THE BOOK
Some of the ideas discussed in this blog are published in my new book called "The Stonehenge Bluestones" -- available by post and through good bookshops everywhere. Bad bookshops might not have it....
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HERE

Saturday 16 October 2010

Oxford Gletscher



It's not often that one gets the chance to name a sizeable piece of Planet Earth, but was reminded that my colleagues and I once got to name a glacier in East Greenland.  It was previously unnamed, and we were the first to explore it.

This is another Google Earth image -- amazing quality.  Click on it to enlarge.  When we were there in 1962, the snout extended almost as far as the southern end of the trough -- there has been a phenomenal retreat since then.  This is a surging glacier, so behaviour is somewhat erratic, but the retreat is certainly down to global warming.

Look at the trimline running down the western side of the valley -- it shows with perfect clarity where the ice edge used to be, with moraine (greyish) below it and frost-shattered scree (brown) above it.  Here endeth the glaciology lesson for today.

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