Exploring the Sun's Role in a Changing Cryosphere
September 15-19, 2025
Fairbanks, Alaska
AGENDA
Session 1. Solar Variability and Earth-Environmental Influences
The Sun’s main influence on the Earth’s enviromental systems is via solar irradiance. Variations in solar irradiance have been measured from space for 46 years and found to be predominantly due to solar-surface magnetic-flux emergence and decay. Models link solar irradiance variability to historical solar records, enabling irradiance reconstructions over the past thousands of years. This session will discuss solar-variability measurements and models over all timescales and their corresponding influences on Earth’s environmental systems, such as temperature variations and atmospheric and ocean circulation changes.
Session 2. Dynamics of Polar Environment: Variability, Feedback, and Solar Influence
The polar regions are key indicators of global change, and understanding their environmental variability is crucial for predicting future scenarios. This session explores how changes in snow and ice cover, and terrestrial and oceanic processes coupled with the atmosphere, interact and contribute to the overall variability of the polar environment. For example, we want to investigate the importance of impurities and melt dynamics for the solar spectral absorption in snow and ice and its effects on albedo, which influences the energy balance and feedback mechanisms in polar regions. This session will bring together experts from solar radiation, cryospheric, atmospheric and oceanic sciences to identify critical knowledge gaps that need to be addressed to improve our understanding of polar dynamics.
Session 3. Polar Region Measurements: field and satellite observations
A number of field missions have been conducted over the past decade to investigate the amplification of environmental change over the polar regions. Satellite observations, some of which were specifically designed to probe the complex energy exchange between atmosphere and cryosphere, have provided additional observational evidence that the polar environment is undergoing significant transitions in the current epoch. This session invites papers on recent satellite observations and field missions directed toward polar research.
Session 4. Paleoclimate Studies (centuries to millennia)
Diverse paleoclimate data records, such as ice core samples and tree rings, can highlight natural climate variability and the drivers of environmental variability over extended timescales. These records can reveal how solar activity, volcanic activity, and other environmental drivers have influenced global and regional environmental patterns over centuries to millennia. Results from paleoclimate studies are important for placing current environmental variability in a broader historical context and refining future environmental projections.
Session 5. Future Observations and Modeling for Advancing Environmental Science
This session will focus on new developments in observational remote-sensing techniques and Earth-system modeling that are essential for advancing our understanding of Earth’s changing environment that includes improved understanding of solar variability and cryosphere / polar changes. Improvements in both observational data and model simulations (e.g., spatial resolution, spectral content, radiometric calibration, and observation cadence and coverage) are critical for more accurate characterizations, attributions, and predictions. We will explore the role of new satellite missions and ground-based observations for monitoring environmental variables and assess the integration of these new data sources into Earth-system models.
- Tom Woods, SOC Chair, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics
- Uma Bhatt, University of Alaska at Fairbanks
- Pascal Buri, University of Alaska at Fairbanks
- Odele Coddington, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics
- Greg Kopp, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics
- Jae Lee, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- Peter Pilewskie, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics
- Doug Rabin, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- Erik Richard, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics
- Ed Thiemann, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics
- Dong Wu, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
