20 Terms
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Glaciers
A glacier is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation (melting and sublimation) over many years, often centuries. Glaciers slowly deform and flow due to stresses induced by their weight, creating crevasses, seracs, and other distinguishing features. They also abrade rock and debris from their substrate to create landforms such as cirques and moraines. Glaciers form only on land and are distinct from the much thinner sea ice and lake ice that form on the surface of bodies of water.
Industry: Water bodies
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Glaciers
disarticulation
Water bodies; Glaciers
Disarticulation is the process through which large blocks of ice, sometimes greater than .5 miles in width, detach from the thinning and retreating terminus of a glacier that ends in a body of water. ...
ice sheet
Water bodies; Glaciers
A thick, subcontinental to continental-scale accumulation of glacier ice and perennial snow that spreads from a center of accumulation, typically in all directions.
ogive
Water bodies; Glaciers
An arcuate, convex, down-glacier-pointing band or undulation that forms on the surface of a glacier at the base of an icefall. Two types of ogives occur: wave ogives, which are undulations of varying ...
nunatak
Water bodies; Glaciers
A mountain peak or ridge that pokes through the surface of an ice field or a glacier. It may separate adjacent valley glaciers (Greenlandic).
tarn
Water bodies; Glaciers
A lake that develops in the basin of a cirque, generally after the melting of the glacier.
suncups
Water bodies; Glaciers
A series of bowl-like depression melted into a snow or ice surface, separated by a network of connected ridges. Individual suncups may be more than three feet deep and ten feet in diameter. Suncups ...
firn
Water bodies; Glaciers
An intermediate stage in the transformation of snow to glacier ice. Snow becomes firn when it has been compressed so that no pore space remains between flakes or crystals, a process that takes less ...
