115 articles
Drumlin
A drumlin is an elongated oval hill of glacial sediment, mainly till, molded under flowing ice; its blunt end faces up-glacier, and drumlins occur in drumlin fields.
Edgeoyjokulen
Edgeoyjokulen (Edgeøyjøkulen) is a 1,365 km² ice cap on Edgeøya, Svalbard, at about 77°40′N 23°24′E; one of Svalbard's largest ice caps, nearly three times the area of mainland Norway's Jostedalsbreen.
Ejnar Mikkelsen Range
The Ejnar Mikkelsen Range (Danish: Ejnar Mikkelsen Fjeld) is a mountain range in King Christian IX Land, eastern Greenland, and forms part of the Watkins Range. It was first climbed in 1970 by a Scottish team.
Equilibrium line altitude
The equilibrium line altitude (ELA) is the elevation on a glacier where accumulation of snow exactly balances ablation over a year, dividing accumulation and ablation areas.
Esker
Esker (Irish eiscir; also osar, ås): long sinuous ridge of stratified sand and gravel deposited by meltwater in subglacial or englacial tunnels, up to 200 m high and hundreds of kilometres long; used for aggregate, aquifers, and mineral exploration.
Eyjafjallajökull
Eyjafjallajökull, also called Eyjafjalla glacier, is an ice-covered stratovolcano in southern Iceland whose 2010 eruption produced fine ash that closed most European airspace for about a week.
Firn
Firn, called névé during its first year, is snow older than one year compacted into grains denser than 550 kg per cubic meter, the transition between snow and glacial ice.
Flade Isblink
Flade Isblink is an ice cap in Kronprins Christian Land, northeastern Greenland, near Station Nord; at about 8,500 km2 it is Greenland's largest ice cap outside the ice sheet, with surging outlet glaciers, a 2015 subglacial lake drainage, and near-zero mass change in the 2000s.
Fleming Glacier
Fleming Glacier, a fast-flowing glacier on the southwest Antarctic Peninsula feeding the former Wordie Ice Shelf, named for W.L.S. Fleming; accelerated, thinned up to 160 m, and retreated after the shelf's disintegration.
Gangotri Glacier
Gangotri Glacier, a large debris-covered Garhwal Himalaya glacier and Ganga basin source, feeds the Bhagirathi at Gaumukh; mass balance about −0.9 m w.e. per year with slowing retreat but accelerating thinning.
Gemini Nunatak
Gemini Nunatak, also Nunatak Gemini (Chile) and Nunatak Dzheminay (Soviet chart), is a twin-peaked Antarctic nunatak, 465 and 490 m, on Philippi Rise, east Graham Land, named by FIDS after the constellation Gemini.
Glacial landform
Glacial landforms are surface features created by glacier ice through erosion during advances and deposition during retreat, including cirques, U-shaped valleys, moraines, drumlins, eskers, and sandur, studied within glacial geomorphology.
Glacier mass balance
Glacier mass balance is the mass a glacier gains or loses, usually measured annually in meters water equivalent, and the key link between glaciers, climate, and sea level.
Glacier surge
A glacier surge is a temporary period of rapid ice flow, during which a glacier speeds up by up to two orders of magnitude and often advances its front.
Gomukh (गोमुख)
Gomukh (गोमुख), also Gaumukh, is the snout of the Gangotri Glacier in Uttarakhand, India, where the Bhagirathi River emerges; measured retreat slowed from 38 m/yr in the 1970s to about 10 m/yr by 2015.
Greenland ice sheet
The Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) is the ice sheet covering about 80 percent of Greenland: 1.7 million km², over 3 km thick, 7.4 m sea-level equivalent, losing mass annually since the late 1990s.
Grounding line
A grounding line is the boundary where a glacier or ice sheet resting on bedrock loses contact with the ground and starts to float on seawater as an ice shelf or floating tongue.
Gruening Glacier
Gruening Glacier (Spanish: Gruening, glaciar; Gruening, Ventisquero) is a broad valley glacier on the east coast of Palmer Land, Antarctica, flowing southeast into Hilton Inlet; discovered by the USAS in 1940 and named for Ernest H. Gruening.
Gulliver Nunatak
Gulliver Nunatak, a 575 m flat-topped ice-free nunatak on the north side of Adie Inlet, east Graham Land, Antarctica (66°12′S 62°40′W), near the Gulliver's Travels-themed Lilliput and Laputa nunataks.
Hertha Nunatak
Hertha Nunatak, also Herthainsel (German), is a 225 m nunatak in the Seal Nunataks group, Oscar II Coast, Antarctica, discovered by Captain Larsen on 11 December 1893 and named after the Norwegian sealing ship Hertha.
Hofsjökull (glaciated)
Hofsjökull is Iceland's third largest ice cap (923 km², ~200 km³), covering a dormant volcanic caldera in the central highlands and feeding the rivers Þjórsá, Hvítá, and Blanda; monitored for mass balance since 1988, it has lost about 25% of its volume since 1890.
Holtedahlfonna
Holtedahlfonna, also called Plateau Holtedahl, is a 1,375 km2 polythermal ice cap in Haakon VII Land, northwestern Spitsbergen, Svalbard; the second largest on Spitsbergen, it feeds the tidewater glacier Kronebreen and hosts ice core and mass balance monitoring.
Homathko Icefield
Homathko Icefield, formerly Homathko Snowfield, is a 570 km2 icefield in the British Columbia Coast Mountains between the Homathko and Southgate Rivers, 50 km southeast of Mt. Waddington, with Holocene glacier advances, 1990s dam-break floods, and 1957 first crossing.
Hooker Icefield
Hooker Icefield is an official-named icefield on the British Columbia-Alberta boundary in the Canadian Rockies' Kootenay Land District, about 907 km² with 70 peaks, highest Mount Fryatt at 3361 m, near Hooker, Scott, and Kane glaciers.
Ice calving
Ice calving is the breakage of ice from glacier termini or ice shelves into icebergs, bergy bits, and growlers. It causes nearly all Antarctic and about half of Greenland's marine ice loss and dominates sea-level projection uncertainty.
Ice sheet
An ice sheet is a mass of glacial land ice exceeding 50,000 km²; Earth's only two are the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which hold most of Earth's fresh water.
Ice shelf
An ice shelf is a thick, floating platform of ice extending from a glacier or ice sheet over the ocean, found around Antarctica and parts of the Arctic.
Ice spike
Ice spike: an inverted-icicle-shaped ice formation growing upward from freezing water, formed when expanding ice extrudes water through a hole in the surface crust (Bally-Dorsey model). Favored near -7°C, with pure water and moving air; distinct from penitentes.
Ice stream
An ice stream is a band of fast-flowing ice within an ice sheet, moving far faster than the ice beside it and draining ice toward the ocean.
Iceberg
Iceberg: a mass of freshwater ice calved from a glacier or ice shelf floating in open water, at least 5 m above sea level. Also called tabular bergs (Antarctic) and growlers, bergy bits (smaller fragments); 13% above water, monitored by IIP and NIC.