National Capability is long-term, strategic science spanning decades, which enables the development of exciting step changes in techniques and technologies. The ongoing development and maintenance of these capabilities makes a much wider portfolio of environmental science possible.
The UK Polar Research Expertise for Science and Society (PRESCIENT), a British Antarctic Survey (BAS)/CPOM partnership, provides the UK and wider scientific community with the necessary infrastructure and data to support research into the polar regions. Through PRESCIENT, scientists provide essential advice to Government to inform policy and help prepare for the effects of climate-related changes.
In this first annual meeting of PRESCIENT, introduced by Professor Dominic Hodgson, interim Director of Science at BAS, and Professor Andrew Shepherd, CPOM Director, we heard from scientists across the programme on exciting advances and achievements in polar climate data records, long-term observations of ecosystems in regions of the Southern Ocean, sea-level Rise science and the Space Weather Observatory.
We also heard from Sophie Hodgson (Associate Director for National Capability, NERC) about the importance of National Capability to UK science and research: “you can’t understand trends and what is happening in the world if they’re not being observed over long periods of time.”
This broad programme of work supports and underpins research into how environmental change is affecting the polar regions, how this in turn leads to global sea-level rise, and space weather impacts measured from Antarctica.
The PRESCIENT programme is funded by NERC’s National Capability Single Centre Science and National Public Good initiatives.
The European State of the Climate 2024 report, an annual report compiled by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and implemented by ECMWF on behalf of the European Commission, has been released today, showing Europe to be the fastest-warming continent in what was the hottest year on record for Europe.
This year, the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) contributed to the section on Trends in climate indicators.
The polar ice sheets, in Greenland and Antarctica, store a significant proportion of the Earth’s freshwater. When they melt, they contribute this freshwater to the oceans, not only increasing sea levels, but also affecting ocean circulation. Estimates of the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets mass balance produced by IMBIE, an international collaboration of polar scientists led by CPOM and supported by the space agencies ESA and NASA, are used in this report’s key climate indicator on Ice Sheets.
Since the 1970s, there has been a recorded ice loss of:
Greenland ice sheet: 6776 km3
Antarctic ice sheet: 5253 km3
Please see Figure 19.3 on page 89 of the report.
This report also includes an overview of the different components of The cryosphere, including glaciers, sea ice, and ice sheets and how they interact with each other and the Earth’s wider environment, impacting the climate. CPOM is part of C3S (the Copernicus Climate Services) Cryosphere Service, which is led by ENVEO IT GmbH (https://www.enveo.at).
CryoSat-2 was successfully launched by the European Space Agency fifteen years ago today on 8th April 2010.
To mark the day, we’ve put together this short history of CryoSat-2 and how this fantastic satellite mission has contributed to polar science.
The original CryoSat-1 mission was proposed by CPOM’s Founder, Sir Duncan Wingham, in 1998 and launched in 2005; however, a programming issue with the rocket meant that this satellite was lost immediately after launch.
Its successor, CryoSat-2 was launched in in 2010 with CPOM Director Andy Shepherd as the mission’s Principal Scientific Advisor. CryoSat-2 was designed to last approximately 5 years, but it is still in orbit today and the mission has now been extended until 2028.
CryoSat-2 uses a radar instrument called SIRAL (Synthetic Aperture Interferometric Radar Altimeter), designed to measure Earth’s land and sea ice. It can measure changes at the margins of vast ice sheets and floating ice in polar oceans. SIRAL can not only detect tiny variations in the height of the ice but also measure sea level with unprecedented accuracy.
Here are just some of the ways CPOM has used CryoSat data in the last fifteen years:
Monitoring ice sheet mass balance
The CPOM-led IMBIE Project (Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Project) provides a long-term record of polar ice sheet melting in Greenland and Antarctica from community submitted estimates derived from satellite observations. Taking advantage of data from missions including CryoSat-2, IMBIE has made it possible to chart polar ice sheet mass change every year, ensuring the scientific community has the very latest estimates.
Understand the dynamics of sea ice
This recent research led by CPOM Associate Investigator Harry Heorton, uses the “consistent, good coverage” sea ice thickness data from CryoSat-2 to give an estimate of sea ice volume from 2010 – 2022. Take a look at this ESA article to find out more.
Detecting changes in the subglacial lakes
Led by CPOM Associate Investigator Noel Gourmelen (The University of Edinburgh & Earthwave), this research on sudden drainage events of subglacial lakes uses European Space Agency – ESA CryoSat-2 data, combined with computer models of glacier flow and ocean currents through the ESA FutureEO Science for Society 4D Antarctica project.
Improving climate models
Data from CryoSat-2, and other Earth observation missions, helps scientists to project future changes to the Earth’s ice and its impact on sea level rise by providing boundary conditions for numerical models and improving understanding of key ice loss mechanisms. CryoSat-2 data has been used in simulations from computer models such as BISICLES , which has been integrated into the UK Earth System Model (UKESM) as well as used in the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6 (ISMIP6).
Visit the CPOM data portal to see CryoSat measurements of sea ice, ice sheets, ice shelves and ice velocity.
Here at the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, we love spreading the word about our science, but also about the wider world of Earth Observation and modelling, satellites, net zero science and more. That’s why we regularly write blogs and articles about interesting research and findings, to raise awareness about the polar regions and the vital information being collected by satellites like ICESat-2 and CryoSat-2.
Whether you’re a scientist already working in the field, are thinking about studying science, or just love learning about space, satellites and the polar regions, there are a number of ways you can keep up to date with news and stories from CPOM:
Follow us on social media
We regular post our articles and repost interesting information from our colleagues in the field on our social media channels.
We would love to hear from you, so do please comment on our posts if you have any questions you would like to ask about our science.
Join us at an event
We regularly attend a range of events, from scientific and academic conferences to family-friendly events, like the Festival of Tomorrow, where we had an activity stand at the end of February. We advertise these events on social media, but also here on our website, so do come along if you see one advertised in your area. We would love to meet you!
Get in touch directly!
We would love to hear from you! Get in touch with us if you would like to find out more about our work or think we could work together in the future.
Have you heard about the colossal A23a iceberg, currently grounded off the coast of the South Atlantic island of South Georgia?
This iceberg first broke away in 1986 and remained on a sandbank in the middle of the Weddell Sea for 35 years.
Scientists from the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) monitor icebergs like A23a from space using satellites to better understand the impact of a warming climate on the cryosphere.
Recently, A23a has been making headlines as it drifts closer to South Georgia, raising concerns about its potential effects on shipping routes and local wildlife.
Over the weekend (14 – 15 March 2025), CPOM Director Professor Andrew Shepherd spoke to Sky News and Times Radio about this iceberg and the threats it poses to penguins, seals, and marine life that thrive in these coastal areas.
As we don’t get to see these icebergs up close very often, it is fantastic to see this video footage from Sky News, which helps show the true scale of this mega iceberg.
Image Credit: Professor Andrew Shepherd (taken in Antarctica).
In 2024, we were very lucky to be able to catch up with women working in the field of Earth observation and modelling from across the world at the ESA/NASA Cryo2ice conference in Iceland.
Ahead of International Women’s Day 2025 coming up this Saturday, we gathered some of the perspectives shared with us on the importance of studying and understanding the Earth, what it’s like working in this area of science and why it’s important to share scientific understanding with the world- as well as encouraging words for women and girls thinking of pursuing a career in science.as well as encouraging words for women and girls thinking of pursuing a career in science.
Thank you to our interviewees for taking part in this video: CPOM Principal Investigator: Sea Ice Earth Observation, Rosemary Willatt (UCL), Anny Cazenave (LEGOS), CPOM Director for Knowledge Exchange, Sammie Buzzard (Northumbria University), Liza Wilson (University of Iceland/Fulbright Commission Iceland), Rachel Tilling (NASA), Bryony Freer (Scripps Institute of Oceanography) and Helen Fricker (Scripps Institute of Oceanography).
A special thanks must also go to the ESA and NASA Cryo2ice team, who facilitated many of the interviews included in this video.
This week, the Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE) has released a new report in Nature, assessing mass changes in the balance of the Earth’s glaciers from 2000 to 2023. The report shows that during this period, glaciers around the world have lost somewhere between 2% and 39% of their ice regionally and around 5% globally.
The team is co-led by Professor Michael Zemp (University of Zurich) and CPOM’s Associate Investigator: Ice Sheet Modelling and Satellite InSAR, Professor Noel Gourmelen (University of Edinburgh). It is coordinated by the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) at the University of Zurich, in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh and Earthwave Ltd.
There are an estimated 200,000 glaciers across the Earth and so monitoring them all individually is very challenging. That is why satellite observations are so important as they enable scientists to produce robust and accurate assessments of how much ice glaciers contain, and how rapidly they are melting. This is crucial if we are to protect our planet from the effects of climate change and to prepare for a warmer planet in the future.
2025 is the UN’s International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, so never has there been a more pressing time to take notice of what’s happening in the cryosphere and strive to protect it.
You can read Professor Noel Gourmelen’s comments on GLaMBIE’s recent findings in this article from The Guardian, alongside comments from CPOM Director, Professor Andrew Shepherd.
The research is funded by the Science for Society element of ESA’s FutureEO programme, with additional support from the International Association for Cryospheric Sciences and various institutional partners
Environmental tipping points occur when warming temperatures lead to changes in the climate system which pass a threshold and become irreversible. Passing these points will lead to changes to sea level, ocean circulation and our weather, something world leaders need to plan for in advance. That’s why it’s vital to monitor for signs we are coming close to and passing these tipping points.
Combining observation and modelling expertise with innovative sensing systems, the programme aims to develop sensing systems for monitoring the Earth’s ice and oceans and place these systems in locations such as the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Subpolar Gyres (ocean circulation systems which sit under an area of constant low atmospheric pressure); both of which have been identified as crucial climate tipping points.
The programme will also look at developing improved models (computer simulations) to produce more robust and accurate predictions of these tipping points and the potential impact on the planet.
The programme is made up of 27 international teams of experts in climate science, maths, computer science, statistics, optics, photonics, and nuclear physics – bringing together this expertise to develop the best possible early warning system for these climate tipping points.
CPOM members are supporting three of these teams:
CryoWatch: Aims to progress the development of affordable, solar-powered, High Altitude Pseudo Satellites (HAPS), to be stationed in the stratosphere for persistent monitoring of polar regions. Led by Steve Tate (Voltitude), the team includes CPOM Co-Director of Science, Professor Mal McMillan.
OptimISM: A Next-Generation Framework for Ice Sheet Modelling. Led by Trystan Surawy-Stepney (University of Leeds), the team includes CPOM Principal Investigator: Land Ice Modelling, Dr Steph Cornford (University of Bristol).
PROMOTE: Progressing Earth System Modelling for Tipping Point Early Warning Systems. Led by Reinhard Schiemann (University of Reading and National Centre for Atmospheric Science), the team includes CPOM Principal Investigator: Land Ice Modelling, Dr Steph Cornford (University of Bristol).
It is said that Ernest Shackleton advertised ‘men wanted’ for ‘hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger’ ahead of his 1914 Antarctic expedition which ended in the loss of his ship. Back then polar exploration and research was seen as an exclusively male occupation, even though women had been involved since as early as the 19th century. Women were often formally blocked from joining expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic.
Times have certainly changed since then. During the last century intrepid and tenacious women led the way in shattering this ice ceiling. Fast forward more than a century after Shackleton’s infamous advert to 2025 and women scientists are participating in and leading field research projects across the cryosphere.
The UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, brings together Earth Observation experts with modellers, to provide robust and accurate measurements of the Earth’s ice from the past and present, as well as projections for the future to help with world prepare for the changes a warming world might bring. Although we use satellite data in our work, Earth Observation often requires field-based observations to help verify satellite data, and so fieldwork is still an important piece of the puzzle when researching the polar regions, providing our scientists with wonderful opportunities to visit these incredible and rapidly changing environments.
DEFIANT (Drivers and Effects of Fluctuations in sea Ice in the ANTarctic) is a NERC project aimed at studying sea ice in the Southern Ocean and how it affects the wider climate system. CPOM’s Dr Inès Otosaka and Dr Isobel Lawrence and CPOM Director Professor Andrew Shepherd joined a fantastic team of scientists from BAS and DTU, to visit Antarctica to verify data collected on Antarctic sea ice by satellites.
Image credit: Professor Andrew Shepherd
Inès said (in this blog she wrote at the time) that ‘it was incredibly rewarding to see all the work that had been done over the months preceding the actual fieldwork come to fruition’. Although field work can be an exhausting experience, there was still time to enjoy the spectacular location with the team being ‘lucky enough to spot some penguins, seals, and even a pod of orcas.’
The team recorded this brilliant Iceworld podcast with BAS (British Antarctic Survey) – have a listen to their experiences on this incredible expedition.
Inès also joined Andrew Shepherd, PhD Researchers Amy Swiggs and Dr Anne Braakmann-Folgmann (former PhD Researcher) on the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Cryo2ice campaign to Greenland in 2022 where they collected ice cores, verified LiDAR measurements and collected snow depth measurements for snow density calculations. Amy wrote this blog about the fieldwork adventure, if you want to read more about this.
More recently in September 2024, Amy and Inès were also part of a CPOM team that visited Iceland to study proglacial lakes with a drone, alongside PhD Researcher Natasha Lee, CPOM Director for Knowledge Exchange Dr Sammie Buzzard, Andrew Shepherd, PhD Researcher, Nitin Ravinder and Data Scientist, Ben Palmer. We made this short film about this campaign, showing the team in action.
Image: CPOM PhD Researcher Natasha Lee, setting up a drone, on the Iceland Fieldwork campaign 2024.
Getting the opportunity to do fieldwork at an early career stage often draws people to polar science. For Dr Rosie Willatt (CPOM PI) the opportunity to visit Antarctica as a PhD student was a turning point in her career, and ultimately led to her becoming a polar scientist. You can hear more about how Rosie became a polar scientist in this video.
Sammie Buzzard, a glaciologist who started out studying maths, has been part of numerous fieldwork expeditions, including measuring glaciers in the Arctic during her PhD. She will soon be visiting the Antarctic in 2025.
She said “Although we are still far from gender equality within the polar sciences it’s fantastic to see opportunities becoming available to those of all genders that wouldn’t have been even during the earlier years of my lifetime”.
Image: CPOM’s Sammie Buzzard, preparing equipment on the Iceland Fieldwork Campaign, 2024.
These are just some of the examples of CPOM women scientists leading, and working on, these important fieldwork projects across the Arctic and Antarctica.
As we strive to understand these complex regions, how climate changes affect them and in turn how these changes will impact the rest of the planet in the years to come, it’s fantastic to see women scientists playing a vital role following the years of exclusion they experienced in previous centuries.
Greenland is a fascinating and beautiful country, with a population of more than 50,000 people. It has long been a key area of focus for polar scientists, due to the importance of observing and modelling of changes to the Greenland ice sheet. This huge expanse of ice, the second largest land ice mass in the world, is more than 2000km in length, 1000km wide and at its thickest point is over 3km thick.
And this ice sheet is melting.
Melting ice sheets directly contribute water to the oceans, leading to sea level rise. This influx of cooler water also affects the ocean circulation, with implications for global weather patterns. Accurately tracking melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets is essential to ensure people all over the world can prepare for the effects of climate change.
As ice sheets are so huge they are incredibly difficult to fully measure in person. Satellite measurements are the only ways we can accurately measure these vast areas.
CPOM has provided assessments of the amount of ice stored in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets since 2018, via the IMBIE Project (Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise) which uses three decades of satellite data to assess the ice sheets. You can read their most recent report in Earth System Science Data from 2023, which estimates ice losses from these regions since 1992.
Another recent study from December 2024, led by CPOM PhD Researcher, Nitin Ravinder, and published in Geophysical Research Letters, showed that the Greenland ice sheet lost 2347 km3 of ice during the period since 2010 – which has contributed roughly ‘the amount of water stored in Africa’s Lake Victoria’ to the Earth’s oceans. Here’s an animation from Planetary Visions based on this study showing these changes in the Greenland ice sheet.
As sea level rise will affect many millions of people around the world, as well as the numerous at-risk species in coastal habitats, it’s vital that Governments and international bodies are able to plan for this rise. Computer modelling (simulations) is the only way we can accurately predict how the ice sheets might behave in the future.
CPOM provides UK National Capability research in ice sheet modelling, developing the BISICLES model.
BISICLES is a numerical model (simulation) that works with high resolution simulations around the margins of ice sheets (the grounding line), where interactions between the ice sheet and the ocean and atmosphere are the most complex. This is particularly useful when looking at the Greenland ice sheet.
Scientists from CPOM recently worked on combining this system as the ice sheet component within the UKESM (The UK Earth System Model), allowing us to better explore and understand the interactions between the ice sheets and the global ocean and atmospheric circulations (and providing evidence for IPCC reporting).
BISICLES has also been integrated into large international projects such as ISMIP (Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project) to help project future changes to global sea levels, something that is particularly difficult to predict beyond the end of the century with one model alone.
The behaviour of the Greenland ice sheet is particularly difficult to predict, as over recent years we have seen points where melting has been more rapid than anticipated, but also points where it has been less than expected. We need to continually hone and improve computer simulations (or models) that can accurately predict how these ice sheets might behave in a rapidly warming planet to account for the complexity of the interactions between the ice sheets and the atmosphere in these regions.
Understanding this part of the world is vital for understanding how we might protect the rest of the Earth in the years to come. By combining expertise in land ice Earth observation with modelling simulations, like BISICLES, CPOM is continuing to increase the accuracy of future projections of sea level rise and weather changes, leading from the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
