Glaciers and Ice Sheets

What is Glaciers and Ice Sheets?

Within Earth & Environmental Science, which covers our planet, its resources and ecosystems, and how people can protect the environment, this topic explains Glaciers and Ice Sheets. Earth and environment topics show how the planet’s systems shape landscapes, climate and life, with models that make these processes visible.

Check that you can explain Glaciers and Ice Sheets in your own words and give one example from everyday life. If you can do that, you have understood the core idea.

Understanding Glaciers and Ice Sheets helps you explain the environment around you and weigh up how people can protect it.

Glaciers and Ice Sheets in detail

Glaciers are large masses of ice that form where snow builds up over many years and compresses into ice, flowing slowly downhill under their own weight. Valley glaciers flow down mountains, while ice sheets, in Greenland and Antarctica, cover continents and hold about 99% of the world's glacier ice.

Glaciers erode the landscape, carving U-shaped valleys, corries, arêtes and fjords, and depositing moraines. They are sensitive indicators of climate and store fresh water that feeds rivers. Most glaciers are now retreating because of warming, contributing to sea level rise and threatening water supplies for millions, while ice cores give records of past climate.

How the interactive helps you understand Glaciers and Ice Sheets

Watch the Earth model in the interactive. Use any sliders or buttons it offers to change the values and see how the Earth model responds.

Before you change anything, predict the result. Then change one value at a time and check whether your prediction was right. This is a quick way to build a correct mental model of Glaciers and Ice Sheets.

Real-life uses and examples

• Link Glaciers and Ice Sheets to a real environmental problem and a possible solution.
• Use a diagram of Glaciers and Ice Sheets to describe the steps of a process in order.
• Discuss how human activity changes Glaciers and Ice Sheets, using a named example.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Presenting one cause as the only cause of an environmental change.
• Describing a process without the timescale it works over.
• Learning the definition without testing it. Use the quiz and the interactive to check that you can apply the idea.