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How do glaciers move uphill?

 Glaciers flow across landscapes carrying boulders and debris e.t.c. Until recently I always assumed they travelled downhill, but I hear they can carry boulders uphill. How is this gravity defying feat possible?

Ian Jones, Solihull, UK

 

 

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Last edited on: 2011-01-26 14:53:21

Categories: Planet Earth.

Tags: flow, gravity, Icecaps, glaciers.

 

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petethebloke says:

They are pushed. The motive force for a glacier is gravity, so they only go uphill if they are pushed from behind by more ice coming downhill.

If you've ever tried to stop and look around you while you're in a big rush-hour crowd (e.g. on an underground railway platform) then you'll know the feeling.

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Tags: flow, gravity, Icecaps, glaciers.

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posted on 2011-01-25 14:24:42 | Report abuse


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Jon-Richfield says:

Glaciers are water, a bit frozen, but water. Like most other water and some cars and people, such as amateur or professional politicians, they only move uphill if pushed or lifted, and as a rule flow dowhill only. You might wonder in that case, how they get uphill to flow down from, and they do it the same way as most other water; the sun lifts them by turning them into water vapour, mostly by heating water, mainly seawater, so that it evaporates and reaches the heights as snow.

If you or your teacher do not regard this as "glaciers moving uphill" then you are left with very little uphill movement of glaciers, because glaciers do very little wicking. The commonest example is when a glacier moves steeply downhill and reaches a hollow that it can only get out of  by moving up the opposite slope. If the pressure from the ice descending behind the hollow is great enough, it will force the lower ice up the slope.One sometimes sees this in liquid water that reaches a sort of concrete ski-jump at the outlet of a large dam, only faster.

The force on the floor and further wall of the hollow is very great of course, so such a J-shaped path does not last very long in glacial terms. The rock soon gets gouged out, leaving a descending channel. One sometimes finds such channels through transverse ridges on mountainsides where once glaciers had passed. One knows that they were glaciers, because for one thing, water would not have followed such a path, let alone smoothed and scraped it in such a way.

In spite of what they tell you in holy books, such as the papers of certain research workers, or prophets, glaciers never were eternal, not in the past, and not yet.

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Tags: flow, gravity, Icecaps, glaciers.

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posted on 2011-01-25 14:32:19 | Report abuse


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Jon-Richfield says:

I did it again, didn't I? I answered your question without reading it properly.Oh well, at least that made for a shorter answer.

The point about finding rocks up hillsides sometimes may be tricky though; all sorts of things can happen that might mislead non-geologists (but not geologists themselves; geologists are too clever!)

Remember that in the past there were some seriously thick glacial sheets. Just like modern Antarctica and Greenland, only more so. A glacier could carry a lot of rocky material from a high peak and deposit it on a hillside high above a later glacier, without ever having gone uphill much.

Also, where there used to be really opressive ice sheets, the ground sinks until a few km of overlying ice depart. Then the ground suddenly rebounds for a few thousand years, such as currently is happening in Finland for example. The rebound is not necessarily uniform of course, so you can find rocks, glacial or otherwise, unexpectedly high up places that once were far lower.

 

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posted on 2011-01-26 17:30:15 | Report abuse

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petethebloke says:

>I answered your question without reading it properly.<

No Jon, it's another moving target, otherwise known as the endlessly editable enquiry.

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Tags: flow, gravity, Icecaps, glaciers.

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posted on 2011-01-26 18:11:27 | Report abuse

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Jon-Richfield says:

He does spot well, doesn't he? He must be hell to live with, but he is great for rescuing my ego when I make booboos like that.

 

Anyway, not a bad question. It is as well to remind people now and then that many processes in this world are a great deal more complex than one might think at blush, and that simplistic assumptions lead to wrong, often nonsensical, conclusions. (I could show you some scars...)

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Tags: flow, gravity, Icecaps, glaciers.

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posted on 2011-01-27 11:37:24 | Report abuse


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