Comprehensive Cryospheric Science and Environmental Change
- 1st Edition - February 2, 2026
- Imprint: Elsevier
- Editors: Richard Kelly, Scott Elias
- Language: English
- Hardback ISBN:9 7 8 - 0 - 3 2 3 - 8 5 2 4 2 - 5
- eBook ISBN:9 7 8 - 0 - 3 2 3 - 8 5 8 9 3 - 9
The cryosphere is where water is frozen on the Earth. It includes glaciers and ice sheets, sea ice and terrestrial snow cover, permanently and seasonally frozen ground, and frozen… Read more
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The cryosphere is where water is frozen on the Earth. It includes glaciers and ice sheets, sea ice and terrestrial snow cover, permanently and seasonally frozen ground, and frozen lakes and rivers. It is also where indigenous and non-indigenous communities reside across the high latitudes and at high altitudes. As a result of human-induced global warming, the cryosphere is shrinking in its coverage and changing in its temporal behavior, which will have profound implications for society.
Comprehensive Cryospheric Science and Environmental Change, Four Volume Set provides a broad and comprehensive overview of the cryosphere and our understanding of its energy and mass processes. Containing approximately 80 chapters written by world-leading experts, it contextualizes the state of current cryosphere against past states over geologic time, explaining how and why the cryosphere is changing and what the implications are for the environment and society.
Structured using an integrative approach, it draws together scientific understanding of the cryosphere from the perspective of fundamental physical principles, field experimentation, remote sensing observations and numerical modelling, to demonstrate how society will be impacted and respond to consequential environmental change. With the availability of sophisticated modelling tools and big data, scientific skill in modelling cryospheric systems has led to improved understanding of past cryospheric environments and increasingly skillful predictions of the future. With our evolving, yet not fully formed understanding of how society responds to environmental change, this work outlines current thinking around vulnerability, impact, adaptation and mitigation of cryosphere-induced environmental change, for example sea level rise, snow and sea ice season changes and permafrost degradation.
Ideal for geoscience and earth/environmental science researchers of all levels, this one-stop reference work provides deep-level treatment of data science and the human responses to cryospheric change via a fully integrated, interdisciplinary approach.
Comprehensive Cryospheric Science and Environmental Change, Four Volume Set provides a broad and comprehensive overview of the cryosphere and our understanding of its energy and mass processes. Containing approximately 80 chapters written by world-leading experts, it contextualizes the state of current cryosphere against past states over geologic time, explaining how and why the cryosphere is changing and what the implications are for the environment and society.
Structured using an integrative approach, it draws together scientific understanding of the cryosphere from the perspective of fundamental physical principles, field experimentation, remote sensing observations and numerical modelling, to demonstrate how society will be impacted and respond to consequential environmental change. With the availability of sophisticated modelling tools and big data, scientific skill in modelling cryospheric systems has led to improved understanding of past cryospheric environments and increasingly skillful predictions of the future. With our evolving, yet not fully formed understanding of how society responds to environmental change, this work outlines current thinking around vulnerability, impact, adaptation and mitigation of cryosphere-induced environmental change, for example sea level rise, snow and sea ice season changes and permafrost degradation.
Ideal for geoscience and earth/environmental science researchers of all levels, this one-stop reference work provides deep-level treatment of data science and the human responses to cryospheric change via a fully integrated, interdisciplinary approach.
- Contains approximately 80 chapters written by world-leading experts
- Helps students and scientists frame fundamental questions regarding the cryosphere, environmental change and how this impacts civil society
- Describes foundational elements such as remote sensing and modelling in a manner that is accessible, equipping readers to go further in their understanding
- Covers new and emerging themes in cryospheric science that deal with big data/data science, AI, and data management strategies and policies
- Couples the science of cryospheric environmental change with the impacts, adaptations and mitigation strategies to respond to these changes, drawing in social scientists working in this field
Academic students and researchers in Geosciences, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Hydrology and Water Resources, Geography, Computational sciences, Environmental / Natural Resource Management, Practitioners and researchers in Applied Economics and Financial Management, policy makers from private and governmental agencies
Section 1: Cryospheric data curation and management: open standards and interoperability/ New observing technologies
Section 2: Introduction: The nature of the cryosphere/ The paleo-record of the cryosphere/Society and the cryosphere
Section 3: The state of the cryosphere –Present and Future
Section 4: Ice caps and Glaciers and Ice Sheets
Section 5: Sea ice and ice at the land margins
Section 2: Introduction: The nature of the cryosphere/ The paleo-record of the cryosphere/Society and the cryosphere
Section 3: The state of the cryosphere –Present and Future
Section 4: Ice caps and Glaciers and Ice Sheets
Section 5: Sea ice and ice at the land margins
- Edition: 1
- Published: February 2, 2026
- Imprint: Elsevier
- Language: English
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Scott Elias
Scott A. Elias grew up in Colorado, USA, and received both an undergraduate degree and Ph.D. in Environmental Biology from the University of Colorado. He went on to do postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and the University of Berne, Switzerland. Scott returned to the University of Colorado in 1982 and became a research associate of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. In 2000 he took a lectureship in Physical Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, and became a Professor of Quaternary Science in 2007. He has served as editor-in-chief of three editions of the Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science, and co-editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Geology and the Cryosphere Comprehensive.
Affiliations and expertise
University of Colorado, Westminster, Colorado, USA