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Friday 21 August 2020

Glacier porn -- NASA / Ice Bridge images



This is somewhere in Antarctica.  Classic extending flow in a glacier flowing at a steady pace, probably over a slightly convex slope.  The ice is under tension, and the pattern of regular crevasses is perpendicular to the direction of flow.




This one is from Alaska, I think.  A glacier with two halves -- the right hand ice stream is active, with relatively clean ice.  But the left hand segment is filled with debris and is decaying rapidly. There is a vast area of dead-ice wastage, and from the wavy pattern in the ice it appears that this segment has been subject to surging behaviour.



There are two big ice discharge routes here, on either side of this spectacular ridge.  There is at least one classic "arete" and the end product, after more glaciation, would be the horns or tinds that we see in many areas of long-continued glaciation.  This photo is, I think, from west Greenland.

NASA adds new images to its "Ice Bridge" pages all the time.  This is a recent selection from Antarctica, Greenland and Alaska

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/icebridge/image-gallery/index.html

2 comments:

Tom Stephenson said...

Frigid porn. Strange concept.

BRIAN JOHN said...

Ah, we deal with strange concepts all the time on this blog........