ENVS 2160 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Northern Canada, Accumulation Zone, Ice Sheet
22 Jun 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Snowflakes half-melted snowflakes granular snow firn glacier ice. The specific stages are: new or fresh snow, old snow, a) firn, b) intermediate stage, new glacier ice, old glacier ice. Firn: snow which has survived a summer melt season and has begun to transform into ice. With processes of transformation, snowflakes transform into granular snow and then ice; this process makes the structure of the snowflakes less intricate. One important aspect between the transformation of now and ice (change of phases) are the changing conditions. For example, you can get snow or ice to melt simply by increasing temperature. Another way is to apply significant pressure which will change the melting point. 1 bar (pressure at surface), melting at 0 c. Melting point changes by ~1 c with an increase of 140 bars of pressure. E. g. melting at -22 c at 2047 bar. Soil type, soil cover, geothermal heat from plates: albedo.
