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.
The devastating floods that have swept through the Nepal–Tibet border region are first and foremost a human tragedy. Hundreds of people have died or remain missing. But as scientists begin to reconstruct what happened, the ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 28, 2026
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A huge piece of ice that fell thousands of meters from a glacier into a river below may have unleashed the disaster in Nepal and Tibet that killed at least 180 people.
Environment
Aug 27, 2026
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26
A study conducted in the Swiss Alps by the University of Lausanne and the University of Milan shows that glacier retreat and changing vegetation could influence the spread of certain pathogens between honeybees and wild bees.
Plants & Animals
Aug 24, 2026
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Over the past 230,000 years, the growth and retreat of the Icelandic ice sheet have led to major changes in the seawater chemistry of the North Atlantic, caused by the interaction between volcanism and ice in Iceland. Scientists ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 20, 2026
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The exceptionally hot summer in the Alps has been marked by a record number of rockfalls, some of them fatal, with "a large majority attributable to the climate crisis," according to scientist Ludovic Ravanel.
Environment
Aug 20, 2026
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14
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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27
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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207
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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42
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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25
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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