Ice covering a costal strip of low-lying land backed by mountains; the surface of an ice piedmont slopes gently seawards and may be anything from 1 to 50 kilometers (0.6 to 31 miles) wide, fringing lo
ng stretches of coastline with ice cliffs; ice piedmonts frequently merge into ice shelves; a very narrow ice piedmont may be called an ice fringe.
Ice covering a coastal strip of low-lying land backed by mountains. The surface of an ice piedmont slopes gently seawards and may be anything from 1 to 50 km wide, fringing long stretches of coastline
with ice cliffs. Ice piedmonts frequently merge into ice shelves. A very narrow ice piedmont may be called an ice fringe (cf. Piedmont glacier).
A glacier covering a coastal strip of low-lying land backed by mountains, and sloping gently seaward over a distance up to 30km or more to terminate in ice cliffs or to merge with an ice shelf, cf. ic
e fringe.
Part of an ice stream extending upglacier from the grounding line and having a surface slope so small as to suggest that it is not far from the transition to being afloat. See flotation. The upglacier
limit of the ice plain may be marked by a measurable break of surface slope, or may be indistinct. Ice plains are documented from several of the ice streams of Antarctica.
The temperature at which a mixture of air-saturated pure water and pure ice may exist in equilibrium at a pressure of one standard atmosphere. The ice point is often used as one fiducial point (0C or
32F) in establishing a thermometric scale because it is reproduced relatively easily under laboratory conditions. The ice point is frequently called the freezing point, but the latter term should be reserved for the much broader reference to the solidification of any kind of liquid under various conditions.
The true freezing point of water; the temperature at which a mixture of air-saturated pure water and pure ice exist in equilibrium at a pressure of one standard atmosphere.
The approximate center of the most consolidated portion of the arctic pack ice, near 83 or 84N and 160W. This term was falling into disuse until its reintroduction with reference to antarctic Internat
ional Geophysical Year (IGY) activity. (Also called pole of inaccessibility.)
A fall of unbranched ice crystals, in the form of needles, columns or plates, often so tiny that they seem to be suspended in the air. These crystals may fall from a cloud or from a cloudless sky. The
y are visible mainly when they glitter in the sunshine (diamond dust); they may then produce a luminous pillar or other halo phenomena. This hydrometeor, which is frequent in polar regions, occurs at very low temperatures and in stable air masses.