Areas of study within glaciology include glacial history and the reconstruction of past glaciation patterns, effects of glaciers on climate and vice versa, the dynamics of ice movement, the contributions of glaciers to erosion, lifeforms that live in the ice, and so forth.
Unsurprisingly, glaciology is one of the key areas supported by polar research.
There are two general categories of glaciation which glaciologists distinguish: alpine glaciation, accumulations or "rivers of ice" confined to valleys; and continental glaciation, unrestricted accumulations which once covered much of the northern continents.
The word glacier is derived from the Latinglacies, meaning ice or frost.
External links
International Glaciological Society (http://www.igsoc.org/)
World Data Centre for Glaciology, Cambridge, UK (http://wdcgc.spri.cam.ac.uk/)
Glaciologists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute have used a laser measuring device to reveal that many Alaska glaciers are melting dramatically.
Geophysical Institute co-authors Echelmeyer, Arendt, Harrison, Lingle, Valentine and glaciologists Sandy Zirnheld and Reggie Muskett have calculated that Alaska glaciers are responsible for at least 9 percent of the global sea-level rise during the past century, and Alaska's glaciers raise the level of Earth's oceans by more than one-tenth of a millimeter each year.
He and the other glaciologists compared his measurements of glacier elevation with those on maps and found that about 85 percent of the Alaska glaciers they measured had lost vast portions of their mass between the 1950s and the 1990s.
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