We usually think of a glacier as a white, clean surface. Well, this is only an idealized vision because in reality glaciers are far from immaculate, they can be colored! And this is extremely important since colored (dirty) ice absorbs more solar radiation than clean ice, accelerating melt. One of the places on Earth where it is fundamental to understand these processes is Greenland, where ice is ...[Read More]
Questions from space: what is snow and what is ice on the Greenland ice sheet?
Fig.1: Extremely dark bare ice at QAS_U automatic weather station on August 4, 2014. Credits: Jason E. Box