How are glaciers formed? What makes them move?

-- Joseph Lewis Cook (Darkchild82@excite.com), May 04, 2001

Answers

The answer to your question can be found on pages 330-335 in the textbook. There are two things that make glaciers form: low teperatures and adedquate snowfall. The temperature needs to be cool enough, so that snowfall does not have an opportunity to melt. Most glaciers form in high elvations due to this. A high moisture level needs to exist as well. Just because a place is cold, it doesnt mean that there will be snow. Glaciers begin to form with large amounts of snow not melting in the summer. The snow turns to ice and when it gets thick enough, it begins to flow. When the ice builds up to a couple meters thick, which is sufficent to make gravity overcome the ice's resistance to movement, it starts to move. I hope this helped!

-- Megan O'Rourke (morourke@oswego.edu), May 04, 2001.

Glaciers form when they the climate cools and when the snow which falls in winter does not melt completely in the summer. Over a long period of years, the snow becomes larger and thicker and wider. The weight of the snow on the top causes the snow under to turn into ice. There are two kinds of glaciers. They are the continental and alphine. The continental glacier moves under its own weight while the alphine glacier moves from a high elevation to a low elevation under the force of gravity

-- Michael Creppy (mcreppy@yahoo.co.uk), March 25, 2003.