Earth System: What is the cryosphere
The cryosphere is the sum of frozen water around the globe. By volume, the perennial ice-containing cold regions of the world are dominated by the continental ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. Sea ice and snow have much less volume but are large in areal extent. Ice sheets, snow, and sea ice play a critical role in the Earth's climate.
Earth System: What is the biosphere?
The biosphere – the sphere of life – was named by Eduard Suess in 1875 but not fully described as a concept until the work of Vladimir Vernadsky in the 1920s. The biosphere is made up of biomes, or biophysical zones, filled with many ecosystems. Each ecosystem is composed of an intricate set of species adapted to prevailing conditions, from below ocean floors, to the land surface, to above the highest mountains. It includes life forms ranging in size from microscopic bacteria to the gargantuan blue whale. While persistent for billions of years, the biosphere has been hit by five mass extinctions in the geologic past and now faces existential threats to species diversity from human activity.
Earth System: What is the Geosphere?
The geosphere is the earth itself: the rocks, minerals, and landforms of the surface and interior. Below the crust - which varies in depth from about 5 km beneath the ocean floor to up to 70 km below the land surface, temperatures are high enough for deformation and a paste-like flow of elements.
Earth System: What is the hydrosphere?
The hydrosphere is the sum of all water on Earth and the water cycle that distributes it around the planet. Earth is unique in the solar system for its abundant surface waters. Our orbital distance from the sun, in addition to our unique atmosphere, gives Earth the right temperature in our middle-aged solar system to have water as a liquid, and lots of it.
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