Hi Dennis, This is a really good question and it is not always clear in articles when they mention different amounts of warming. Typically, when articles say this, they refer to warming since the industrial period. The IPCC quantify amounts of warming relative to the period between 1850-1900 as this is when we saw the […]
Hi Oliva, Great question! Staircase corries are also known as staircase cirques, this is when there are more than two cirques, where one is sat above another. Staircase cirques form with the same process as a stand alone cirque, beginning with a small hollow which overtime expands due to both physical and chemical weathering. You
What are staircase corries and how do they form? Read More »
Asked by Edward Hello Edward! Great question. Fossils can be very useful in understanding past environmental change; this can be linked to past glacier fluctuations so that we can understand what the environment or climate was like when glaciers in the past grew larger or smaller. For example, fossil pollen from plants can be found
Why are fossils important when studying glaciers? Read More »
Submitted by Phyllis Hello Scientists: I am wondering about the purity of the oldest water that makes up the oldest glaciers. That is, if a very old (pre-Homo-sapiens) sample of ice is taken from a glacier in Antarctica, what is found in there? It’s not salty, I would guess, but is it extremely pure? Does
How pure is the oldest ice water? Read More »
Question: how cold do we need to keep ice cores to save the data? Submitted by Kettaashano Hi Kettaashano, Thank you for a very interesting question! The world’s major ice core storage facilities, such as the National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility, store ice cores in large freezers at a temperature of around -36°C. Often,
What temperatures are ice cores stored at? Read More »
Dear Malcolm, Thank you for your question on glacial erratics. Below is a summary of the main debris transport pathways in glacial systems. Debris can be supplied to a glacier system from supraglacial or subglacial sources. Supraglacial sources include rock or snow avalanches from valley sides or mountain peaks that rise above an ice sheet/cap
Does the Antarctic Ice Sheet transport glacial erratics? Read More »
Hi Luke, thanks for your question! An answer to your question can be found in the recent BEDMAP2 (an ice bed, surface, and thickness dataset for the Antarctic Ice Sheet) paper. In terms of area: 5.50 x 10^6 km^2 (or 5,500,000 km^2) of ice is grounded below sea level. The total area of the ice
How much of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is below sea level? Read More »
Looking at maps of Larsen C, the area of the shelf is many time larger than the area of the glaciers that I assume would accumulate snow and feed it. This made me wonder about the source of the Larsen Ice Shelf. Is most of Larsen C’s ice mass originally from the glaciers or was
What is the source of Larsen C Ice Shelf? Read More »
Question: my question: Fact: A massive iceberg weighing more than one trillion tons has broken away from western Antarctica Speculation: Global Warming My Question: In 1911 – the Titanic sank due to icebergs in the shipping lanes – was this Global Warming? Probably not? Speculation: It seems icebergs break away are normal Asked by
Is the breakaway of the Larsen C Iceberg normal? Read More »
The oldest penetrated Antarctic ice is about 800,000 years old. However, I have read that the Antarctic Ice Sheet has been present for several millions of years. Is there any direct evidence for older ice, or is it simply an inference from dC18 values from somewhere, or something like that? Do global sea-level curves support
How do we know how old the Antarctic Ice Sheet is? Read More »
