Blue ice field
Blue ice fields are areas in Antarctica where the ice is openly visible on the surface and not covered by a layer of snow. In these areas, the snow is quickly removed by wind or sublimation so that it cannot accumulate.
Blue ice fields arise when the glaciers are blocked from moving through mountains and the flow of ice is deflected upwards, where the ice is carried away by wind and sublimation. In such places mittransportiertes collects the ice rocks on. Meteorites in particular , which often fell on the Antarctic ice sheet a long time ago , are collected in such places ( meteorite trap ).
Blue ice fields are used as stable runways for air traffic in the Antarctic:
literature
- Richard Bintanja: Blue Ice . In: Vijay P. Singh, Pratap Singh, Umesh K. Haritashya (Eds.): Encyclopedia of Snow, Ice and Glaciers . Springer, 2011, ISBN 978-90-481-2641-5 , pp. 102-103 ( limited preview in Google Book search).