Related topics: climate change · sea level rise · ice · climate · sea level

Ground beneath Thwaites Glacier mapped for first time

The ground beneath Antarctica's most vulnerable glacier has been mapped for the first time, helping scientists to better understand how it is being affected by climate change. Analysis of the geology below the Thwaites Glacier ...

Rocks beneath Antarctic Ice Sheet reveal surprising past

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is shrinking, with many glaciers across the region retreating and melting at an alarming rate. However, this was not always the case according to new research published last month (April 28) in ...

Swiss villagers told to evacuate over Alpine rockslide alert

Authorities in eastern Switzerland ordered residents of the tiny village of Brienz to evacuate by Friday evening because geology experts say a mass of 2 million cubic meters of Alpine rock looming overhead could break loose ...

Researchers discover a cause of rapid ice melting in Greenland

While conducting a study of Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland, researchers at the University of California, Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory uncovered a previously unseen way in which the ice and ocean interact. ...

Meltdown: 2023 looking grim for Swiss glaciers

This year is already shaping up to be another bad one for glaciers in the Swiss Alps, with the snowpack covering them around 30 percent below the 10-year average, according to the scientist tracking their decline.

CryoSat reveals ice loss from glaciers

When one thinks of the damage that climate change is doing, it's probable that what comes to mind is a vision of huge lumps of ice dropping off one of the polar ice sheets and crashing into the ocean. While Greenland and ...

Further loss for Aotearoa's glaciers

Researchers from Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington have shown continued loss of ice and snow in NIWA's annual end-of-summer survey. The 2023 survey was the 46th undertaken in a collaboration between the ...

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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.

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