glacier

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  TRACKS OF THE GLACIER
• WordNet 3.6
  • n glacier a slowly moving mass of ice
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• • n Glacier An immense field or stream of ice, formed in the region of perpetual snow, and moving slowly down a mountain slope or valley, as in the Alps, or over an extended area, as in Greenland.☞ The mass of compacted snow forming the upper part of a glacier is called the firn, or névé; the glacier proper consist of solid ice, deeply crevassed where broken up by irregularities in the slope or direction of its path. A glacier usually carries with it accumulations of stones and dirt called moraines, which are designated, according to their position, as lateral medial, or terminalsee Moraine). The common rate of flow of the Alpine glaciers is from ten to twenty inches per day in summer, and about half that in winter.
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• • n glacier The form in which the snow, falling on the higher parts of those mountain-ranges which are above the snow-line, finds its way down into the valleys. Under suitable climatic conditions, the snow which thus falls does not all disappear by evaporation, or melt at once and run off in the form of water, but becomes gradually converted into ice, and moves slowly down the mountain-slope in the depressions or valleys until it reaches a point where the mean temperature has so far risen that evaporation and melting counterbalance the supply from above. Here the glacier ends, and a stream of water begins, which is often the head of some large river, as the Gangootri glacier of the Ganges, or the Rhone glacier of the river of that name. The snow of the glacier is not transformed into ice at once, but passes through the intermediate stage of névé (German firn). (See firn.) Several subordinate glaciers often combine to form one large one, a result dependent on the topography of that part of the mountain-range in which the glacier takes its rise. The great glaciers, those of the first order, as the Gorner and the Aletsch glaciers in Switzerland, begin in large amphitheaters (cirques), where a considerable number of affluents are forced by the topographical conditions to unite in forming one great glacier. The ice-stream of the longest glacier in the Swiss Alps, the Gross Aletsch, was in 1880 10¼ miles in length; some in the Himalayas are four times as long. From the cliffs which overhang the glacier is always being detached, by frost and aërial erosion, more or less detritus, which is carried downward on the ice as it moves, and finally dumped at the terminus of the ice-mass. Such accumulations of debris are called moraines, and are very conspicuous on many glaciers. (See moraine.) The former greater extension of glaciers over certain regions has been, and still is, a subject of much discussion among geologists. See the glacial epoch (under glacial) and ice.—
  • n glacier A vessel for holding ice and cooling wine.
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• • n Glacier glā′shēr or glas′i-ėr a field or, more properly, a slowly moving river of ice, such as is found in the hollows and on the slopes of lofty mountains.
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