Meltwater
Meltwater from the Jostedalsbreen glacier in Norway
After the cold spell, meltwater collects from snow and ice melt in streams and rivers. The runoff of the water often leads to floods or flooding in spring and summer, depending on the extent of the catchment area, temperature changes and additional precipitation.
Melt water in the narrower sense of the term in glaciology refers to the water that forms on glaciers (see glacier melt ).
Subdivisions
- Intraglacial melt water arises in crevasses in the frozen area.
- Subglacial melt water in channels at the bottom of the glacier. The enormous pressure of the ice masses causes the ice to melt (see phase diagram ).
- Supraglacial melt water is created on the surface of the glacier by the effects of heat from the sun or the ambient temperature at the end of the tongue. So-called “ channel lakes ” are created from this water .
- Proglacial melt water forms at the glacier gate and emerges as a glacier stream .
Effects
The meltwater in Greenland or in the Antarctic can lead to climatic changes . It also leads to a rise in the sea level . Even harmless meltwater in the Antarctic can burst the ice shelf , as the Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder (Colorado) found and confirmed in another study.
See also
Web links
Wiktionary: Meltwater - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Individual evidence
- ↑ Alison F. Banwell, Ian C. Willis, Grant J. Macdonald, Becky Goodsell, Douglas R. MacAyeal: Direct measurements of ice-shelf flexure caused by surface meltwater ponding and drainage. In: Nature Communications. 10, 2019, doi : 10.1038 / s41467-019-08522-5 .