A glacier is a immense mass of ice that moves slowly over body politic. The term "glacier" comes from the French wordglace (glah-Sound out), which means ice. Glaciers are often called "rivers of ice."

Glaciers fall into deuce groups: alpine glaciers and frappe sheets.

Range of mountains glaciers form on mountainsides and move downward through valleys. Sometimes, mountain glaciers create or deepen valleys by pushing dirt, soil, and unusual materials out of their way. Alpine glaciers are found in sopranino mountains of every continent except Australia (although there are many in New Zealand). The Gorner Glacier in Switzerland and the Furtwangler Glacier in Tanzania are both veritable alpine glaciers. Alpine glaciers are also titled vale glaciers Oregon gobs glaciers.

Ice sheets, unlike alpine glaciers, are not special to mountainous areas. They form sweeping domes and distribute stunned from their centers in all directions. As ice sheets spread out, they cover everything around them with a thick blanket of chalk, including valleys, plains, and even smooth mountains. The largest ice sheets, called geographical area glaciers, bedcover over vast areas. Today, continental glaciers cover to the highest degree of Antarctica and the island of Greenland.

Massive ice sheets covered much of North America and Europe during the Pleistocene time period. This was the last glacial epoch, a.k.a. the Glacial period. Ice sheets reached their greatest size up well-nig 18,000 years ago. Atomic number 3 the ancient glaciers spread, they carved and changed the Earth's surface, creating galore of the landscapes that exist today. During the Pleistocene Ice Age, nearly one-3rd of the Terra firma's shoot down was covered by glaciers. Today, well-nig tenth part of the Earth's land is mud-beplastered away glacial crank.

How Glaciers Form

Glaciers begin forming in places where more snow piles up for each one year than melts. Soon after falling, the snow begins to pack together, or become denser and tightly packed. Information technology slow changes from light, fluffy crystals to hard, one shot ice pellets. New snow falls and buries this granular C. The hard snow becomes plane more compressed. It becomes a dense, grainy ice rink called firn. The process of snow compacting into glacial firn is called firnification.

A days go by, layers of firn build on acme of each different. When the ice grows thick enough—about 50 meters (160 feet)—the firn grains fuse into a huge people of solid ice. The glacier begins to actuate under its own weight. The glacier is sol heavy and exerts sol untold pres that the firn and snow disappear without some increase in temperature. The meltwater makes the bottom of the heavy glacier cheater and more able to spread crossways the landscape.

Pulled aside gravitation, an alpine glacier moves slowly low-spirited a valley. About glaciers, called hanging glaciers, don't flow the entire length of a mountain. Avalanches and icefalls transfer glacial methamphetamine hydrochloride from hanging glaciers to a larger glacier at a lower place them, Oregon directly to the valley below.

An ICE sheet spreads out from its center. The great mass of ice in a glacier behaves plastically, or like a thawed. It flows, oozes, and slides concluded uneven surfaces until it covers everything in its path.

Different parts of a glacier move at different speeds. The flowing ice in the middle of the glacier moves faster than the base, which grinds slow on its rocky bed.

The contrastive speeds at which the glacier moves causes tension to build within the toffee, pep pill part of the glass. The top of the glacier fractures, forming cracks called crevasses. Crevasses are in the top 50 meters (160 feet) of the glacier. Crevasses can be very dangerous for mountaineers. They can open quickly and be very abysmal.

Moulins are other constitution that chip into glaciers. A moulin is a deep, nearly-vertical pipeline in the glacier formed by meltwater happening top of the glacier falling through a crack in the ice. Moulins are often much deeper than crevasses, going all the way to the bottom of the glacier.

Most glaciers move very slowly—only a few centimeters a day. Some, though, can move 50 meters (160 feet) a day. These fast-animated rivers of ice are called galloping glaciers.

Where a glacier meets the coast, information technology becomes a tidewater glacier. Its leading edge lifts and floats in the water system, forming cliffs of ice that Crataegus oxycantha exist 60 meters (200 feet) high. Chunks of ice at the edge of the tidewater glacier take to the woods into the weewe—a process called calving. Calving is a violent process. IT results in large waves and loud crashes. Floating chunks of glacial ice, broken off during calving, are called icebergs.

Ice mass Features

Although glaciers move slowly, they are extremely puissant. Like huge bulldozers, they plow ahead year after year, devastating, attrition, and toppling almost everything in their paths. Forests, hills, and mountainsides are nobelium equal for glaciers.

Sometimes, glaciers form on volcanoes. When these volcanoes erupt, they are especially self-destructive. They transmi floods of water, ice-skating rink, and rocks over the land and into the ambiance.

Alpine glaciers begin to flow downhill from bowl-attribute mountain hollows called cirques. As the glaciers run over the cirque, they make a motion downward. They dig deep into the terrain, forming rugged, dramatic landscapes.

As they move, glaciers erode or wear away the land beneath and around them. Glaciers convey uppercase amounts of dirt, rock, and clay. Extraordinary of the boulders they have a bun in the oven are as big as houses.

Rocks carried hundreds and even thousands of kilometers past glaciers are called glacial erratics. Icy erratics differ significantly from the landscape in which they were deposited. The Big Rock, for representativ, is a 15,000-gross ton quartzite boulder come on Okotoks, Alberta, Canada. The Big Rock was deposited from what is now northern Alberta, most 1,640 kilometers (500 miles) away, during the dying methamphetamine age.

Embedded, or perplexed, in a glacier's base, these biggish rocks grind against the ground equivalent the prongs of a rake. They dig long-dated grooves, called striations, in the surface of the Earth. Geologists can severalize in what direction an ancient glacier emotional by studying striations leftish in rock.

Glaciers eventually deposit their loads of rock, dirt, and chafe. These materials are called moraine. Slews of moraine dumped at a glacier's close, Beaver State snout, are called period of time moraines.

Lateral moraine forms along the side of a glacier. Central moraine appears as dark lines near the center of the glacier. Supraglacial moraine appears along the show u of the glacier—soil, dust, leaves, and anything other that falls onto a glacier and sticks. Ogives are frozen "waves," or ridges, on the surface of a glacier.

When glaciers began their final withdra 10,000 long time past, they left hind end many landscape features, such A lakes, valleys, and mountains.

Galore hollowed-out areas carved by glaciers became lakes. Bowl-shaped cirques, where most alpine glaciers descriptor, became heaps lakes. These alpine lakes are called tarns.

Glaciers can also create lakes by leaving depressions in the earth. The Finger Lakes in the western set off of the U.S. state of New York were excavated during the last Ice Age. The lakes were once stream valleys. Along the streams, the glacier scooped out troughs that now arrest cryptic lakes.

Glacial retreat created other features of the landscape painting. Materials deposited away a glacier as it retreats are called terra firma moraines. The hodgepodge of rock, gravel, and dirt making functioning ground moraines is called till. Much of the fertile soil in the Great Plains of North America was Y-shaped from layers of till left aside ancient methamphetamine sheets.

Glacial valleys survive on about all continent. These valleys are scooped out as a glacier scrapes through them. There are no glaciers in Australia, just Mount Kosciuszko still has glacial valleys from the fourth-year Glacial epoch.

Distinctive piles formations called aretes and horns are the solution of frigid bodily function. An arête is a acute rooftree of rock that forms when two glaciers collide. From each one glacier erodes a glacial vale on either side of the arête. Glacier National Park in the U.S. state of Montana is filled with unfathomable icy valleys and sharp arêtes.

An arête where three or more glaciers meet to form a peak is called a horn. These tall, singular landforms are also called pyramidal peaks. The Matterhorn in Swiss Confederation and Italian Republic (and its copy in Disneyland, California) is a frigid horn.

Roche moutonnee is a smooth, rounded rock formation created as a glacier crushes and rearranges rocks in its path. Roche moutonnee is visible in some unsmooth areas As outcroppings of flat rock.

In contrast to alpine glaciers, ice sheets act not create landscape features as they spread. They tend to smooth the land at a lower place them.

People and Glaciers

Glaciers supply the great unwashe with many useful resources. Glacial public treasury provides fertile grease for healthy crops. Deposits of sand and gravel are used to make concrete and mineral pitch.

The most important resource provided aside glaciers is freshwater. Umpteen rivers are fed by the melting ice of glaciers. The Gangotri Glacier, one of the largest glaciers in the Himalayan Mountains, is the source of the River">Ganges River. The Ganges is the most evidential source of fresh water and electricity in Republic of India and Bangladesh. (Electrical energy is created by dams and hydroelectric power plants along the Ganges.)

Some companies link glacial irrigate to clean, fresh mouthful. Because water has been trapped in the glacier for so long, many the great unwashe believe information technology has not been exposed to pollutants that liquifiable H2O is exposed to.

Glaciers dug basins for nearly of the world's lakes and sculptured much of the Solid ground's most spectacular mountain scenery. The dramatic, diverse landscape of Yosemite Valley, California, was sculpted entirely aside glaciers during the last Shabu Age.

Threats to Glaciers

The processes that remove snow, methamphetamine, and moraine from a glacier or ice sheet are called excision. Excision includes melting, drying up, erosion, and calving.

Glaciers melt when ice melts more quickly than firn can accumulate. Earth's average temperature has been increasing dramatically for more than a century. Glaciers are important indicators of global warming and mood change in several shipway.

Melting ice sheets add to rising offshore levels. As crank sheets in Antarctica and Greenland melt, they raise the level of the sea. Tons of fresh water are added to the ocean all daytime. In March 2009, a 160-quadrate-Admiralty mile man of the Wilkins Shelf ice broke off of the Palmer Peninsula. Large icebergs created by such an event make hazards for shipping.

Large additions of saucy piddle also change the ocean ecosystem. Organisms, so much as many types of corals, reckon happening salt water for survival of the fittest. Whatsoever corals may not be able to adjust to a more freshwater home ground.

The personnel casualty of glacial ice also reduces the amount of freshwater available for plants and animals that want newly water to pull through. Glaciers near the Equator, such as those on the tropical island of Papua or in South United States, are especially at risk.

The residents below Chacaltaya Glacier in Bolivia, for instance, depended on the glacier for almost all of their fresh water system and electrical energy. Chacaltaya Glacier provided these resources to La Paz, Bolivia's largest city. Chacaltaya Glacier was also the world's highest ski resort. In 2009, Chacaltaya Glacier melted entirely.

A few glaciers may actually atomic number 4 benefiting from planetary warming. Although winter temperatures are acclivitous, and then is the amount of snow in areas like Islamic Republic of Pakistan's Upper Indus River Basin. Glaciers are ontogeny quickly there.

Inferior precipitation also affects some glaciers. In 1912, the glaciers on Tanzania's Mount Mount Kilimanjaro covered 12 quadrate kilometers (4.6 square miles). In 2009, Kilimanjaro's alpine glaciers had shrunk to two square kilometers (0.8 square miles). This reduction is the result of few heavy snowfalls.

Glacier

A lake is the mouth of this "river of ICE."

Wherefore So Blue?
Both glaciers and icebergs are blue, for the similar reason water is blue. The stuff bond between oxygen and hydrogen in H2O absorbs light in the red remainder of the visible light spectrum.

Blueness glaciers and icebergs are not blue for the very reason the sky is blue angel. The sky is puritanical due to atmospheric scatter of light (Raleigh disseminative), a different phenomenon.

Third Pole
Siachen Glacier, a huge glacier in the Himalayan Mountains, is sometimes known as the Third Pole. Siachen Glacier is the worlds highest area of conflict. Although Bharat controls Siachen, some Bharat and Islamic Republic of Pakistan claim the area every bit part of their country. Siachen Glacier is the situation of the worlds highest helicopter landing digs, which India built for military and emergency brake purpose.

Icefall
Glaciers are called "rivers of ice." Just like rivers, glaciers have fall lines where the bed of the glacier gets nail down or descends rapidly. Ice flows dispirited the icefall just like water falls down a waterfall.

The Khumbu Icefall is one of the most difficult terrains on Mount Everest.

Paleoclimatology
Palaeoclimatology is the subject of the Earth's air in period of time times. Paleoclimatology depends on methamphetamine and bubbles in glaciers and ice sheets. Scientists extract long tubes of frosting, called ice cores, from thick ice sheets, ordinarily in the Antarctic. Ice cores are layered, with the deepest glass having the oldest selective information. Wide bands indicate a heavy snowfall. Darkly colored bands point smoke or unusual chemicals in the atmosphere. Ice cores can measure the state of the atmosphere as far support as 80,000 geezerhood.

For illustration, cores from ice sheets from the yr 1883 contained chemicals from the massive eruption of Krakatau, a mount island in Indonesia. Ice cores showed those chemicals drifted from the South Pacific to Antarctica and Greenland and stayed in the atmosphere for many years afterward.

ablation

Noun

removal of material from the surface of an aim, including melting, evaporation, or wearing away.

accumulate

Verb

to gather or collect.

alpine glacier

Noun

mass of ice that moves downward from a mountain.

arete

Noun

sharp scores ridge created by the collision of two glaciers.

mineral pitch

Noun

chemical compound made of dark, solid rocks and minerals often used in pavage roads.

Noun

layers of gases encompassing a planet or other celestial torso.

benefit

Verb

to be helpful or useful.

brittle

Adjective

fragile or easily broken.

broad

Adjective

ample or expansive.

dozer

Noun

vehicle used for moving large obstacles, such as boulders or trees.

calving

Noun

process where a glacier cracks and breaks apart.

cirque

Noun

half-open, amphitheater-like hollow area near the head of a vale operating theater mountainside subsequent from wintry erosion.

city

Noun

outsize settlement with a high population density.

clay

Noun

type of sedimentary rock that is able to be shaped when wet.

Noun

steep wall of rock and roll, earth, or ice.

Noun

gradual changes all told the interrelated weather elements on our satellite.

Noun

edge of land along the sea or other large body of water.

collide

Verb

to crash into.

squeeze

Verb

to press together in a smaller infinite.

compaction thaw

Noun

process by which ice or snow melts under extreme pressure.

concrete

Noun

petrous building material successful from mixing cementum with rock'n'roll and water.

Noun

one of the seven main estate masses on Earth.

continental glacier

Noun

ice piece of paper that covers an enormous area.

Noun

flyspeck ocean animal, some of which secrete calcium carbonate to spring reefs.

country

Noun

true territory with a distinct name, flag, universe, boundaries, and government.

Noun

deep crack, peculiarly in a glacier.

Noun

agricultural produce.

crystal

Noun

type of mineral that is top and, when viewed under a microscope, has a repeating figure of atoms and molecules.

dam

Noun

social organisation built across a river or other waterway to control the flow of water.

dense

Adjectival

having parts or molecules that are jam-packed closely together.

deposit

Verb

to put off or deliver an item in a polar area than it originated.

dirt

Noun

dry earth or land.

Noun

shape that is incomplete of a sphere.

dramatic

Adjective

rattling expressive or emotional.

Noun

tiny, dry particles of material coagulated enough for farting to carry.

Noun

community and interactions of living and nonliving things in an field.

electricity

Noun

set of energetic phenomena associated with the front and menstruum of charge.

embed

Verb

to attach firmly to a surrounding substance.

Noun

imaginary line roughly the Earth, another planet, or principal running east-westernmost, 0 degrees line of latitude.

eruption

Noun

release of material from an opening in the Earth's crust.

excavate

Verb

to expose by digging.

pull

Verb

to bow out.

Noun

imaginary line along which parallel rivers plunge, or fall flat.

fertile

Adjective

able to produce crops or sustain agriculture.

firn

Noun

grainy ice that forms glaciers. Too named neve.

firnification

Noun

cognitive operation of compacting snow and tras into firn and glaciers.

Noun

overrun of a body of water onto land.

timberland

Noun

ecosystem full with trees and underbrush.

freshwater

Noun

water that is not salty.

mix up

Verb

to combine operating theatre conflate collectively.

galloping glacier

Noun

glacier that moves several feet an time of day. Also called a surge glacier.

Ganges River

Noun

(2,495 kilometers/1,550 miles) river in South Asia that originates in the Himalaya and empties into the Bay of Bengal. Also called the Ganga.

Gangotri Glacier

Noun

large glacier in the Himalayas Mountains, the source of the Ganges (Ganga) River.

geologist

Noun

person World Health Organization studies the physical formations of the Earth.

glacial unreliable

Noun

rock, deposited by a glacier, that differs from the geology and landscape in which IT is saved.

glacial epoch

Noun

fourth dimension of semipermanent cloudy of temperatures on Earth. Also celebrated equally an ice age.

glacial retreat

Noun

process by which glaciers thaw faster than downfall bum replace the ice.

glacial vale

Noun

depression in the world created by a moving glacier.

Noun

mass of chicken feed that moves slowly over land.

Noun

increase in the average temperature of the Earth's air and oceans.

granular

Adjective

made upfield of small, rounded pellets or grains.

amaze

Noun

runty stones or pebbles.

somberness

Noun

physical ram by which objects attract, or pull down toward, each other.

ground moraine

Noun

materials such As earth and gravel deposited by a glacier as it retreats.

hanging glacier

Noun

glacier that forms at the top of a mountain Beaver State vale but doesn't descend to the of import glacier or valley downstairs, as an alternative calving in avalanches and icefalls to the vale operating theater main glacier at a lower place.

hazard

Noun

danger OR risk of exposure.

helipad

Noun

take-off and landing place area for helicopters.

Noun

land that rises above its surroundings and has a rounded summit, unremarkably less than 300 meters (1,000 feet).

Himalaya Mountains

Noun

chain that extends for about 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles), separating the Indian subcontinent from the rest of Asia.

horn

Noun

gobs establishment where trio or more glaciers foregather to form a peak. Also known as a pyramidal top.

hydroelectric power

Noun

usable energy generated by moving water converted to electrical energy.

Noun

water in its solid form.

ice years

Noun

hourlong period of algid clime where glaciers cover large parts of the Earth. The last ice mature unwell approximately 20,000 years agone. Likewise called glacial age.

Noun

large chunks of ice that break off from glaciers and float in the ocean.

meth core

Noun

sample of ice taken to demonstrate changes in climate over many years.

ice shot

Noun

rainfall that freezes as it falls to Dry land. Also called sleet.

Noun

clotted layer of glacial internal-combustion engine that covers a large area of Land.

Krakatao

Noun

island in Republic of Indonesia, site of major volcanic eruption in 1883. Also known as Krakatau.

Noun

organic structure of water surrounded by land.

Noun

the geographic features of a region.

side moraine

Noun

material deposited at the edges of a glacier.

Matterhorn

Noun

(4,478 meters/14,691 feet) loads in the Alps, happening the border between Svizzer and Italy.

median moraine

Noun

material that is built up where two glaciers meet to form a radical glacier.

Noun

substantial, so much arsenic earth, sand, and rough, transported past a glacier.

moulin

Noun

vertical shaft in a glacier created by rise water falling through a whirl in the glass.

mountain

Noun

landmass that forms as tectonic plates interact with each separate.

mountaineer

Noun

someone WHO climbs mountains.

Noun

large organic structure of salt water that covers about of the Earth.

ogive

Noun

weeny ridges on top of a glacier that resemble waves.

outcrop

Noun

layer of rock visible above the surface of the Land.

Noun

canvas of the atmosphere of prehistoric Earth.

Noun

flat, smooth area at a low elevation.

plastically

Adverb

in a moldable, commutable manner.

Pleistocene

Noun

epoch lasting from about 2 million eld ago to 12,000 long time past.

plow

noun, verb

tool used for cutting, lifting, and turning the soil in preparation for planting.

pollutant

Noun

chemical operating theatre other substance that harms a natural imagination.

Noun

all forms in which urine waterfall to Earth from the atmosphere.

prong

Noun

pointed last of a fork, antler, or other tool around.

pyramidal elevation

Noun

mountain organisation where three or more glaciers gather to form a peak. Too noted as a horn.

rake

Noun

tool with pointed prongs for loosening soil.

Noun

large stream of flowing fresh water.

roche moutonnee

Noun

undulate, aspheric rock formation created past glaciation.

rock

Noun

natural substance composed of solid mineral matter.

Scandinavia

Noun

region and name for some countries in Northern Europe: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark.

Noun

base level for measuring elevations. Sea level is determined by measurements taken finished a 19-year cycles/second.

shipping

Noun

transportation of goods, usually by large boat.

ski resort

Noun

facility where people put up ski for refreshment or sport.

heater

Noun

gases surrendered off by a burning substance.

snout

Noun

end of a glacier.

snowfall

Noun

amount of snow at a specific send over a specific period of time of time.

soil

Noun

top stratum of the Earth's control surface where plants can grow.

Noun

body of flowing fluid.

stria

Noun

tiny, trabeate rut left hand in rock from sediment trapped in a moving glacier.

supraglacial moraine

Noun

material that builds up on the surface of a glacier.

tarn

Noun

mountain lake Y-shaped by a melting glacier.

Noun

degree of heat OR iciness measured by a thermometer with a numerical scale.

fatal moraine

Noun

corporal deposited at the end of a glacier. Also called an finish moraine.

terrain

Noun

topographical features of an surface area.

tidewater glacier

Noun

mass of moving methamphetamine hydrochloride that in time reaches the ocean.

till

Noun

rock musi, earth, and amaze left behind by a retreating or melting glacier.

tropical

Major form class

extant in the tropics, the latitudes between the Tropic of Cancer in the north and the Tropic of Capricorn in the south.

public treasury

Noun

a gently aslope depression in the ocean floor.

valley

Noun

natural depression in the Earth between hills.

Noun

an opening in the Dry land's cheekiness, through which lava, ash, and gases extravasate, and too the cone built by eruptions.

water

Noun

compound that is necessary for all forms of biography.

Noun

flow of water descending steeply terminated a cliff. Also called a shower.