NASA Scientists Take to Air and Space to Study Arctic Sea Ice - EARTH

These four views were captured from a World War II-era aircraft in April 2026, when scientists used instruments aboard the plane to study Arctic sea ice. Their flights were timed to coincide with satellites passing overhead so the airborne and orbital data could be combined.

NASA/JPL-Caltech 

This month, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California are testing a spacecraft sensor that will help measure how quickly Arctic sea ice is disappearing. And while that instrument won’t launch for another year, scientists started preparing for its use during a recent field campaign in the Canadian wilderness.

Researchers spent two weeks in April flying above the Arctic Ocean, often watching sunrise from an altitude of 1,500 feet (457 meters) in a World War II-era plane. A variety of cutting-edge sensors used to measure the thickness of sea ice and snow were aboard the plane, including a stand-in for the microwave radiometer now undergoing testing at JPL. Measuring sea ice thickness is tricky, requiring a number of precise figures, including how high the sea ice rises above water, the depth of snow on top of that ice, and microwave emissions from the surface.

Flights were timed to the passage of satellites overhead so coordinated observations could be taken of the same features. Combining the airborne and satellite data will improve scientists’ ability to measure sea ice and understand how climate conditions are evolving across the Arctic.

In recent decades, the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice have changed. Improving measurements of those changes helps scientists better understand the Arctic system while supporting navigation, weather and ocean research, and future satellite observations. As Arctic shipping activity increases, the region is also becoming strategically and economically more significant.

According to Sahra Kacimi of JPL, who served as the field campaign’s science lead, ongoing warming in the Arctic could potentially impact public safety and economic interests. 

Find out what Arctic sea ice looked like as scientists studied it from the air — and using space-based instruments — during a field campaign this past April.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 

Frequent flyers

Kacimi has spent years studying sea ice using satellite data, but the top-down view she gets from space is different than peering out a plane’s window.

The bewildering diversity of sea ice creates otherworldly landscapes. The ice can be attached to land or adrift in the ocean; it can be rough or smooth. Driven by winds and ocean currents, the ice is constantly shifting, breaking apart, and deforming. Cracks can open into long stretches of exposed ocean, and collisions between floes can push ice rubble into massive ridges that extend for miles.

Some sea ice lasts only one season, while thicker ice can survive for several years (though multiyear sea ice is becoming less common in many parts of the Arctic). Entire ecosystems are affected by these changes, down to the arctic foxes and hares the scientists spotted throughout the trip.

Improving estimates of sea ice thickness helps scientists better understand how the region is changing and supports long-term observations of the Arctic environment. The NASA team logged about 50 hours in the air over the two-week campaign, conducting flights over drifting ice near the town of Inuvik before studying ice fixed to the shore of another location, a hamlet called Cambridge Bay.

For the Inuvik portion of the campaign, the team coordinated with the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, a satellite jointly developed by NASA and the French space agency, CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), with JPL leading the United States component of the mission. Though it was designed to map the height of the globe’s sea and fresh water, SWOT can also measure the amount of sea ice above the waterline.

In Cambridge Bay, the NASA team joined researchers from ESA (European Space Agency), Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute, and Canada’s University of Calgary. During this part of the campaign, coordinated flights soared over a field camp and under the tracks of satellite missions such as NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) and ESA’s CryoSat-2.

To improve sea ice thickness estimates, ESA is developing, with cooperation from NASA, a new polar mission called Copernicus Polar Ice and Snow Topography Altimeter (CRISTAL). During the April airborne campaign, scientists flew instruments similar to what CRISTAL will carry, including the microwave radiometer now being tested at JPL.

“Combining observations from space, air, and ground surface instruments is essential for developing and validating algorithms for current and future missions,” Kacimi said.

For the scientists, it was also a chance to meet locals who see the Arctic’s changes up close. Kacimi spoke to community leaders and students at a STEM camp about how disappearing ice is affecting their communities.

“I’m used to looking at sea ice from space and thinking about its role in the global climate, but for people living in the Arctic, it carries a much deeper meaning,” Kacimi said. 

Source: NASA Scientists Take to Air and Space to Study Arctic Sea Ice - NASA

Indigenous peoples in the Amazon face massive cultural and ecological loss due to climate change - Earth - Environment

Linking biological and cultural heritage to study climate change impacts over time. Credit: Nature (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10741-y

The Amazon region, Earth's most important ecosystem, is home to more than 400 Indigenous groups that use thousands of rainforest plant species. They pass on their knowledge of the flora primarily through oral tradition, usually from parents or other family members to their children. This creates a "living library of knowledge" about how to use native plants. Until now, little was known about how this treasure trove of knowledge is affected by the combined effects of climate change and language loss. A new study by the University of Zurich (UZH) provides the first reliable scientific data on the impact of global change on the biocultural heritage of the Amazon region.

To investigate the value of the Amazon region's biocultural heritage, the research group led by UZH professor of tropical plant diversity and ethnobotany Rodrigo Cámara Leret began by compiling a database documenting all reports on plant use in Amazonian countries and territories (Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana). The researchers collaborated with Patrick Roehrdanz, director of climate change and biodiversity at Conservation International's Moore Center for Science in the United States.

Commenting on the significance of the database, study leader Cámara Leret says, "For the first time, we synthesized information dispersed across 700 references spanning more than 500 years, revealing that Amazonian peoples use at least one-third of the region's known plant species." In absolute terms, this amounts to 5,796 plant species. The study is published in the journal Nature.

Indigenous peoples use 5,796 plant species

Although the database represents a major step forward, Cámara Leret believes that further ethnobotanical fieldwork will lead to important new discoveries. "For example, our participatory work with the Indigenous Cacua people led to the description of a new canopy palm species previously unknown to science, despite being locally abundant and long recognized by the Cacua as a key source of food security," he says.

Plants play a key role in Indigenous societies in many ways: as food, including legumes, peach palms and patauá oil; in cultural practices such as communal customs or hunting; in construction; and as medicine.

"Tobacco, for example, is a plant that is used in many ways in everyday life," Cámara Leret explains. Indigenous people not only chew the leaves of the tobacco plant as a stimulant, but also burn them before entering the rainforest to signal the arrival of humans. The distinctive smell is said to appease the forest spirits and give dangerous animals, such as snakes, time to retreat.

"Such everyday rituals reflect a respect for nature and an awareness of humanity's dependence on the rainforest," says co-author Jordi Bascompte, professor of ecology at UZH. Moreover, such rituals define the cultural identity of Indigenous groups, just as French or Italian cuisine helps define the identity of those countries.

One-third fewer plants used in future

In a second step, the researchers fed the collected plant-use data into 8,429 species distribution models and simulated the future of these plants based on three climate scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, many of the plant species currently in use are already rare and found only in a few areas, where they are increasingly being displaced by hyperdominant species.

The researchers have now shown that between 2060 and 2080, the ranges of plant species used by humans will shrink more significantly due to climate change than those of plant species not used by humans. Specifically, Indigenous cultures may lose an average of 28% to 34% of the plant species they use and 18% to 23% of the associated ecosystem services as a result of climate change.

Biocultural heritage to decline by 26%

By focusing on plants used by humans, the researchers were able to combine the effects of species loss with language extinction in the Amazon. When a plant species goes extinct, its Indigenous name, uses and benefits are lost as well, along with knowledge of its role in the rainforest ecosystem. As a result, the valuable body of knowledge about the world's richest flora, which also helps shape cultural identity, is gradually disappearing.

The study quantifies for the first time the extent to which the biocultural heritage of the Amazon region is expected to diminish as a result of species and language extinction from 2060 to 2080: by 26%.

"It turns out that the plants that Indigenous communities rely on could be decimated more severely than previously thought," says Cámara Leret. "But our results also suggest that the climate tipping point for Amazonia will not only impact biological diversity but also interact with language threat and cascade across the unique cultural heritage of the biome."

Guide to biocultural restoration

The study's findings, together with the publicly available dataset, may help guide biocultural restoration in the Amazon region, according to Cámara Leret. "We want our results to help stop, or even reverse, growing global change impacts on ecosystems and cultural traditions." It is important to continue documenting knowledge about Amazonian flora in writing, in partnership with local Indigenous communities, while also preserving the tradition of oral transmission.

Roehrdanz confirms, "Effective conservation will depend on recognizing Indigenous knowledge systems as fundamental to effective environmental stewardship. The study will help identify the locations where preserving culture and nature in tandem can have real impact for species that are currently under threat."

Bascompte adds, "Recognizing this intimate dependence between the ecological and cultural heritages is key to assessing nature's contributions to people." 

by University of Zurich

edited by Lisa Lock, reviewed by Andrew Zinin 

Provided by University of Zurich 

Source: Indigenous peoples in the Amazon face massive cultural and ecological loss due to climate change