GlaciologyGlaciology (; study of ice) is the scientific study of glaciers, or more generally ice and natural phenomena that involve ice. Glaciology is an interdisciplinary Earth science that integrates geophysics, geology, physical geography, geomorphology, climatology, meteorology, hydrology, biology, and ecology. The impact of glaciers on people includes the fields of human geography and anthropology. The discoveries of water ice on the Moon, Mars, Europa and Pluto add an extraterrestrial component to the field, which is referred to as "astroglaciology".
AntarcticaAntarctica (ænˈtɑːrktᵻkə) is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, being about 40% larger than Europe, and has an area of . Most of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, with an average thickness of . Antarctica is, on average, the coldest, driest, and windiest of the continents, and it has the highest average elevation.
IceIce is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 32 °F, 0 °C, or 273.15 K. Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaque bluish-white color. In the Solar System, ice is abundant and occurs naturally from as close to the Sun as Mercury to as far away as the Oort cloud objects. Beyond the Solar System, it occurs as interstellar ice.
Weichselian glaciationThe Weichselian glaciation was the last glacial period and its associated glaciation in northern parts of Europe. In the Alpine region it corresponds to the Würm glaciation. It was characterized by a large ice sheet (the Fenno-Scandian ice sheet) that spread out from the Scandinavian Mountains and extended as far as the east coast of Schleswig-Holstein, northern Poland and Northwest Russia.
GreenlandGreenland (Kalaallit Nunaat, kalaːɬːit nʉnaːt; Grønland, ˈkʁɶnˌlænˀ) is a North American autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark. It is one of three countries that form the Kingdom, the others being Denmark proper and the Faroe Islands; the citizens of all three countries are citizens of Denmark and the European Union. The capital and largest city of Greenland is Nuuk. Greenland lies between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
Ice streamAn ice stream is a region of fast-moving ice within an ice sheet. It is a type of glacier, a body of ice that moves under its own weight. They can move upwards of a year, and can be up to in width, and hundreds of kilometers in length. They tend to be about deep at the thickest, and constitute the majority of the ice that leaves the sheet. In Antarctica, the ice streams account for approximately 90% of the sheet's mass loss per year, and approximately 50% of the mass loss in Greenland.
Euler methodIn mathematics and computational science, the Euler method (also called the forward Euler method) is a first-order numerical procedure for solving ordinary differential equations (ODEs) with a given initial value. It is the most basic explicit method for numerical integration of ordinary differential equations and is the simplest Runge–Kutta method. The Euler method is named after Leonhard Euler, who first proposed it in his book Institutionum calculi integralis (published 1768–1870).
Global temperature recordThe global temperature record shows the fluctuations of the temperature of the atmosphere and the oceans through various spans of time. There are numerous estimates of temperatures since the end of the Pleistocene glaciation, particularly during the current Holocene epoch. Some temperature information is available through geologic evidence, going back millions of years. More recently, information from ice cores covers the period from 800,000 years before the present time until now.
Antarctic ice sheetThe Antarctic ice sheet is one of the two polar ice caps of Earth. It covers about 98% of the Antarctic continent and is the largest single mass of ice on Earth, with an average thickness of over 2 kilometers. Separate to the Antarctic sea ice it covers an area of almost and contains of ice. A cubic kilometer of ice weighs approximately 0.92 metric gigatonnes, meaning that the ice sheet weighs about 24,380,000 gigatonnes. It holds approximately 61% of all fresh water on Earth, equivalent to about 58 meters of sea level rise if all the ice were above sea level.
Ice shelfAn ice shelf is a large floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface. Ice shelves are only found in Antarctica, Greenland, Northern Canada, and the Russian Arctic. The boundary between the floating ice shelf and the anchor ice (resting on bedrock) that feeds it is the grounding line. The thickness of ice shelves can range from about to . In contrast, sea ice is formed on water, is much thinner (typically less than ), and forms throughout the Arctic Ocean.
