The end of 2016 is an uneasy moment for climate science in the United States. With a new Administration and a new Congress arriving in January 2017, future support for climate science and observing systems is uncertain. Against this backdrop, this special issue of Oceanography on ocean-ice interaction is timely. Although it was not our intent to highlight climate change, the fragile nature of Earth’s cryosphere and how it is responding to a warming world are essential parts of each article. Many aspects of the shrinking cryosphere are not yet understood, but the research described in these pages points to larger-​than-​anticipated—and alarming—changes to the planet’s large ice sheets, with associated future increases in global sea levels. Importantly, the articles in this special issue demonstrate the value to society of continuing vigorous scientific research that will enable us to better understand our planet’s rapidly changing polar environments.

Willis, J.K., E. Rignot, R.S. Nerem, and E. Lindstrom. 2016. Introduction to the special issue on ocean-ice interaction. Oceanography 29(4):19–21, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2016.95.

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.