Ice Sheets and Glaciers Glacier A glacier is

Ice Sheets and Glaciers

Glacier • A glacier is a perennial mass of ice which moves over land. • A glacier forms in locations where snow and ice accumulate. The Baltoro Glacier in the Karakoram Mountains. At 62 kilometres in length, it is one of the longest alpine glaciers on earth

Ice Sheet • An ice sheet is a mass of glacier ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50, 000 km² • The only current ice sheets are in Antarctica and Greenland Antarctica's Ice Sheet

Water-supply of glaciers • Glaciers contain 2% of Earth’s water and 77% of inland water • Glaciers cover about 10% of Earth’s terrain (ca 15 000 km 2) • During the last Ice Age glaciers covered about 32% Earth’s terrain • If all the glaciers melted, the water level in oceans would rise about 70 m

Division of glaciers Antarctica • Alpine Glaciers 2% The Alps Greenland • Ice Sheets 98% The Andes

Spreading of Glaciers TV H 1 lk 56

Formation of Glaciers • Glaciers form in places where the temperatures are under 0 °C for most of the year and fallen snow does not melt.

Constitution of Glacier TV H 2 lk 57

Snow line • The climatic snow line is the point above which snow and ice cover the ground throughout the year. TV H 3 lk 57

Movement of Glaciers • As the snow and ice thicken, they reach a point where they begin to move, due to a combination of the surface slope and the pressure of the overlying snow and ice.

Movement of Glaciers

Movement of Glaciers

Glacier

Ice Shelf

Ice Shelf TV H 4 lk 58

Ice Shelf

Links • http: //lepo. it. da. ut. ee/~arps/maateadus/MT _liustikud_1. htm • http: //map. ngdc. noaa. gov/website/nsidc/gl acier/viewer. htm • http: //nsidc. org/glaciers/ • http: //www. indiana. edu/~g 103/G 103/Week 8/week 8. html • http: //www. swisseduc. ch/glaciers/indexen. html