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.
Where once there was ice, only rock remains. One of the glaciers in a chain of snow-capped mountains in the Colombian Andes has vanished due to high temperatures driven by climate change.
Environment
Apr 16, 2026
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Earth and the course of life on Earth have been shaped by impacts. Scientists have uncovered links between massive impacts and changes in climate that altered the planet forever. But the further scientists look into the past ...
Planetary Sciences
Apr 15, 2026
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Models of glacial flow and retreat rely on estimates of glacial ice viscosity, the measure of the ice's resistance to flow. Ice viscosity is dependent on the stress applied to the glacier. Most ice sheet models use a standard ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 14, 2026
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Earth's glaciers are continuing to shrink at alarming rates, with new international research revealing that 2025 was among the worst years on record for global ice loss. Published in the Climate Chronicles collection of Nature ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 10, 2026
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114
Some newly published findings from an Idaho State University professor and his colleagues point out how changes to currents an ocean away can impact climates on the other side of the globe. The new paper published in Nature ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 2, 2026
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159
This past winter, the Rocky Mountains experienced an historic snow drought, a worrying development for the tens of millions of people in the arid American West who depend on snowmelt for water. Now, a new study in the journal ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 25, 2026
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An international team led by the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) has just published a paper in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews reconstructing episodes of highstands of the Black ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 18, 2026
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Ice cores taken from glaciers reveal the air pollution of the past, using atmospheric particles incorporated in snow that fell on the glacier and became ice. Now, scientists have extracted a record of thousands of years' ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 13, 2026
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A new study led by researchers at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo challenges a long-standing assumption about Earth's most extreme ice ages. Using numerical geochemical models, the team ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 10, 2026
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Our planet plunged into one of the most dramatic climate states in its long history, approximately 720–635 million years ago. During a period geologists call Snowball Earth, ice sheets crept from the poles all the way to ...
