Glaciers - National Snow and Ice Data Center
What is a glacier? A glacier is an accumulation of ice and snow that slowly flows over land. At higher elevations, more snow typically falls than melts, adding to its mass. Eventually, the surplus of built-up ice begins to flow downhill. At lower elevations, there is usually a higher rate of melt or icebergs break off that removes ice mass.
Science of Glaciers - National Snow and Ice Data Center
The World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) tracks changes in more than 100 alpine glaciers worldwide. Forty-two of those glaciers qualify as climate reference glaciers because their records span more than 30 years. The WGMS reports glacier mass balance changes in millimeters of water equivalence. (There are 25.4 millimeters in an inch.)
Glacier Quick Facts | National Snow and Ice Data Center
The largest glacier, by area, is the Seller Glacier on the Antarctic Peninsula, measuring over 7,000 square kilometers (2,700 square miles). The largest ice crystals that make up a glacier can be as large as apples. However, there are many other ice masses on Earth that are much larger than the largest glacier.
Quick Facts About Ice Shelves - National Snow and Ice Data Center
This conceptual diagram of an outlet glacier and its ice shelf shows the various processes at play where the atmosphere, ice, and ocean interact. The red arrow indicates the ocean heat beneath the ice shelf. The black arrow indicates that dynamic changes of outlet glaciers are more pronounced toward the glacier terminus (ending in ocean).
piedmont glacier - National Snow and Ice Data Center
Agassiz Glacier is the smaller glacier to the left. The Malaspina Glacier is one of the most famous examples of this type of glacier, and is the largest piedmont glacier in the world. Spilling out of the Seward Ice Field (visible near the top of the photograph), it covers over 5,000 square kilometers as it spreads across the coastal plain.
What are glacial lakes? | National Snow and Ice Data Center
2022年2月15日 · In spring 1986, Hubbard Glacier in Alaska surged and blocked the outlet of Russell Fjord, entrapping a large lake. Over the summer, snowmelt continued to fill the lake. In October, the glacier-created dam gave way. The fjord reconnected to the ocean, only after releasing 1.3 cubic miles of water, a gush equivalent to about 35 Niagara Falls.
Ice Sheets Today | National Snow and Ice Data Center
The left map shows the total melt days for the Antarctic Ice Sheet as of November 17, 2024. The map in the middle is a close up of the Antarctic Peninsula. The graph on the right show the daily melt extent for the 2024 to 2025 melt season through November 17, 2024 as …
Ice Sheet Quick Facts - National Snow and Ice Data Center
Is an ice sheet different from a glacier? Ice sheets are much larger than glaciers. An ice sheet is a mass of glacial land ice, extending more than 50,000 square kilometers (20,000 square miles). Ice sheets can cover underlying canyons and mountain ranges. During the last ice age, ice sheets also covered much of North America and Scandinavia.
Greenland Ice sheet Mapping Project (GrIMP)
For both data sets, each glacier is assigned to a common box with a name based on its East/West/North and latitude position (e.g., E68.80N and W69.10N). TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X (DLR): MEaSUREs Greenland Ice Velocity: Selected Glacier …
Glacier Photograph Collection - NSIDC
Name of glacier: From the Glacier Photograph Collection. Boulder, Colorado USA: National Snow and Ice Data Center. Digital media. If using many images, the user may simply cite the entire collection: National Snow and Ice Data Center (comp.). 2002, updated 2019. Glacier Photograph Collection, Version 1.