Did you know?

Did you know about the weathering crust? Five things you never knew about glacier surfaces

Ian Stevens August 20, 2021

The weathered surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Photo credit: Ian Stevens

To the untrained eye, the melting surface of glaciers and ice sheets can look a little boring. It’s bright in some places, dark in others, and there are lots of things to fall over and (hopefully not) get your feet wet in. However, a huge range of processes are occurring both upon and just underneath the ice surface, in a 50-ish cm thick layer of ice called the weathering crust (or the “crust” for ...[Read More]

The softness of ice, how we measure it, and why it matters for sea level rise

Emma Smith & TJ Young June 25, 2021

Figure: The Scott Polar Research Institute’s beautiful fabric maps show that Antarctica is composed of the combination of many different aspects, including snow, rocks, volcanoes, and biological life. Although the fabric of ice does not refer to material textiles, the analogy is similar in that ice fabric represents the physical composite of all its constituent ice crystals. [Image credit: Derek Langley / Naomi Chapman (SPRI University of Cambridge)]

One of the first things school children learn is that ice is a solid, and forms by freezing water. Most people think of ice as brittle–have you ever dropped a slippery ice cube on the kitchen floor, and watch it break and shatter into many pieces? It may be surprising, then, to find that ice can also stretch and squeeze, like a ball of pizza dough! Once deformed, ice is then softer in certai ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Did you know that Arctic sea ice is melting from the bottom?

David Docquier May 28, 2021

The current retreat of Arctic sea ice is a major sign of ongoing climate changes. And it could almost disappear during summer in a few decades from now, depending on the amount of greenhouse gases we will emit into the atmosphere. In this context, understanding what are the exact causes of this sea-ice loss is important. One of these causes is the amount of heat transported by the ocean (which dep ...[Read More]

Do you know about OGGM-Edu? An open-source educational platform about glaciers and glacier modelling

Zora Schirmeister, Patrick Schmitt & Fabien Maussion March 12, 2021

Are you teaching about glaciers and looking for fun educational activities for your students? Are you planning a workshop about glacier modelling and want to make it interactive, with a low entry level? Are you interested in learning about glaciers and glacier modelling, and looking for a simple way to get started? On top of that, do you want to do all of the above without installing anything on y ...[Read More]

Did you know that glacier mass loss affects water resources?

Larissa van der Laan March 5, 2021

The picture above shows a typical Kyrgyz summer yurt camp, located in the valley of Altyn-Arashan, Kyrgyzstan. The stream you see flowing through comes from the glacier-fed lake of Ala-Kul, the gorgeous turquoise water featured below. The families who live there during summer have done so for generations, and travel up with their herds of horses and cows. The stream provides the water they need fo ...[Read More]

Did you know there’s a place to Find, Discover, & Download Arctic Data? Meet The Arctic Data Center!

Erin McLean February 5, 2021

Getting data from the Arctic is often difficult and expensive – instead, stand on the shoulders of giants and investigate over 6000 datasets preserved for future download and reuse in the Arctic Data Center! Read on for more information about the Arctic Data Center and the data contained therein. The Arctic Data Center is the primary data repository for the Arctic section of the US National ...[Read More]

Did you know … that liquid water can be held within a glacier?

Annika Horlings January 29, 2021

Hidden below the surface of some glaciers, liquid water can be found within what is called the firn layer – the upper layer of a glacier where snow compacts into glacier ice. Liquid water may persist there for up to many years, forming what scientists call “firn aquifers.” While observations of seasonal firn aquifers have existed since the mid to late 1900s in several mountain glaciers, recent stu ...[Read More]

Did you know… that you can read the edge of Greenland’s ice as an open book?

Joe MacGregor November 20, 2020

Layering of ice along the northern margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet, Daugaard-Jensen Land. Figure credit: John Sonntag.

Scientists struggle to get ice samples from the depths of glaciers where fundamental pieces of information about the climate of Earth are stored. But in many places around the periphery of the Greenland Ice Sheet, you don’t need to drill a deep ice core to obtain ancient ice, you can simply walk across the ice sheet’s margin and look at the layered ice surface. There you can read the ice as though ...[Read More]

Did you know…about regenerated glaciers?

Giovanni Baccolo October 2, 2020

Fig. 1 The Eastern Fellaria glacier, in the Bernina massif (Central Alps). Its lower sector is a beautiful example of a regenerated glacier. Photo credit: Riccardo Scotti.

Ice caps, valley glaciers, cirque glaciers, piedmont glaciers, ice sheets… I’m guessing that if you are a glaciology enthusiast, you have already heard about these types of glaciers. But you probably don’t know anything about regenerated glaciers, am I right? Well, you are in the right place! Let’s find out more about this little-known glacier type. Classifying glaciers Glaciers are classified on ...[Read More]

Did you know… the Andes are so cryo-diverse?

Lucas Ruiz June 19, 2020

Extending for almost 8,000 km along the west of South America, the Andes are the longest continental mountain range in the world. They portray an impressive richness and diversity of cryospheric features, including: the most substantial extension of tropical glaciers on Earth, one of the highest densities of rock glaciers, the largest glacierized area in the Southern Hemisphere outside Antarctica, ...[Read More]