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A cirque (French: [siʁk]; from the Latin word circus) is an amphitheatre -like valley formed by glacial erosion. Alternative names for this landform are corrie (from Scottish Gaelic: coire, meaning a pot or cauldron) [1] and cwm (Welsh for 'valley'; pronounced [kʊm]). A cirque may also be a similarly shaped landform arising from fluvial erosion.
Glacial landform. Glacial landforms are landforms created by the action of glaciers. Most of today's glacial landforms were created by the movement of large ice sheets during the Quaternary glaciations. Some areas, like Fennoscandia and the southern Andes, have extensive occurrences of glacial landforms; other areas, such as the Sahara, display ...
Pyramidal peak. The Matterhorn, a classic example of a pyramidal peak. A pyramidal peak, sometimes called a glacial horn in extreme cases, is an angular, sharply pointed mountain peak which results from the cirque erosion due to multiple glaciers diverging from a central point. Pyramidal peaks are often examples of nunataks.
A cirque glacier is formed in a cirque, a bowl-shaped depression on the side of or near mountains. Snow and ice accumulation in corries often occurs as the result of avalanching from higher surrounding slopes. If a cirque glacier advances far enough, it may become a valley glacier. Additionally, if a valley glacier retreats enough that it is ...
Striding Edge, an arête viewed from Helvellyn with the corrie Red Tarn to the left and Nethermost Cove to the right. An arête (/ əˈrɛt / ə-RET; French: [aʁɛt]) [1] is a narrow ridge of rock that separates two valleys. It is typically formed when two glaciers erode parallel U-shaped valleys. Arêtes can also form when two glacial cirques ...
Overdeepening is a characteristic of basins and valleys eroded by glaciers. An overdeepened valley profile is often eroded to depths which are hundreds of metres below the lowest continuous surface line (the thalweg) along a valley or watercourse. This phenomenon is observed under modern day glaciers, in salt-water fjords and fresh-water lakes ...
A bergschrund (from the German for mountain cleft) is a crevasse that forms where moving glacier ice separates from the stagnant ice or firn above. [1] It is often a serious obstacle for mountaineers, who sometimes abbreviate "bergschrund" to "schrund". Bergschrunds extend to the bedrock and can have a depth of well over 100 metres (330 ft).
Glacier ice is slightly more dense than ice formed from frozen water because glacier ice contains fewer trapped air bubbles. Glacial ice has a distinctive blue tint because it absorbs some red light due to an overtone of the infrared OH stretching mode of the water molecule. (Liquid water appears blue for the same reason.