Do glaciers recede during summer and advance during winter?

Is there a significant cyclic variation in the position of the glacier terminus along the year?

-Asked by Felix

Hi Felix.

This is a great question. In some areas with glaciers with especially fast response times, this may indeed be the case. Some glaciers in places like Scandinavia and Iceland have small annual moraines, which form each year, as the glacier recedes in the summer and the terminus position stabilises in the winter. However, this is not the case for most glaciers, as the response time of the glacier is typically longer than a single year.

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