I realized that it may be difficult for our new readers to understand most of abbreviations used here. So I suggest making a glossary !
For more terms you can refer to
NSIDC's Glossary. Or peruse the Global Cryosphere Watch
Glossary (4141 entries from 26 sources; over 2200 are unique).
Please add terms and definitions below, I'll try to compile them in this first message (except the jokes). Please also provide links when you can.
An other Glossary is available for Antarctic hereAABW - Antarctic Bottom Water
ABW - Arctic Bottom Water
AIS - Antarctic Ice Sheet
AMO - Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation
AMOC - Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
AMSR - Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer
AO - Arctic Oscillation
ASI - Arctic Sea Ice - all the Ice floating in the Arctic Seas
ASIB -
Arctic Sea Ice BlogASIF - Arctic Sea Ice Forum
ASIG -
Arctic Sea Ice Graphs pageAtlantic Front - Region where ice from the CAB melts in water coming from the Atlantic; located north of Svalbard in most recent years
AW - Atlantic Water, a deeper layer of water in the Arctic Ocean
AWI - Alfred Wegener Institute, an important research center in Germany
AWP - Albedo-Warming Potential, product of approximate albedo and insolation (ignoring clouds) in a specific region or the Arctic overall
Beaufort Gyre - A loosely defined circular pattern of ice movement from the Beaufort Sea towards the Chukchi, ESS, CAB and ultimately back to Beaufort; mostly wind driven and as such, not a true gyre; served as nursery for MYI in the past
BOE - Blue Ocean Event, a situation of an ice-free Arctic; usually defined as less than 1 million km2 of SIE, but can also mean zero SIE
BS - Bering Strait (or when someone is talking nonsense) (or
Blog Science)
CAA - Canadian Arctic Archipelago - Canadian islands in the North of America: Ellesmere, Victoria, Baffin and many others, except Greenland; CAA main waterways include the Parry Channel (Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, Viscount Melville Sound, McClure Strait), Amundsen Gulf, Peel Sound, PGAS, Peary Channel, McClintock Channel and Gulf of Boothia
CAB - Central Arctic Basin, the central part of the Arctic Ocean, bordering the CAA, Beaufort, Chukchi, East Siberian, Laptev, Kara, Barents and Greenland seas; has several definitions of borders, mainly a smaller CAB (NSIDC/MASIE maps) or larger CAB (CT/Wipneus maps) versions, depending on demarcations with the other seas; includes the Lincoln Sea and the Wandel Sea
CAPIE - Cryosphere Today Area Per IJIS Extent (crude melt pond and compactness measure)
CB -
Century Break, a drop of more than 100K (one hundred thousand) km2 in sea ice area or extent
CDW - Circumpolar Deep Water, a relatively warm Antarctic water mass that has been melting ice shelves
CIS -
Canadian Ice ServiceCONUS - Continental (or contiguous, or conterminous) U.S., meaning the 48 states, not including Alaska
CR - Climate Reanalyzer, a website providing detailed weather forecast maps
CT -
Cryosphere Today, a popular but now-defunct website
DJF - December January February - winter (Meteorological calendar, northern hemisphere)
DLR - Downwelling Longwave (infra-red) Radiation
DMI - Danish Meteorological Institute
DMI +80N T -
Daily mean temperatures for the Arctic north of the 80th parallel; averaged by latitude weighting instead of by area weighting, thus highly biased towards the NP
DRA - Data Release Area, the previously top secret US Navy submarine data showing measured thickness of sea ice; released to scientists in 1992 by then VP of the US Al Gore
DTC - Digital Temperature (or Thermistor) Chain, in the context of ice mass balance buoys
DTR - Diurnal Temperature Range - the difference between daily max and min temperatures
EAIS - East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the larger and more stable part of the AIS
ECMWF (AKA the Euro) - European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, a leading global weather model
ECS - Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity, steady state change in global temps resulting from a doubling of atmospheric CO2
EEI - Earth Energy Imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy absorbed by Earth and the amount of energy the planet radiates to space as heat
ENSO - El Nino Southern Oscillation
EPO - Eastern Pacific Oscillation
ESAS - East Siberian Arctic Shelf, a huge continental shelf of shallow depth in the Arctic
ESS - East Siberian Sea
FDD - Freezing Degree Days, sum of temps in C below freezing, provides integrated intensity of cold
FJL - Franz Josef Land, a group of islands to the east of Svalbard
FRIS - Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, in the Weddel Sea, Atlantic part of WAIS (Filchner eastern, Ronne western), both having gently sloping submarine outlets
FYI - First-Year Ice
GAC - Great Arctic Cyclone, a large summer storm in the Arctic ocean with significant effects on the ASI, occurred in 2012 and 2016
GAAC - Great Arctic Anti-Cyclone (result of persistent high pressure), a large and persistent summer weather feature causing clear skies and anti-cyclonic winds, occurred in 2020
GCM - General Circulation Model, or Global Climate Model, the sort of model used to make IPCC temperature projections
GFS - Global Forecast System (US weather forecast model)
gice - One of the PIOMAS output files, containing the distribution of thicknesses in each grid cell
GIS - Greenland Ice Sheet
HFO - Heavy Fuel Oil
High Arctic - "hard to melt" arctic seas, including the CAB, CAA, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, ESS, Laptev Sea, Kara Sea
hPa - hectoPascal, a unit of pressure; 1000 hPa is 1 Bar; 1013.25 hPa is 1 Atmosphere; 850 hPa is ~1.5km above sea level
HYCOM - Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model, a US Navy global ocean model including ice concentration and thickness
ICESat - Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite, the precursor to CryoSat 2, used to validate PIOMAS
IJIS - IARC-JAXA Information System run by the International Arctic Research Center (IARC), University of Alaska, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
IMB - Ice Mass Balance buoy
IS - Ice stream, Isstrom in Danish
JAXA - Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency
JIS, JH - Jakobshavn Isbrae (or Ice Glacier)
JJA - June July August - summer (Meteorological calendar, northern hemisphere)
LFO - Light fuel oil
MAM - March April May - spring (Meteorological calendar, northern hemisphere)
MIZ - Marginal Ice Zone
MSLP - Mean Sea Level Pressure
MYI - Multi-Year Ice
NAO - North Atlantic Oscillation
NAVGEM - Navy Global Environmental Model
NEW - Northeast Water Polynya
NH - Northern Hemisphere
NEGIS - North-East Greenland Ice Stream
NOW - North Water Polynya, aka North Water Polynya, the largest Arctic polynya, between Greenland and Canada in northern Baffin Bay
NP - North Pole
NSR - Northern Sea Route
NWP - North West Passage
OLR - Outgoing Longwave (infra-red) Radiation
OMG - Oceans are Melting Greenland, a 5-year NASA mission to understand the role of the ocean in melting Greenland’s glaciers
OSISAF - Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility
OWFE - Open Water Formation Efficiency, a measure of the melt season thinning that leads to a percentage of open water in the Arctic ocean
PAC - Persistent Arctic Cyclone
PDO - Pacific Decadal Oscillation
Peripheral Seas - "easy to melt" Arctic seas - Sea of Okhotsk, Bering Sea, Hudson Bay, Baffin Bay, Gulf of St. Lawernce, Greenland Sea, Barents Sea
PGAS - Prince Gustav Adolf Sea, in the CAA bordering the CAB
PICT - PIOMAS volume per Cryosphere Today area (crude average thickness measure)
PIG - Pine Island Glacier, blocking one specific steep and deep outlet of WAIS below sea level; the other sensitive outlet nearby is Thwaites glacier
PIJAMAS - PIOMAS volume per JAXA sea ice extent (crude average thickness measure)
PIOMAS -
Pan Arctic Ice Ocean Modelling and Assimilation SystemPNA - Pacific North American pattern
Polynya - a region of year-round open water surrounded by sea ice
PSC - Polar Science Center, University of Washington (PIOMAS)
PV - Polar Vortex
QBO - Quasi Biennial Oscillation
RILE - Rapid Ice Loss Event, an event where area or extent shows marked drops faster than the long term trend, these can take years to play out in the models and rarely end with a totally ice free Arctic
RIS - Ross Ice Shelf, Pacific part of WAIS (with at least 3 gently sloping submarine outlets)
SAT - Surface Air Temperature
SFW - Stratospheric Final Warming
SH - Southern Hemisphere
SIA - Sea Ice Area, Sea Ice Concentration (SIC) of a grid cell multiplied by its size, summed over a region of interest or over the whole NH
SIC - Sea Ice Concentration, a physical characteristic of regions covered with sea ice, usually measured by passive microwave satellite, provides a measure of how much of a given region is covered by water rather than fully by ice; water can be in the form of polynyas, leads or surface meltwater
SIE - Sea Ice Extent, a measure of which grid cells contain significant amounts of sea ice, summed over regions of interest or the whole NH; historically the main measure of how much sea ice there is, given that its measurement is quite reliable; the usual cutoff is >15% SIC
SIMB - Seasonal Ice Mass Balance buoy
SIT - Sea Ice Thickness, a most important physical characteristic of sea ice; notoriously difficult to measure remotely, with various algorithms suffering from a number of issues; also estimated by models, suffering from a number of issues as well; measured locally by buoys and submarines
SIV - Sea Ice Volume, a measure of how much sea ice there is, product of SIT with SIA
SLP - Sea Level Pressure
SMB - Surface Mass Balance
SMOS - Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity, ESA satellite
SOI - Southern Oscillation Index
SON - September October November - autumn (Meteorological calendar, northern hemisphere)
SoO - Sea of Okhotsk
SST - Sea Surface Temperature
SSTa - Sea Surface Temperature anomaly
SSW - Sudden Stratospheric Warming
SW - ShortWave radiation - sunlight otherwise known as insolation
SWE - Snow Water Equivalent
SWT - SouthWestern Tributary, an arm of West Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier that connects to the PIG and affects its flow
TDD - Thawing Degree Days, sum of temps in C above freezing, provides integrated intensity of warmth
THC - Thermohaline Circulation
TPD- TransPolar Drift, a pattern of ice movement in the Arctic Ocean from Siberia across the North Pole and towards the Fram Strait; speed and direction vary
TPV - Tropopause Polar Vortex
TPW - Total Precipitable Water
UKMO - United Kingdom Meteorological Office
WAA - Warm Air Advection
WACC - Warm Arctic, Cold Continents
WAIS - The whole West Antarctic Ice Sheet
WIPD - Whole Ice Pack Detachment
ZI, ZIS - Zachariae Isstrom (or Ice Stream)
