Emerging Remote Sensing Tools for Comprehensive Cryosphere Assessment

Mukesh Gupta 

This review synthesizes current remote sensing (RS) applications for monitoring Earth's cryosphere, encompassing ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice, snow cover, permafrost, and mountain ice features. It examines how satellite-based technologies, including radar interferometry, laser altimetry, passive microwave sensors, and optical imagery, have revolutionized cryospheric science by enabling consistent monitoring across vast, inaccessible regions. Recent advances have dramatically improved measurements of ice mass balance, thickness distribution, surface velocity, and melt dynamics. The integration of multiple sensor platforms with machine learning algorithms is enhancing prediction capabilities while reducing uncertainties. As climate change accelerates cryospheric transformations, RS provides critical data for understanding feedback mechanisms, improving climate models, and assessing impacts on global systems, human communities, and water resources.