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The word glacier is a loanword from French and goes back, via Franco-Provençal, to the Vulgar Latin glaciārium, derived from the Late Latin glacia, and ultimately Latin glaciēs, meaning "ice". [12] [13] The processes and features caused by or related to glaciers are referred to as glacial.
Last Glacial Period, the most recent glacial period (115,000 to 11,700 years ago) Penultimate Glacial Period, the glacial period that occurred before the Last Glacial Period; Late Cenozoic Ice Age, the geologic period of the last 33.9 million years; Little Ice Age, a period of relative cold in certain regions from roughly 1450–1480
Areas of study within glaciology include glacial history and the reconstruction of past glaciation. A glaciologist is a person who studies glaciers. A glacial geologist studies glacial deposits and glacial erosive features on the landscape. Glaciology and glacial geology are key areas of polar research.
A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate between glacial periods. The Last Glacial Period ended about 15,000 years ago. [1]
A nunatak (from Inuit nunataq) is the summit or ridge of a mountain that protrudes from an ice field or glacier that otherwise covers most of the mountain or ridge. They often form natural pyramidal peaks. Isolated nunataks are also called glacial islands, [2] and smaller nunataks rounded by glacial action may be referred to as rognons. [3] [4]
An iceberg in the Arctic Ocean Tabular iceberg Iceberg from overhead showing above and submerged ice. An iceberg is a piece of fresh water ice more than 15 meters (16 yards) long [1] that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open water.
Drift is often subdivided into unstratified (unsorted) drift (glacial till) that forms moraines and stratified drift (glaciolacustrine and fluvioglacial sediments) that accumulates as stratified and sorted sediments in the form of outwash plains, eskers, kames, varves, and so forth. The term drift clay is a synonym for boulder clay. Both are ...
Ice streams are a type of glacier [5] and many of them have "glacier" in their name, e.g. Pine Island Glacier. Ice shelves are listed separately in the List of Antarctic ice shelves. For the purposes of these lists, the Antarctic is defined as any latitude further south than 60° (the continental limit according to the Antarctic Treaty System). [6]