Glaciation refers to the climatic and geophysical processes leading to the formation, expansion, and persistence of glaciers and ice sheets, and their subsequent sculpting of the Earth’s surface. It encompasses large-scale cooling, snow accumulation exceeding ablation, and dynamic ice flow driven by gravity and basal sliding. Glaciation cycles, governed primarily by orbital forcing (Milankovitch cycles), greenhouse gas concentrations, and feedbacks involving albedo and ocean circulation, produce glacial–interglacial variations in global climate. These events generate diagnostic landforms (e.g., moraines, drumlins, U-shaped valleys) and stratigraphic signatures, and they are central topics in Quaternary science, paleoclimatology, and Earth system modeling.
Melting and breaking icebergs in the far-off northeastern Pacific Ocean can weaken a massive current system in the Atlantic Ocean, according to a University of California, Davis study published in Nature Communications.
Environment
Jul 13, 2026
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25
A new study published in Quaternary Science Reviews dates the dramatic collapse of one of the largest glaciers ever documented in the Himalayas. The findings overturn a long-held assumption about what sustains wet-climate ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 9, 2026
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197
East Antarctica hosts the largest ice sheet on Earth, containing enough water to raise global sea levels by 52 meters (171 feet) were it to fully melt. Yet scientists have been puzzled for decades about how and why this ice ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 6, 2026
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40
Many of the boulders scattered across the Swiss landscape did not originate where they now stand. Instead, they were carried by ice nearly 24,000 years ago. For the first time, researchers at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 2, 2026
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23
Scientists have uncovered why Antarctica became engulfed by ice millions of years before the Arctic. The international research, published in Science, helps solve one of climate science's longest-standing puzzles: how a vast ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 2, 2026
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154
Researchers at Newcastle University have carried out the first comprehensive modeling of glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) risk in Bhutan and identified previously unrecognized high-risk lakes.
Earth Sciences
Jun 30, 2026
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7
An international expedition including University of Sydney researchers has pieced together the clearest picture yet of how the Great Barrier Reef responded to dramatic environmental change over the past 30,000 years. Multiple ...
Earth Sciences
Jun 29, 2026
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25
The last deglaciation (between 11,000 and 20,000 years ago) was a period of dramatic natural warming on Earth. During this time, North America experienced the most extensive ice-sheet melting on the planet, which profoundly ...
Earth Sciences
Jun 8, 2026
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14
For the past several years, Penn State geoscientist Sarah Ivory and her students have been among a team of scientists scaling the East African Rwenzori Mountains, collecting sediment core samples from lakes formed at the ...
Earth Sciences
May 30, 2026
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11
A new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience by researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea shows that the Antarctic ice sheet became more sensitive to climate ...
Earth Sciences
May 28, 2026
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