GEOB 103 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Sensible Heat, Permafrost, Thermokarst
14 Sep 2018
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Document Summary
The volume of ice at any given instance in time, is addition of ice minus the loss of ice, added on to the existing ice. Snowfall --> snow falling onto the glacier itself. Snow that gets stored on ridges, can be blown from the ridge to the glacier itself. When snow gets fallen onto glacier, it is not ice yet (there is a process that transfers it into ice) It begins as snowflakes, then gets transformed into ice crystals (causing the property of the snowfall to change itself) Ice crystals go through metamorphosis and becomes larger (because ice crystals aggregate together) Porous spaces are being removed and the mass increases, density is quite low (since snowflakes are quite light) until mass is accumulated. Calving: glacier that is being floated out of it"s terminus by a body of water (due to feedback), causing big chunks of ice to fall off. Existing: whatever ice that is present during determining the mass balance.
