Brief summary of The ISMASS 2012 Workshop and its outcomes, held on 14 July 2012 in Portland, Oregon, USA, under the auspices of the XXXII SCAR and Open Science Conference. More than 60 participants from all five continents attended the workshop, which was co-sponsored/supported by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) Project, the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), the International Glaciological Society (IGS), the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS) and the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS).