Questions tagged [glaciology]

The [glaciology] tag concerns all forms of snow and ice on Earth and in space. And the marks left by ancient glaciers.

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How saline were the earth's oceans during the Last Glacial Maximum?

According to Wikipedia sea water is 34.7 parts per thousand salt. Between evaporation and precipitation it seems like this amount is kept largely in equilibrium but, during the last glacial maximum, a ...
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More about hypsometry for large glaciers

I am currently reading a paper which says The elevation ranges between 1700 and 2200 m show smaller relative surface changes than the elevation ranges between 2200 and 3300 m. This has to be related ...
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Would it make sense to compare glacier fluctuations in New Zealand with Alps or Canadian rockies?

If I want to draw parallels between the glacier fluctuations between different glaciers, (considering similar size class, here, small) at a) New Zealand b) European Alps c) Canadian Rocky Mountains ...
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How to judge a good journal for glaciology?

I am trying to find articles/papers related to glacier fluctuations since LIA, how do i quickly analyze if the journal is good? Is impact factor sufficient to judge the journal quickly, if so, what ...
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How to calculate main aspect of a glacier?

Aspect is based upon the direction of flowline axis of the glacier. is flowline axis same as ice flow direction? What is aspect of a mountain (say in the tropics). Would a glacier have aspect ...
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What is 0 degree isotherm and how to calculate it?

I want to look at different areas of alpine glaciers and understand the position of 0 degree isotherm to do a comparative climate analysis. Given the mean annual air temperature and altitude, how do i ...
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How can sublimation of glacial ice cause positive mass balance?

I am trying to understand how the sublimation process can cause a positive mass balance in general, intuitively as highlighted in the text taken from W. S. B. Paterson,The Physics of Glaciers: 3rd ...
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Is This Portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide a Good Representation of Parallel Sided Slab on Slope Glacier

I'm trying to find data that I can use to compare to the graph in Figure 6.2 on page 88 of this source which shows temperature (found from solving the parallel sided slab on slope problem) vs height ...
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Understanding Graphs for Velocity and Temperature Solutions for Parallel Sided Slab on Slope Problem

I'm trying to recreate the graphs in Figure 6.2 from this source (page 88). They get these plots by using the following solutions for velocity and temperature (both obtained from solving the basic ...
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Is There Data Describing the Velocity of Different Heights of a Glacier?

I'm looking for glacier data that provides the velocity at different heights within a glacier. So, ideally I would like data that includes not only velocity at the surface, but also velocity at at ...
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Obtaining ELA from AAR method

I am trying to understand how to obtain ELA using Accumulation area ratio method. My understanding is: Accumulation area/ ablation area is assumed to be constant. Empirical data of long term annual ...
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Simulating snow melt inundation in urban areas

I am trying to understand how melt water from snow in urban setting gets routed. I understand that for routing rain water, one can create grid and then determine the flow direction for each cell by ...
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Which depiction of the world map, with focus on dry land vs ocean do you think is more accurate? Scotese's or deeptimemaps?

Special attention paid particularly to the Arctic where the Hudson and Berent's sea are ocean in the above they are ocean, below they are land. In other places, Scotese's seems more accurate to me but ...
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How do melting glaciers dry rivers?

How do melting glaciers dry rivers? Unless there's less precipitation during winter, I don't see how it affects the volume of water of the rivers that glaciers feed into. If it's cold, water ...
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How is sea level rise due to a glacier melting calculated?

There's news going around (e.g. link) that the melting of the Thwaites glacier may cause sea levels to rise by 10 feet. Is that true and not exaggerated? How is the calculation made? They said the ...
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I am searching for a word to describe the area of a glacial valley where the sides transition into the floor?

I have been tasked with proof reading before publication a Russian paper that has been translated into basic English and am searching for a word to describe the area of a glacial valley where the ...
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Internal rocks in glaciers

I am very new to the study of the cryosphere. I was looking at the GLIMS inventory for glaciers and observed red patches as shown below which the legend mentions the red patches as internal rocks. In ...
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Remote sensing of glaciers, season for data collection

I would like to understand to view the health of a glacier using optical or SAR data. What season would be the best for observation? Is the ablation season better or the accumulation season? More ...
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How does global-warming-triggered ice melting cause global sea levels to rise?

Apologies for asking a silly question like this. But I want to offer some points which I could not counter, as follows: Ice is less dense than water, that is why it floats. For the same unit mass, if ...
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What did the water's edge look like on the Pacific coast of the Laurentide Ice Sheet?

I have seen news reports saying that in recent years many more scientists think that humans first arrived in the Americas by boat, along coast of Alaska and Canada (before they were able to come ...
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Hypothetically, in the near future, could gas hydrate pingos erupt?

Could gas hydrate pingos erupt? If so, how quickly? And how much CH4 could they release? I'm sorry if the questions sounds silly. I'm new here and I don't know much about gas hydrates and oceanography....
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Is there a mountain-shaped iceberg?

From Iceberg - Wikipedia, the closest mountain-shaped iceberg seem to be dome iceberg: Different shapes of icebergs. 1: Tabular; 2: Wedge; 3: Dome; 4: Drydock; 5: Pinnacled; 6: Blocky. However, dome ...
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Dynamic of glacier retreat? (here: in Greenland)

During the last years I have taken many pictures of obviously retreating glaciers and empty moraines in Greenland - just like this one. Looks devastating, actually. In my understanding, the current ...
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What behaviour does an ice sheet exhibit in crossing a cliff?

I've not come up against clear explanations when trying to think about a situation where an ice sheet is advancing and comes up against a cliff. What happens next? How does the ice sheet cross the ...
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How would I simulate the effects of the Antarctic ice sheet being deleted on Earth's climate?

This is a follow-up to my question If its ice sheet were removed under modern atmospheric conditions, what climatic and ice-sheet equilibrium would be re-established over Antarctica?. As it has ...
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If its ice sheet were removed under modern atmospheric conditions, what climatic and ice-sheet equilibrium would be re-established over Antarctica?

Note the use of the term removed instead of melted—as in, any excess water is moved to where it can't cause trouble, either through the use of advanced technology (space elevators, et cetera) or for ...
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What is the name of this landform?

These are from the movie Insomnia. Also available in this video from 4 seconds to 8 seconds. What is the name of this landform? Are these just snow on Lapies? or These are some form of glaciated ...
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What does "glacier collapse" mean?

CNN's Mont Blanc glacier could collapse at any moment, Italy warns says: A staggering 250,000 cubic meters (8.8 million cubic feet) of ice could break away from the Planpincieux glacier on the ...
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Why did "Glaciologist Princess Elsa" have to leave the glacier because it was too warm?

This tweet shows "Glaciologist Princess Elsa" is actually Caltech geophysics PhD student and cryoseismologist Celeste Labedz. The BBC News article What's a 'Science Princess' doing in an ice field in ...
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Why doesn't sea level show seasonality?

North-hemisphere ice-shelf melts on summer and grows on winter. I would expect appreciable changes on sea-level between seasons, but sea-level looks equal on winter than on summer. Why doesn't sea ...
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Should I perform EOF analysis on an unevenly-spaced time series?

I have a dataset of sample concentrations of several ions/elements (Ca 2+, SO4 2-, K +, S, Ca, V, etc.) from an ice core which I am using to detect volcanic eruptions. The raw version of the dataset ...
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How do you interpret Oxygen Isotope changes?

In a paper I am reading, the authors note "large (5-7%) negative shifts in the oxygen isotopic composition of geologic proxy materials" (Davis 2008, pg. 102) in several regional basins. This is then ...
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Is "Chasm One" the really the name of this feature on the Brunt Ice Shelf?

The BBC News article Antarctic: No role for climate in Halley iceberg splitting says: With no-one on the ice surface, notice of any breakaway will have to come from automated in-situ ...
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What (if any) "in-situ instrumentation" is on the Brunt Ice Shelf that will detect its splitting and breaking away?

The BBC News article Antarctic: No role for climate in Halley iceberg splitting says: With no-one on the ice surface, notice of any breakaway will have to come from automated in-situ instrumentation ...
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Glen's power-law alternatives

For glacier models, there exist alternatives to the Glen's power-law? I searched on internet, but I have not found other alternatives.
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Why antarctic research stations are built above ground instead of on the ground or underground?

Many online sources stresses how much the antarctic wind is dangerous for the structures and for the personnel, yet most buildings I see are built off the ground. I suppose that is due to the ...
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Waterlevel increase calculation

So I tried to calculate the rise of waterlevel myself. But the results I have gotten seem to be pretty low: Given the earths radius, I clalculated different Events: 1) If all landice melts there is ...
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Giant Cavern the Size of Manhattan Under Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica - how was satellite and airborne radar data combined?

This is a follow-up question to Giant Cavern the Size of Manhattan Under Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. The work is reported in an open access paper in Science: Heterogeneous retreat and ice ...
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Giant Cavern the Size of Manhattan Under Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica

Avery Thompson writes in Popular Mechanics In Thwaites’ case, that radar uncovered a gigantic cavern between the glacier itself and the bedrock below it. That cavern is likely filled with air much ...
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Are we at the beginning of a Heinrich Event?

Does our current weather trend properly reflect a Heinrich Event? It seems like the drastic weather swings are what I would expect but I realize that is not definitive. I don't see the term bandied ...
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Do icebergs have any impact on ecology?

Are icebergs neutral actors in the environment, or do they have any impact on the local ecology. Do they have any environmental impacts that might influence any part of the biosphere?
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Weather conditions to create significant glacier growth

I am fascinated at the rapid growth of Glacier Bay Glacier from 1600 to 1750, along with its rapid retreat from 1750 to 1900. I am interested in the local weather conditions during these times. What ...
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Does snow melt on ice?

I looked up nearly everywhere on the internet, but couldn't find any evidence that snow wouldn't melt because of ice. When I look it up, it instead tells me how salt can melt snow. I'm NOT looking up ...
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If ALL the ice melted, what percentage of the Earth's surface would be water?

At the present time, about 70% of the earth's surface is liquid water (perhaps that includes floating ice around Antarctica, and the Arctic Ice cap). What percentage of the Earth's surface would be ...
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How would Earth map look like if all ice melts?

Is there somewhere a map which indicates which areas and cities become sea?
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Quantifying long term melt record on glacier surface

I intend to create a long term melt record on a glacier surface. What are parameters required to efficiently calculate the same using satellite, weather station observations & reanalysis datasets (...
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Help understanding radar data in subglacial lake complex beneath Devon Ice Cap

The BBC News article Isolated lakes found beneath Canadian ice sheet links to the open access Science Advances article Discovery of a hypersaline subglacial lake complex beneath Devon Ice Cap, ...
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How does ice-penetrating radar "see" through kilometers of ice without being absorbed?

The BBC News article Isolated lakes found beneath Canadian ice sheet links to the open access Science Advances article Discovery of a hypersaline subglacial lake complex beneath Devon Ice Cap, ...
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How many extreme shifts in climate has Earth gone through in its existence?

As the Earth formed, it went through cycles of essentially hotter and colder periods. Extremely volcanic times and ice ages, in feedback loops contributing to one another. CO2 swinging from high to ...
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How old are Chile's fjords?

Do we have any knowledge about the age of Chile's fjords, more specifically, those found near the Northern Patagonian Ice Field? Is it reasonable to conclude that they were formed in Quaternary given ...