Transformation Of Snow Essay

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The term snow is usually restricted to material that fall during precipitation in the form of small white ice crystals formed directly from the water vapour of the air at a temperature of less than 0°C and has not changed much since it fell. A fall of snow on a glacier surface is the first step in the formation of glacier ice, a process that is often long and complex (Cuffey and Paterson, 2010). The transformation of snow to ice occurs in the top layers of the glaciers and the time of the transformation depends mostly on the temperature. Snow develops into ice much more rapidly on Temperate glaciers, where periods of melting alternate with periods when wet snow refreezes, than in Polar glaciers, where the temperature remains well below the freezing point throughout the year. The density of new snow as it falls on glacier surface depends mostly on the weather conditions. In clam conditions, the density of new snow is ρs ≈ 50 – 70 kg m-3 (Table 1.1). If it is windy, there is breaking of the corners of snowflakes, and the density is more like ρs ≈ 100 kg m-3. After the snow has fallen on the surface, there are three processes that are all active together and work to transform the snow to ice. …show more content…

Since, a sphere has the smallest surface area for a given volume; this process makes the snow crystal round (Fig. 1.2 A). The higher the curvature is the less stable grain. In this process, the larger grains grow but smaller ones disappear. When these processes have acted on the snowpack, the grains are mostly sphere of nearly equal size, and the density is ρs ≈ 400 – 830 kg m-3 (Table 1.1). This stage of material refers to the intermediate stages of transformation as firn, wetted snow that has survived one summer without being transformed to

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