glaciology

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The study of ice and its effect on the landscape, especially the study of glaciers.

   “From this high position in latitude, explorations (furthered for a time by the effective aid of their Esquimaux dogs) were perseveringly made, and rewarded by results of the most interesting nature in geography, hydrography, and glaciology.”

   “Until now, aerial photography had been used in glaciology only for mapping the glacier surface and the surface velocity field; other, much more expensive, methods have been used to determine the bed and mass balance.”

   “This general approach offers the possibility of reconstructing past glaciologies for a situation where (1) the outline of the glacier can be reconstructed, (2) the ELA [equilibrium line altitude] can be determined, (3) the area under the ELA can be measured, and (4) there is some information on the winter balance and ablation gradient of the former glacier.”

   “In order to understand and predict the actions of water in the climate system it is useful to think of the water as being part of a distinct system, sometimes called the hydrological cycle[…]. A complete understanding of this system would […] require excursions into geomorphology, pedology, botany, glaciology, oceanography and, if human structures are included as part of the Earth's surface, civil engineering.”

   “I was leafing through deep-core glaciology results from Greenland's mid-rift when the telephone rang. It droned on forever before it finally quit and I could concentrate again. The Greenland data confirmed all the other studies: the earth suffered ninety thousand years of ice-age weather, then ten thousand years of warm, in a loop that repeated over and over, as far back as there was ice to record it.”