Glaciers

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Welcome to our page about glaciers. We are two students who made a webpage on glaciers for our school project. We hope you enjoy learing about glaciers as much as we did.

Some Glacier Facts

10% of the world's land area is covered with glaciers
Glaciers store about 75% of the world's freshwater
In some areas of Antarctic ice, it is over 4 200 metres thick
In the last Ice Age, glaciers covered 32% of the total land area
Sea level worldwide would rise 70 metres if all land ice melted
The longest glacier in North America is the Bering Glacier in Alaska, measuring 204 km long
almost 90% of an ice berg is below water - only about 10% shows above water
The Antarctic ice sheet has been in existence for at least 40 million years

Glacier Information In the far south and north of the earth, it is too cold for sbow to melt. Over the years, the fallen snow bulids up in layers. The increasing weight of the glacier causes snow crystals under the surface to become compact, grainlike pellets that are called firn. At depths of 15 metres or more, the firn is further compressed into dense crystals of glacial ice. The ice then becomes os thick that it moves under the pressure of its own weight. The unique thing about glaciers is that they move, their own weight causing them to flow like slow rivers. Some glaciers can be over a hundred km long, while some are as small football fields.

Glaciers are an important cause of erosion. They widen and deppen vallies by pushing away all of the dirt and debris that is in their way. This causes all of the excess dirt to pile up at the foot of the glacier. This is called a glacial moraine. They are not safe to stand or climb on as they are not like mountains. They often have steep cliffs and all of the rocks are not evenly interlocked thus allowing them to crumble and collapse under the slightest pressure.

There are two types of "glaciers". Ice fields (such as the Columbia Icefield) and ice rivers (Such as the Athabasca Glacier). Icefields are like huge cakes of snow. An icefield feeds many different glaciers. The largest body of ice in the Canadian Rockies is an ice field. It is the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park. It is 325 km squared (130 miles squared) Icefields are most often the deepest part of the glaciers.

The ice rivers or glaciers are the outlets from icefields. They feed off of icefields. They can be miles long or as short as just a few kilometres. Some glaciers empty out into oceans like the ones in Greenland and Antarctica, and some empty into glacial fed lakes, streams and rivers. These are much colder than regular lakes, streams and rivers.

Global warming is slowing down glacier because most of the ones in the world are in retreat. That means that they are melting faster each year then they are moving. The only glaciers in the world that are increasing are the ones in New Zealand such as the Mount Cook glacier. These glaciers are moving and creating ice faster than they are melting. Scientists don't know why the only growing glaciers are in such a warm country but it may be because of the high elevation or because of the alpine temperature.

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