The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Arctic System Science (ARCSS) Program is a multidisciplinary approach to understanding polar processes for climate and global change. ARCSS is the only element of the U.S. Global Change Research Program specifically concerned with the arctic region. By focusing on understanding Arctic processes in great detail, investigators are better able to characterize global changes through the improvement of global-scale models and other research tools.

In 2008 the ARCSS data archived at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) were transferred to the National Center for Atmospheric Research Earth Observing Laboratory (NCAR/EOL) archive. In 2016 the newly established NSF Arctic Data Center became the custodians of the ARCSS data.