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Glaciers And Climate Change

Decent Essays

Expository Essay: Glaciers And Climate Change

A glacier is a large mass of snow and ice that has accumulated over many years and is present year-round Glaciers begin to form when snow remains in the same area year-round, where enough snow accumulates to transform into ice. Most of the world's glacial ice is found in Antarctica and Greenland, but glaciers are found on nearly every continent, even Africa. In the United States, glaciers can be found in the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, and throughout Alaska. A glacier flows naturally like a river, only much more slowly. At higher elevations, glaciers accumulate snow, which eventually becomes compressed into ice. At lower elevations, the river of ice naturally loses mass because …show more content…

There are several type of glaciers which are Mountain , Valley Piedmont ,Tidewater , Cirque , Rock glaciers and so on .Glaciers are the visible evidence of climate change in the world and directly related to climate. Climate change is a modification of long-term climate parameters in a region of the globe or on the Earth in its entirety. The notion of climate change is now associated with global warming that began around the world a few decades ago. Its length changes in response to climate change with time delay. Climate rules the glacier behavior and any change that happens in climate is reflected in the glacier. Glacier responds to this change in terms of mass balance, runoff, melting and length. This paper studies what happened in regards of climate change, the driving forces of this change and the effects of climate change on glaciers and it will be based on the video and others links . First , the climate change of the planet is now a certainty. Many observations attest to the rise of atmospheric and atmospheric oceans, widespread melting of snow and ice, and of sea-level rise. In particular, eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) are among the twelve warmest years never been recorded since the …show more content…

And the great glacier of Columbia iAlaska has retreated twelve kilometers in the last twenty years. In a few decades, there will be no more glaciers left in the American Glacier National Park.Based on the video , Alaska is a good illustration of climate change . For example, People of Alaska undergo warming before everyone else. The glaciers of Alaska have lost more than 3.5 million tons of water since 1959, which represents one billion Olympic swimming pools. The Alaska Muir Glacier, like many Alaska glaciers, has retreated and dramatically reduced since the 19th century. This pair of images in the video shows the continuous retreat of the glacier and thinning it in the second half of the 20th century. From 1941 to 2004, the front of the glacier retreated about seven miles while its thickness decreased by more than 2,625 feet, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Nevertheless, satellites give us a better understanding of how the ice cover of the Earth has changed in the recent past. The satellite era, from the 1970s onwards, has allowed us to see the acceleration of ice changes in places like Alaska, Greenland and Antarctica, where the loss of land ice contributes to the rise Of the sea

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