The Arctic is a strange and unusual place where nature still rules with and icy fist. In the land of the "high noon moon", the extreme cold has a strange effect on the environment, the people, and even everyday objects that we take for granted act different. Ice rules the land and shapes it to it's will. Layers of cold air change a normal scene into a wonderland of color and mystery. Normal, everyday items take on unusual characteristics in the sub-zero climate.
Ice wedges are structures where water has filled a crack or hole in the ground and froze over the winter. As the water freezes, it expands, making the crack bigger.
As the Wedge gets bigger, the whole it creates gets bigger and gets fovered with sediments and dirt.
On the surface, these ice wedges make the ground look like a patchwork of tiles, called polygons.
As the wedge gets deeper, it begins to melt and the water is then put under high pressure from the surrounding ice and dirt. This causes the water to be forced to the surface. As it moves twards the surface, the rock and soil above it are pushed out of the way, making pingos. These pingos are usually a small hill with a ring or rock and soil at the center. Many pingos, thought, can reach the size of a house or other large building.
When we think of a mirage, we usually think of a hot desert. In the arctic, though, the thermal layering of the cold air causes a similar effect. The effect is the opposite of a heat mirage though. Here, you can see that the mountain looks to be up-side down and mushroom shaped.
In the winter in the far north, the temperatures can get real low! This was the coldest temperature during the winter of '03-'04. The extreme cold allowed me to have a little fun and also caused a few problems.
On the morning that the temperature reached -54F, i decided to get up early and go into town to get a picture of a sign so all my friends would beleave me when i told them how cold it had been, when i started to move in the car, however, i noticed that the tired felt wierd as i drove. When the air in the tires is supercooled, he presure drops and the tires arreap to deflate, causing the bottoms to become flattened against the ground.
The Kettleby till is considered to be younger than the main till in the area because it may have been deposited by ice contact stratified drift. Ice contact stratified drift is normally deposited by meltwater in contact and or in close proximity to the ice sheet. Stratification and some sorting do takes place.
The freezing wind had chilled my hand to the bone. Even as I walked into my cabin, I shivered as if there was an invisible man shaking me. My ears, fingers, toes, and noes had turned into a pale purple, only starting to change color once I had made a fire and bundled myself in blankets like ancient Egyptians would do to their deceased Pharaohs. The once powdered snow on my head had solidified into a thin layer of ice. I changed out of the soaking wet clothes I was wearing and put on new dry ones. With each layer I became more excited to go out and start snowboarding. I headed for the lift with my board and my hand. Each step was a struggle with the thick suit of snow gear I was armored in.
It is an unquestioned fact that the climate is changing. There is abundant evidence that the world is becoming warmer and warmer. The temperature of the global land average temperature has increased by about 8.5 degrees centigrade from 1880 to 2012 (Karr, et al 406). The one or two degrees increase in temperature can cause dramatic and serious consequences to the earth as well as humans. More extreme weather occurs, such as heat waves and droughts. The Arctic Region is especially sensitive to global climate change. According to the data in recent decades, the temperature in the Arctic has increased by more than 2 degrees centigrade in the recent half century (Przybylak 316). Climate change has led to a series of environmental and ecological negative
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.
Even the Antarctic area has a couple of its own arctic regions. The climate of the tundra is characterized by harsh winters. The average temperature in the tundra area is about –27 degrees. But what is even worse is the long night. At night the lowest temperature recorded was –67.36 degrees.
The latter Alpine Tundra occurs at higher altitudes such as mountains whereas the first two are mainly based in plains and lowlands of some kind. The Low Arctic Tundra is the transmission point to the north. It is located above Canada's Boreal forests. and is followed by the High Arctic Tundra. The High Arctic Tundra is located farther north and encompasses the Arctic circle as well as most of the western Northwest Territories.
Pressure on the ice reduces the melting point. If pressure is afterward reduced, water will freeze again. This is called regelation. When a player skates across the ice, he or she applies a lot of pressure, leaving a trail of water where the blades were. Because the pressure leaves quickly, the water freezes to ice again (Haché 22). Nevertheless, pressure is not the only factor that causes this melting. Friction also takes part because it creates heat. With help...
Lake effect snow is a very interesting mesoscale convective phenomenon that occurs mostly during the heart of the winter season and adds greatly to the annual snowfall that areas
Frost line is underground water in soil is expected to freeze. The depth is mostly depends on the location of the weather conditions in the area. When frost heave it can damage the building by moving location of the foundations. Foundations are expected to build under the frost depth. The building code requires for the northern five feet.
captive by a sheath of frost, as were the glacial branches that scraped at my windows, begging to get in. It is indeed the coldest year I can remember, with winds like barbs that caught and pulled at my skin. People ceaselessly searched for warmth, but my family found that this year, the warmth was searching for us.
Surface Creep occurs when landing sand particles remove the larger and heavier particles, pushing them forward.
They are the earth’s crust; they move very slowly every year. As the tectonic plates slide over each other they cause earthquakes. Earthquakes produce various damaging effects this includes damage to structures of buildings, bridges and other standing formations which then...
The snow that was predicted to be several inches by the end of the weekend quickly piled up to around eight inches by that evening. At times, the snow was falling so heavily you could hardly see the streetlights that glistened like beacons in a sea of snow. With the landscape draped in white, the trees hangi...
A rift valley is formed on a divergent plate boundary. Divergence of plates happens because of slab pull (plates being pulled apart due to asthenospheric convection). When two plates are pulled apart, a ridge forms, and low-silica magma comes from inside the Earth to make a new crust (this is called plate formation). Rifts can occur at any location, of any elevation and on both types of plates. Rifts usually form vast valleys around the World (a commonly used example is the African Rift Valley, and it is still currently active). There are often large, incredibly deep lakes found in rift valleys (the deepest lake in the world, Lake Baikal is part of an active rift valley). Rift valleys have mostly shallow earthquakes, not devastating at all. Cracks in the valley with lava flowing out of them can also be found (volcanic fissures), along with cinder cone volcanoes. In Garibaldi Provincial Park, in British Columbia there is a cinder cone volcano, with cinder flats surrounding it, similar volcanoes can be found in rift