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In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, [2] is a mass of glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km 2 (19,000 sq mi). [3] The only current ice sheets are the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet. Ice sheets are bigger than ice shelves or alpine glaciers.
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]
Continental glaciers cover nearly 13 million km 2 (5 million sq mi) or about 98% of Antarctica's 13.2 million km 2 (5.1 million sq mi), with an average thickness of ice 2,100 m (7,000 ft). Greenland and Patagonia also have huge expanses of continental glaciers. [8]
There are around 880 glaciers in Washington state, with 186 named according to the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). [6] However, the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens eliminated nine of its eleven named glaciers and only the new glacier known as Crater Glacier has been reestablished since. Olympic Mountains Mount Olympus. Blue Glacier
The movement of these continental glaciers created many now-familiar glacial landforms. As the glaciers were expanded, due to their accumulating weight of snow and ice, they crushed and redistributed surface rocks, creating erosional landforms such as striations , cirques , and hanging valleys .
Lower Curtis Glacier is a cirque glacier in the North Cascades in the U.S. state of Washington. Cirque glaciers are glaciers that appear in bowl-shaped valley hollows. [4] [12] Snow easily settles in the topographic structure; it is turned to ice as more snow falls and is subsequently compressed. [12]
The Antarctic ice sheet is a continental glacier covering 98% of the Antarctic continent, with an area of 14 million square kilometres (5.4 million square miles) and an average thickness of over 2 kilometres (1.2 mi).
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