To quote the environmental historian Sverker Sörlin, we are living through a “cryo-historical moment”. An ever growing awareness of the decline of the earth’s frozen regions and the consequences this will have for nature and society is matched by an ever growing sense of urgency to do something about it. Most notably, the United Nations declared 2025 to mark the start of the Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences. This initiative is aimed at promoting understanding of the “cryosphere”—a catchall term for the Earth’s snow, ice, and permafrost—and the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the profound changes it is currently experiencing. Beyond the Decade of Action, many other initiatives are emerging, taking place on local to international scales, designed to raise the profile of an endangered cryosphere. 

In this frenzy to promote research, it can be easy to overlook that the “cryosphere” and "cryospheric sciences" have their own histories. For much of these histories, the meaning and relevance of these concepts was far from self-evident. Coined in 1923, the term “cryosphere” did not become part of the mainstream of earth and environmental science until the final quarter of the century. By then, its meaning had changed, and despite sharing the same name, today's cryosphere is certainly conceptually different from the way it was invoked 90 years ago.

In my current research project, I explore where the concept of the cryosphere and its study come from, how they were contested, and how their meanings changed over time. Two questions in particular lie at the heart of my research. The first simply asks why it took the concept of the “cryosphere” over half a century to become widely accepted by scientists? It will lead me to the archives of early cryosphere promoters and detractors, and the histories of emerging organisations which laid claim to its study. The second question unpacks what it means to preserve pieces of the cryosphere for scientific research, specifically what role research laboratories played and continue to play in an area of science traditionally associated with fieldwork? In addition to examining the archives of some of the world’s leading institutions working on snow, ice, and permafrost, I also bring in perspectives from current-day cryospheric researchers to answer this. Altogether, I hope to bring some much-needed historical perspective on this increasingly prominent yet vaguely defined domain of the earth sciences.