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Looking at Earth from the International Space Station, astronauts see big, white clouds spreading across the planet. They cannot distinguish a gray rain cloud from a puffy white cloud. While satellites can see through many clouds and estimate the liquid precipitation they hold, they can't see the smaller ice particles that create enormous rain clouds.

Two species of seal found in Antarctic seas are helping scientists collect data about the temperature and salinity of waters around vulnerable ice sheets in West Antarctica. Understanding more about how this water gets towards the ice shelves by measuring its temperature, salinity and depth, will help climate change modellers make more accurate predictions about how rapidly the Antarctic ice sheet is melting.

Scientists, historians and economists have used ice samples from the North Greenland Ice Core Project to measure, date and analyze European lead emissions that were captured in Greenland ice between 1100 BC and AD 800. Their results provide new insight for historians about how European civilizations and their economies fared over time.

A ribbon of ice more than 600 kilometers long that drains about 12 percent of the gigantic Greenland Ice Sheet has been smaller than it is today about half of the time over the past 45,000 years, a new study suggests.

Scientists have quantified the temperature of Earth's oceans over half a billion years ago by combining fossil data and climate models.

Everybody knows that sliding on ice or snow, is much easier than sliding on most other surfaces. But why is the ice surface slippery? Researchers have now shown that the slipperiness of ice is a consequence of the ease with which the topmost water molecules can roll over the ice surface.

Researchers have used biomarkers in ancient rocks to learn more about the environmental conditions and food sources that sustained the Ediacara Biota.

For emperor penguins waddling around a warming Antarctic, diminishing sea ice means less fish to eat. How the diets of these tuxedoed birds will hold up in the face of climate change is a big question scientists are grappling with.

Global lake evaporation will increase 16 percent by the end of the century, triggering, among other outcomes, stronger precipitation events, according to a new study. But the specific mechanisms that will drive that phenomenon are not quite what scientists expected.

Even though the sun does not shine in Antarctica in winter, in some places snow on the glaciers can melt. The cause: warm wind. Utrecht glacier researchers discovered that fact by combining the results of weather stations and satellite images.

The American pika, a relative of rabbits, occupies rocky environments in the mountains of western Northern America. It has been widely thought that pikas could not survive extremes of temperature and thus were at risk of running out of space at the tops of mountains as temperatures rise due to climate change. But is there more to the story?

New findings describe the dynamics of the clog of icebergs -- known as an ice mélange -- in front of Greenland's Jakobshavn Glacier. The fast-moving glacier is considered a bellwether for the effects of climate change.

Ice mass loss in the Russian Arctic has nearly doubled over the last decade.

Lakes tend to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere, making them important players in the planet's natural regulation of its climate. However, the direction of the flow of CO2 between lakes and the atmosphere can be influenced by humans or by natural factors such as rainfall or air temperature.

Experts have recently found higher amounts of microplastic in arctic sea ice than ever before. However, the majority of particles were microscopically small.

Biologists have been puzzled by the evolutionary adaptation behind a common tooth trait of northern Asians and Native Americans: shovel-shaped incisors. An analysis of archeological specimens shows that nearly 100 percent of early Native Americans had shoveled incisors, and genetic evidence pinpoints the selection to the Beringian standstill 20,000 years ago. One researcher proposes that a trait linked to shoveling, mammary duct growth, was selected to provide vitamin D and fat to infants.

A new study has revealed a previously undocumented process where melting glacial ice sheets change the ocean in a way that further accelerates the rate of ice melt and sea level rise. The research found that glacial meltwater makes the ocean's surface layer less salty and more buoyant, preventing deep mixing in winter and allowing warm water at depth to retain its heat and further melt glaciers from below.

Rising temperatures were a key driver of peatland formation after the last glacial maximum, according to new research.

Radar satellites supply the data used to map sea level and ocean currents. However, up until now the radar's 'eyes' have been blind where the oceans are covered by ice. Researchers have now developed a new analysis method to solve this problem.

An analysis of radar data led scientists to an unexpected discovery of two lakes located beneath 550 to 750 meters of ice underneath the Devon Ice Cap, one of the largest ice caps in the Canadian Arctic. They are thought to be the first isolated hypersaline subglacial lakes in the world.