Sentences with phrase «sheet accumulates snow»

The Greenland ice sheet accumulates snow in its northernmost area and in the central region at high elevations.

Not exact matches

At those times, snows from previous winters do not melt completely, eventually accumulating into miles - thick ice sheets.

They expected the detritus would be safely entombed in the ice sheet for tens of thousands of years, buried ever deeper under accumulating layers of snow and ice.

The size of the ice sheet depends on how much new snow accumulates and how much of the existing ice melts, she said.

The process of accumulating enough ice and snow to form continental ice sheets is slow, and it took about 100,000 years.

There is still some discussion about how exactly this starts and ends ice ages, but many studies suggest that the amount of summer sunshine on northern continents is crucial: if it drops below a critical value, snow from the past winter does not melt away in summer and an ice sheet starts to grow as more and more snow accumulates.

As long as an ice sheet accumulates the same mass of snow as it loses to the sea, it remains stable.

Ice sheets grow when snow accumulates and is compacted into ice.

The surface mass balance of the glacier is the difference of accumulating snow on the ice sheet (its income) and snow and ice losses from melting and calving (its expenditures).

An ice sheet is at equilibrium when the amount of accumulating snow is matched by the amount of ice lost in the ocean.

There is a difference between sea ice (floating and made in situ in the ocean) and the ice sheet (created by accumulating snow on the continent).