
Glacier Quick Facts | National Snow and Ice Data Center
What is a glacier? A glacier is an accumulation of ice and snow that slowly flows over land. Alpine glaciers are frozen rivers of ice, slowly flowing under their own weight down mountainsides and into valleys. Ice sheets exist only on Greenland and Antarctica, and they spread out in broad domes in multiple directions.
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.
Science of Glaciers | National Snow and Ice Data Center
What is the lifecycle of a glacier, and what factors influence its lifecycle? The amount of precipitation, whether in the form of snowfall, freezing rain, avalanches, or wind-drifted snow, is important to glacier survival. For instance, in very dry parts of Antarctica, low temperatures are ideal for glacier growth, but the small amount of net annual precipitation causes the glaciers to …
Why Glaciers Matter | National Snow and Ice Data Center
Glaciers, slow-moving rivers of ice, have sculpted mountains and carved valleys throughout Earth's history. They continue to flow and shape the landscape in many places today.
World Glacier Inventory - NSIDC
Glacier Parameters Search Search by geographic cooridnates (lat/lon), altitude/size/length, data contributor, and glacier features such as primary class, form, frontal characteristic, longitudinal profile, major source of nourishment, and tongue activity.
Ice Sheet Quick Facts | National Snow and Ice Data Center
This illustration provides a simplified view of an ice sheet. The illustration also includes a nearby mountain glacier, giving an idea of the difference in scale between ice sheets and alpine glaciers. — Credit: NASA What is an ice cap? Ice caps are miniature ice sheets. An ice cap covers less than 50,000 square kilometers (19,300 square miles) and comprises several merged glaciers. …
Glacier Photograph Collection - NSIDC
The Glacier Photograph Collection is an online, searchable collection of glacier photographs, mostly in the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and Greenland. Photographs were taken from the air and ground. The dates of the photographs range from …
World Glacier Inventory - NSIDC
Select an entire region (e.g., Europe) or subregion (e.g., Alps Mountains) to extract data for that area only. When you select a geographic region, all glaciers within that region are automatically included ...
névé - National Snow and Ice Data Center
(1) young, granular snow that has been partially melted, refrozen and compacted; névé that survives a full season is called firn; firn becomes glacial ice; (2) also refers to the accumulation zone of a glacier.
Seeking the world’s largest glaciers - National Snow and Ice Data …
Oct 31, 2019 · What defines a glacier? What are the world’s three largest glaciers? What are the largest glaciers in each region of the world? As often as the rapidly changing cryosphere is making headlines, from stories on dwindling Arctic sea ice to thawing permafrost to melting ice sheets, one would think the answers to these questions would be obvious and easy to find.