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are glaciers that terminate in the sea. As the ice reaches the
sea pieces break off, or calve, forming icebergs. Most
tidewater glaciers calve above sea level, which often results
in a tremendous splash as the iceberg strikes the water. If
the water is deep, glaciers can calve underwater, causing
the iceberg to suddenly leap up out of the water. The
Hubbard Glacier is the longest tidewater glacier in Alaska
and has a calving face over 10 km (6 mi) long. Yakutat Bay
and Glacier Bay are both popular with cruise ship
passengers because of the huge glaciers descending
hundreds of feet to the water. This glacier type undergoes
centuries-long cycles of advance and retreat that are much
less affected by the climate changes currently causing the
retreat of most other glaciers. Most tidewater glaciers are
outlet glaciers of ice caps and ice fields.
In terms of thermal characteristics, a temperate glacier is at
melting point throughout the year, from its surface to its
base. The ice of a polar glacier is always below freezing
point from the surface to its base, although the surface
snowpack may experience seasonal melting. A sub-polar
glacier has both temperate and polar ice, depending on the
depth beneath the surface and position along the length of
the glacier.
Glaciers form where the accumulation of snow and ice
exceeds ablation. 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. On steeper slopes this can occur with as little as 50
feet of snow-ice. The snow which forms temperate glaciers
is subject to repeated freezing and thawing, which changes
it into a form of granular ice called firn. Under the pressure
of the layers of ice and snow above it, this granular ice
fuses into denser and denser firn. Over a period of years,
layers of firn undergo further compaction and become
glacial ice. Glacier ice has a slightly reduced density from
ice formed from the direct freezing of water. The air
between snowflakes becomes trapped and creates air
bubbles between the ice crystals.
The distinctive blue tint of glacial ice is often wrongly
attributed to Rayleigh scattering due to bubbles in the ice.
The blue color is actually created for the same reason that
water is blue, that is, its slight absorption of red light due to
an overtone of the infrared OH stretching mode of the
water molecule.[7] Glaciers move, or flow, downhill due to
the internal deformation of ice and gravity.[12] Ice behaves
like an easily breaking solid until its thickness exceeds
about 50 meters (160 ft). The pressure on ice deeper than
that depth causes plastic flow. At the molecular level, ice
consists of stacked layers of molecules with relatively weak
bonds between the layers. When the stress of the layer
above exceeds the inter-layer binding strength, it moves
faster than the layer below.[13]
Another type of movement is through basal sliding. In this
process, the glacier slides over the terrain on which it sits,
lubricated by the presence of liquid water. As the pressure
increases toward the base of the glacier, the melting point
of water decreases, and the ice melts. Friction between ice
and rock and geothermal heat from the Earth's interior also
contribute to melting. This type of movement is dominant
in temperate, or warm-based glaciers. The geothermal heat
flux becomes more important the thicker a glacier becomes.
[14]
Glacial
Diagram of glacial plucking and abrasion