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Ice calving, also known as glacier calving or iceberg calving, is the breaking of ice chunks from the edge of a glacier. [1] It is a form of ice ablation or ice disruption . It is the sudden release and breaking away of a mass of ice from a glacier , iceberg , ice front , ice shelf , or crevasse .
As a glacier retreats, chunks of ice may break off in a process known as ice calving or glacier calving. As sediment-heavy glacial meltwater flows past the stationary ice block, the increased friction between the ice and sediment causes sediment build-up around the block of ice.
Conversely, if the loss of volume (from evaporation, sublimation, melting, and calving) exceeds the accumulation, the glacier shows a negative glacier mass balance and the glacier will melt back. During times in which the volume input to the glacier by precipitation is equivalent to the ice volume lost from calving, evaporation, and melting ...
Ablation zone or ablation area refers to the low-altitude area of a glacier or ice sheet below firn with a net loss in ice mass. This loss can result from melting, sublimation, evaporation, ice calving, aeolian processes like blowing snow, avalanche, and any other ablation.
Using data collected from 13 Alaskan tidewater calving glaciers, Brown et al. (1982) derived the following relationship between calving speed and water depth: = +, where is the mean calving speed (m⋅a −1), is a calving coefficient (27.1±2 a −1), is the mean water depth at glacier front (m) and is a constant (0 m⋅a −1). Pelto and ...
Ice mélange is commonly the result of an ice calving event where ice breaks off the edge of a glacier. Ice mélange affects many of the Earth's processes including glacier calving, ocean wave generation and frequency, generation of seismic waves , atmosphere and ocean interactions, and tidewater glacier systems.
A moulin (or glacier mill) is a roughly circular, vertical (or nearly vertical) well-like shaft formed where a surface meltstream exploits a weakness in the ice. The term is derived from the French word for mill.
Ablation is the reverse of accumulation: it includes all the processes by which a glacier can lose mass. The main ablation process for most glaciers that are entirely land-based is melting; the heat that causes melting can come from sunlight, or ambient air, or from rain falling on the glacier, or from geothermal heat below the glacier bed.