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Lateral moraine on a glacier joining the Gorner Glacier, Zermatt, Swiss Alps. The moraine is the high bank of debris in the top left hand quarter of the picture. For more explanation, click on the picture.

Glaciology (from Middle French dialect (Franco-Provençal): glace, "ice"; or Latin: glacies, "frost, ice"; and Greek: λόγος, logos, "speech" lit. "study of ice") is the study of glaciers, or more generally ice and natural phenomena that involve ice.

Glaciology is an interdisciplinary earth science that integrates geophysics, geology, physical geography, geomorphology, climatology, meteorology, hydrology, biology, and ecology. The impact of glaciers on people includes the fields of human geography and anthropology. The discoveries of water ice on the Moon, Mars and Europa add an extraterrestrial component to the field, as in "astroglaciology".^[1]

Overview[link]

Areas of study within glaciology include glacial history and the reconstruction of past glaciation. A glaciologist is a person who studies glaciers. Glaciology is one of the key areas of polar research. A glacier is an extended mass of ice formed from snow falling and accumulating over the years and moving very slowly, either descending from high mountains, as in valley glaciers, or moving outward from centers of accumulation, as in continental glaciers.

Types[link]

Glacially-carved Yosemite Valley, as seen from a plane

There are two general categories of glaciation which glaciologists distinguish: alpine glaciation, accumulations or "rivers of ice" confined to valleys; and continental glaciation, unrestricted accumulations which once covered much of the northern continents.

• Alpine - ice flows down the valleys of mountainous areas and forms a tongue of ice moving towards the plains below. Alpine glaciers tend to make the topography more rugged, by adding and improving the scale of existing features such as large ravines called cirques and ridges where the rims of two cirques meet called arêtes.
• Continental - an ice sheet found today, only in high latitudes (Greenland/Antarctica), thousands of square kilometers in area and thousands of meters thick. These tend to smooth out the landscapes.

Zones of glaciers[link]

• Accumulation, where the formation of ice is faster than its removal.
• Wastage or Ablation, where the sum of melting and evaporation (sublimation) is greater than the amount of snow added each year.

Movement[link]

Ablation 

wastage of the glacier through sublimation, ice melting and iceberg calving.

Ablation zone 

Area of a glacier in which the annual loss of ice through ablation exceeds the annual gain from precipitation.

Arête 

an acute ridge of rock where two cirques abut.

Bergshrund 

crevasse formed near the head of a glacier, where the mass of ice has rotated, sheared and torn itself apart in the manner of a geological fault.

Cirque, corrie or cwm 

bowl shaped depression excavated by the source of a glacier.

Creep 

adjustment to stress at a molecular level.

Flow 

movement (of ice) in a constant direction.

Fracture 

brittle failure (breaking of ice) under the stress raised when movement is too rapid to be accommodated by creep. It happens for example, as the central part of a glacier moves faster than the edges.

Horn 

spire of rock, also known as a pyramidal peak, formed by the headward erosion of three or more cirques around a single mountain. It is an extreme case of an arête.

Plucking/Quarrying 

where the adhesion of the ice to the rock is stronger than the cohesion of the rock, part of the rock leaves with the flowing ice.

Tarn 

a post-glacial lake in a cirque.

Tunnel valley 

The tunnel is that formed by hydraulic erosion of ice and rock below an ice sheet margin. The tunnel valley is what remains of it in the underlying rock when the ice sheet has melted.

Glacial deposits[link]

Stratified[link]

Outwash sand/gravel 

from front of glaciers, found on a plain

Kettles 

block of stagnant ice leaves a depression or pit

Eskers 

steep sided ridges of gravel/sand, possibly caused by streams running under stagnant ice

Kames 

stratified drift builds up low steep hills

Varves 

alternating thin sedimentary beds (coarse and fine) of a proglacial lake. Summer conditions deposit more and coarser material and those of the winter, less and finer.

Unstratified[link]

Till-unsorted 

(glacial flour to boulders) deposited by receding/advancing glaciers, forming moraines, and drumlins

Moraines 

(Terminal) material deposited at the end; (Ground) material deposited as glacier melts; (lateral) material deposited along the sides.

Drumlins 

smooth elongated hills composed of till.

Ribbed moraines 

large subglacial elongated hills transverse to former ice flow.

See also[link]

• International Glaciological Society (IGS)
• International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS)
• Irish Sea Glacier
• List of glaciers
• Cryosphere

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Benn, Douglas I. and David J. A. Evans. Glaciers and Glaciation. London; Arnold, 1998. ISBN 0-340-58431-9
• Greve, Ralf and Heinz Blatter. Dynamics of Ice Sheets and Glaciers. Berlin etc.; Springer, 2009. ISBN 978-3-642-03414-5
• Hambrey, Michael and Jürg Alean. Glaciers. 2nd ed. Cambridge and New York; Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-521-82808-2
• Hooke, Roger LeB. Principles of Glacier Mechanics. 2nd ed. Cambridge and New York; Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-54416-5
• Paterson, W. Stanley B. The Physics of Glaciers. 3rd ed. Oxford etc.; Pergamon Press, 1994. ISBN 0-08-037944-3
• van der Veen, Cornelis J. Fundamentals of Glacier Dynamics. Rotterdam; A. A. Balkema, 1999. ISBN 90-5410-471-6

External links[link]

• International Glaciological Society (IGS)
• International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS)
• Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Group, University of Alaska Fairbanks
• Arctic and Alpine Research Group, University of Alberta
• Glaciers online
• World Data Centre for Glaciology, Cambridge, UK
• National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder, Colorado
• Global Land Ice Measurements from Space, USGS
• North Cascade Glacier Climate Project
• Centre for Glaciology, University of Wales
• Caltech Glaciology Group
• Glaciology Group, University of Copenhagen
• Institute of Low Temperature Science, Sapporo
• National Institute of Polar Research, Tokyo
• Glaciology Group, University of Washington
• Glaciology Laboratory, Universidad de Chile-Centro de Estudios Científicos, Valdivia
• Russian Geographical Society (Moscow Centre) - Glaciology Commission
• Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics, Univ. of Innsbruck, Austria.

v t e Subfields of physical geography Biogeography Climatology / Paleoclimatology Coastal geography Edaphology Geomorphology Glaciology Hydrology / Hydrography Landscape ecology Limnology Oceanography Palaeogeography Pedology/Soil science Quaternary science

Articles related to Glaciology v t e Earth science Atmospheric science · Environmental science · Geodesy · Geology · Geophysics · Glaciology Hydrology · Oceanography · Physical geography · Soil science Category · Portal v t e Glaciers Types of glaciers Aufeis Cirque glacier Ice cap Ice field Ice sheet Ice shelf Ice stream Ledoyom Outlet glacier Rock glacier Valley glacier Anatomy Ablation zone Accumulation zone Bergschrund Blue ice Crevasse Dirt cone Firn Ice divide Ice tongue Icefall Lateral moraine Medial moraine Moraine Moulin Randkluft Sérac Terminus Processes Ablation Accumulation Basal sliding Calving Creep Motion Outburst flood Overdeepening Plucking Retreat Starvation Surge Measurements Ice core Mass balance Glaciovolcanic relations Jökulhlaup Subglacial eruption Subglacial volcano Tuya Glacial landforms Erosional Arête Cirque Crag and tail Fjord Glacial horn Glacial lake Glacial striae Hanging valley Ribbon lake Roche moutonnée Tunnel valley U-valley Depositional Drumlin Drumlin field Erratic block Moraine Moraine-dammed lake Pulju moraine Rogen moraine Terminal moraine Till plain Veiki moraine Glacifluvial Diluvium Esker Giant current ripples Kame Kame delta Kettle hole Outwash fan Sandur Urstromtal Glaciology Category List v t e Subfields of physical geography Biogeography Climatology / Paleoclimatology Coastal geography Edaphology Geomorphology Glaciology Hydrology / Hydrography Landscape ecology Limnology Oceanography Palaeogeography Pedology/Soil science Quaternary science