Trump Administration Icing Out NSIDC Data

An observing station overlooking Crane Glacier in Antarctica. Such research may be at risk from funding cuts, just as the melting of ice sheets increases sea level rise. Photo: University of Colorado Boulder/Ted Scambos, National Snow and Ice Data Center via Flickr Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Reporter’s Toolbox: Trump Administration Icing Out NSIDC Data

By Joseph A. Davis

The Trump administration is about to hide some major symptoms of climate heating — by starting to liquidate the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

 

The National Snow and Ice Data Center

monitors the melting of ice sheets

that are causing sea level rise.

 

Environmental journalists — and the public they work to inform — need the NSIDC. For one thing, it keeps track of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. For another, it monitors the melting of ice sheets that are causing sea level rise.

All this matters if anyone in your coverage community owns a beach house. Or hopes to survive the next hurricane.

 

Where the data comes from

NSIDC is mostly located in Boulder, Colorado, which is kind of the Vatican of climate and weather research. It is a partnership of many research institutions, focused at the University of Colorado.

The web of partners is too vast and complex to detail here. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration is one of them — and plays a key role in funding the NSIDC.

Last spring, the NSIDC issued a release warning of funding cuts. It said it would “decommission its snow and ice data products from the Coasts, Oceans, and Geophysics Science Division.”

As a result, it said, “the level of services for affected products … will be reduced to Basic—meaning they will remain accessible but may not be actively maintained, updated, or fully supported.” That includes data products like its Sea Ice Index and its World Glacier Inventory.

Much of the NSIDC data comes from satellites mostly flown by NOAA and NASA. That means that the quality of the data is about as good as it can be. Glaciologists add more from expeditions and ice-coring from far-off, chilly places.

More bad news: This year, the Arctic sea ice extent hit a historic low for late June, normally the time of minimum extent. We know because of the NSIDC.

So if you want to report on global melting, this could be your last chance.

 

How to use the data smartly

Despite the global perspective, the NSIDC monitors all kinds of things that may make more local news near you.

Maybe you live in a water-scarce area like California or the Colorado River Basin. The NSIDC not only monitors seasonal snowpack but translates that into meltwater potential.

Or, even if those in your audience who like to ski don’t typically check with NSIDC before they hit the slopes, the people who run that ski resort may well be, to see whether the season will go bust.

There’s a lot more for serious glaciologists — or journalists hoping to explain glaciology news to the general public.

For example, NSIDC’s Operation Icebridge adds detailed surveys via aircraft. It says it watches annual changes in ice surface elevation, topography of bedrock under ice sheets, glacier and ice shelf grounding lines, snow and ice thickness, sea ice distribution, sea ice freeboard, ice temperature and meteorological observations.

Joseph A. Davis is a freelance writer/editor in Washington, D.C. who has been writing about the environment since 1976. He writes SEJournal Online's TipSheet, Reporter's Toolbox and Issue Backgrounder, and curates SEJ's weekday news headlines service EJToday and @EJTodayNews. Davis also directs SEJ's Freedom of Information Project and writes the WatchDog opinion column.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 10, No. 33. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.