115 articles
Polar ice cap
Polar ice cap: high-latitude ice-covered region on Earth (Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, Arctic and Antarctic sea ice) and on Mars; not a true ice cap per NSIDC; IMBIE records 12.5 trillion tons lost since the 1970s.
Prince of Wales Icefield
Prince of Wales Icefield, a 19,325 km² ice field on central Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada; second largest ice mass in the Canadian High Arctic, with negative mass balance driven by calving from Trinity and Wykeham glaciers.
Purog Kangri
Purog Kangri (Puruogangri, 普若岗日) is the largest ice field in Tibet and China, in Nagqu on the central Tibetan Plateau; highest point 6,482 m, area about 390–427 km², shrinking with accelerating mass loss since 2012.
Queen Louise Land
Queen Louise Land (Danish: Dronning Louise Land) is a mountainous nunatak region west of Dove Bay in northeastern Greenland, named by the 1906–08 Danmark Expedition after Queen Louise, wife of King Frederik VIII, and explored by Koch's 1912–13 and British 1952–54 expeditions.
Retreat of glaciers since 1850
Retreat of glaciers since 1850: the near-global shrinkage of mountain glaciers from their Little Ice Age maximum around 1850, accelerating since 1990, with 6,542 Gt of mass lost 2000–2023 and attribution to human-caused warming.
Rockefeller Plateau
Rockefeller Plateau is the interior ice plateau of Marie Byrd Land, West Antarctica, east of the Shirase and Siple coasts, with much of its surface 1,000 to 1,500 meters above sea level.
Ross Ice Shelf
Ross Ice Shelf: Earth's largest ice shelf, ~477,000 km², in the Ross Sea, Antarctica. Cold-water shielded, slow-melting, discovered 1841 by James Clark Ross; base for Amundsen's 1911 polar expedition.
Rusanov Ice Cap
Rusanov Ice Cap, an ice cap on northern October Revolution Island, Severnaya Zemlya, Russian High Arctic, named after lost 1912 explorer Vladimir Rusanov; outlet glaciers flow 100-150 m/year.
Russell West Glacier
Russell West Glacier, also West Russell Glacier or Glaciar Russel del Weste, is an outlet glacier on Trinity Peninsula, Antarctic Peninsula, at 63°40′S 58°50′W, forming a through glacier with Russell East Glacier and named for FIDS surveyor Victor Ian Russell.
Sargent Icefield
Sargent Icefield is an icefield on the eastern coast of the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska's Chugach Mountains, feeding outlet glaciers including Ultramarine, Nellie Juan, and Princeton.
Serac
Serac: a large block or tower of glacier ice, taller than broad, formed where crevasses intersect in icefalls; from Swiss French sérac, a cheese; a major mountaineering hazard.
Siachen Glacier
Siachen Glacier, eastern Karakoram glacier, second longest outside the polar regions; since India's 1984 Operation Meghdoot the world's highest battlefield, disputed by India and Pakistan, with ceasefire since 2003, heavy waste pollution, and accelerating negative mass balance.
Snæfellsjökull
Snæfellsjökull is a 1,446 m glacier-capped stratovolcano on the western tip of Iceland's Snæfellsnes peninsula, centerpiece of Snæfellsjökull National Park (170 km²), with a 200 m ice-filled summit crater and about 16% of its Little Ice Age glacier area remaining.
Southern Patagonian Ice Field
The Southern Patagonian Ice Field (Spanish: Hielo Patagónico Sur) is a continental ice mass straddling the Andes on the Chile–Argentina border, the largest temperate ice mass outside Antarctica.
Steacie Ice Cap
Steacie Ice Cap, a 5,100 km2 ice cap on southwestern Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut, Canada, one of the island's two major ice caps with Müller Ice Cap, drained by the advancing Good Friday Glacier.
Steele Island
Steele Island, an ice rise on the Larsen Ice Front off the Black Coast of Palmer Land, British Antarctic Territory, at 71°00'S 60°43'W; surveyed by USAS in 1940 and named for Clarence E. Steele, East Base tractor driver.
Subglacial drainage
Subglacial drainage is the movement of meltwater at the base of a glacier or ice sheet through films, cavities, and channels, governing basal sliding, erosion, and outburst floods.
Talos Dome
Talos Dome, an ice dome on the eastern edge of the East Antarctic Plateau (72°48′S, 159°06′E, about 2315 m), is the site of the 1620 m TALDICE ice core drilled 2004–2008, covering roughly 250,000 years of climate record.
Three Slice Nunatak
Three Slice Nunatak (Chilean: Nunatak Tres Tajadas) is a c. 500 m nunatak marking the north point of Joerg Peninsula, Bowman Coast, Graham Land, Antarctica; surveyed by USAS in 1940 and named for its three vertical rock faces.
Thwaites Glacier
Thwaites Glacier, the "Doomsday Glacier," is a Florida-sized West Antarctic ice stream losing ice rapidly; its main trunk retreats ~800 m/yr and it could raise sea level 65 cm if it collapsed.
Till
Till, also called glacial till, is unsorted, unstratified glacial sediment deposited directly by ice, a jumbled mix of clay to boulders, forming lodgement, melt-out, and traction tills and moraines.
University Ice Cap
University Ice Cap (UN) is an ice cap on October Revolution Island, Severnaya Zemlya, Russian Arctic, adjacent to Karpinsky Ice Cap; first cored in 2021, showing thick melt layers and no surging.
Vatnajökull (glaciated)
Vatnajökull, Iceland's and Europe's largest ice cap by volume (~7,500 km² in 2023), a temperate ice cap over seven active volcanoes including Grímsvötn and Bárðarbunga, subject to jökulhlaups, surges, and rapid climate-driven retreat.
Vestfonna
Vestfonna: second largest ice cap of Svalbard, on Nordaustlandet at 80°N, covering ~2340 km² with a 630 m summit. Near balance in recent decades; projected equilibrium-line loss between 2043 and 2152 depending on RCP scenario.
Wordie Ice Shelf
Wordie Ice Shelf, former ice shelf in Marguerite Bay, west Antarctic Peninsula, named for James M. Wordie; peaked near 2,200 km2 in 1966, retreated from 1966, and vanished by about 2004, leaving Wordie Bay.