Alaska Expedition Carried Out with the Co-Operation of the Washington Academy of Sciences Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 Excerpt: ...is not the same for all parts of the coastal belt; it must vary with local topographic characters. The glaciers of a low range may be more sensitive to variations of the snow-line than those of a high range. Glaciers facing the sea may be more sensitive to the variations of wastage dependent on the temperature of the incoming winds than are glaciers facing the interior. Glaciers fed from cirques, where snow is concentrated by wind and avalanche, may respond to variations of precipitation in a very different way from glaciers fed by open neve fields, where much of the annual snowfall is dissipated by dry evaporation. The laws of variation for high-grade glaciers may be quite different from those for glaciers of gentle slope. And so, when the ocean temperature approximates the value most favorable for the development of glaciers in the district as a whole, it will be too warm for the highest development of certain glaciers and glacier systems and too cool for others. And whenever such a condition obtains, a change in ocean temperature will cause some glaciers to enlarge and others to contract. It is of course impossible that one of the meteorologic conditions determining Alaskan glaciation should vary by itself while all other conditions remain constant, and the case assumed for the sake of illustration is therefore purely ideal. It has served its purpose if it has given plausibility to the suggestion that a change in some meteorologic factor or factors may result in simultaneous modifications of glaciers which differ not only in amount but in algebraic sign. Whatever may be the causes of the variations of glaciers, Alaska affords an inviting field for their investigation. Intermediate in accessibility between the glacial districts of Europe and Greenland, it...