 2003 to 2024.
This ASTER and Sentinel-2 imagery shows the retreat of the Upsala Glacier in Argentina between 2003 to 2024. Image courtesy of Etienne Berthier.

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