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News tagged with glaciers

Discovery of historical photos sheds light on Greenland ice loss

A chance discovery of 80-year-old photo plates in a Danish basement is providing new insight into how Greenland glaciers are melting today.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created May 29, 2012 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (14) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

Climate scientists say they have solved riddle of rising sea

Massive extraction of groundwater can resolve a puzzle over a rise in sea levels in past decades, scientists in Japan said on Sunday.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created May 20, 2012 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (25) | comments 32

Environmental group measures methane seeps in the Arctic

(Phys.org) -- A team of researchers, led by Katey Walter Anthony, of the University of Alaska, has been studying and mapping so-called seeps, holes in lake ice near the edges of glaciers where methane is bubbling ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created May 21, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 2 | with audio podcast report

Nanostructure of 5,000-year-old mummy skin reveals insight into mummification process

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using cutting-edge microscopy techniques, researchers have gained insight into how human mummies can be extremely well-preserved for thousands of years. A team of scientists from Germany and ...

Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine

created Apr 20, 2010 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (16) | comments 0 | with audio podcast feature

Researchers say habitat loss and tropical cooling were to blame for mass extinction

(Phys.org) -- The second-largest mass extinction in Earth's history coincided with a short but intense ice age during which enormous glaciers grew and sea levels dropped. Although it has long been agreed that ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Apr 10, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (4) | comments 14 | with audio podcast

Increasing speed of Greenland glaciers gives new insight for rising sea level

Changes in the speed that ice travels in more than 200 outlet glaciers indicates that Greenland's contribution to rising sea level in the 21st century might be significantly less than the upper limits some ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created May 03, 2012 | popularity 3.2 / 5 (13) | comments 46 | with audio podcast

New map reveals giant fjords beneath East Antarctic ice sheet

Scientists from the U.S., U.K. and Australia have used ice-penetrating radar to create the first high- resolution topographic map of one of the last uncharted regions of Earth, the Aurora Subglacial Basin, ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jun 01, 2011 | popularity not rated yet | comments 7 | with audio podcast

Glaciers melting faster than originally thought: study

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of scientists from Aberystwyth University, the University of Exeter and Stockholm University, led by Welsh scientist and Professor Neil Glasser, have released at study published in ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Apr 04, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (17) | comments 20 | with audio podcast report

Hearty bacteria help make case for life in the extreme

(PhysOrg.com) -- The bottom of a glacier is not the most hospitable place on Earth, but at least two types of bacteria happily live there, according to researchers.

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Jan 19, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (4) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Ocean currents speed melting of Antarctic ice

Stronger ocean currents beneath West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf are eroding the ice from below, speeding the melting of the glacier as a whole, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience. A grow ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jun 26, 2011 | popularity 3.9 / 5 (9) | comments 24 | with audio podcast

Warming ocean layers will undermine polar ice sheets

Warming of the ocean's subsurface layers will melt underwater portions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets faster than previously thought, according to new University of Arizona-led research. Such melting ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jul 03, 2011 | popularity 3.3 / 5 (14) | comments 101 | with audio podcast

Taking the temperature of the ancient earth

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new technique has allowed scientists to pin down the timing of ancient glaciations, linking them more firmly to two bursts of extinction.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Mar 08, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (10) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Melting ice on Arctic islands a major player in sea level rise

Melting glaciers and ice caps on Canadian Arctic islands play a much greater role in sea level rise than scientists previously thought, according to a new study led by a University of Michigan researcher.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Apr 20, 2011 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (7) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Study finds warm ocean currents cause majority of ice loss from Antarctica

Reporting this week in the journal Nature, an international team of scientists led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has established that warm ocean currents are the dominant cause of recent ice loss from A ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Apr 25, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (12) | comments 13 | with audio podcast

Global sea level likely to rise as much as 70 feet for future generations

Even if humankind manages to limit global warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends, future generations will have to deal with sea levels 12 to 22 meters (40 to 70 ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Mar 19, 2012 | popularity 3.3 / 5 (32) | comments 256 | with audio podcast

Glacier

A glacier is a large mass of ice moving slowly over some land surface or down a valley, formed over long periods from the accumulation of snow in areas where the amount of snow that falls exceeds the amount that melts. The word glacier comes from French via the Vulgar Latin glacia, and ultimately from Latin glacies meaning ice.

Glacier ice is the largest reservoir of fresh water on Earth, and second only to oceans as the largest reservoir of total water. Glaciers cover vast areas of the polar regions and are found in mountain ranges of every continent except Australia, as well as in New Zealand. In the tropics glaciers are restricted to the highest mountains. The processes and landforms caused by glaciers and related to them are referred to as glacial. The process of glacier growth and establishment is called glaciation. Glaciers are sensitive monitors of climate conditions and are crucial to both world water resources and sea level variation.

For more information about Glacier, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.