The net growth of a glacier as accumulation of snow and ice at its upper reaches outpaces melting at its margin, pushing its front further down-valley over time. Periods of widespread glacial advance, such as the Little Ice Age, are used by glaciologists to reconstruct past climate fluctuations.
Facts
Partially Attested
TimescaleCenturies-long cycles of advance and retreat (tidewater glaciers) 1 The source states a centuries-long advance and retreat cycle for tidewater glaciers only; other glaciers respond on other timescales not given here. Timescale (category)w-axisfix-rest-0926: category derived from this entity's own free-text property; the source property's own status (partially-attested) carries whatever is unresolved, this derived category fact makes no further claim beyond bucketing that same text. Process Type Connections
Sources
1. Glacier, Wikipedia
Structure section, mid-twentieth-century cooling sentence
A slight cooling led to the advance of many alpine glaciers between 1950 and 1985.
Types section, Classification by size, shape and behavior, tidewater glaciers
Tidewater glaciers undergo centuries-long cycles of advance and retreat that are much less affected by climate change than other glaciers.
View the SourceReader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.