Ice Caves
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Ice Caves
An ice cave is any type of natural cave (most commonly lava tubes or limestone caves) that contains significant amounts of perennial (year-round) ice. At least a portion of the cave must have a temperature below 0 °C (32 °F) all year round, and water must have traveled into the cave’s cold zone. Terminology This type of cave was first formally described by Englishman Edwin Swift Balch in 1900, who suggested the French term ''glacieres'' should be used for them, even though the term ''ice cave'' was then, as now, commonly used to refer to caves simply containing year-round ice. Among speleologists, ''ice cave'' is the proper English term. A cavity formed ''within'' ice (as in a glacier) is properly called a glacier cave. Types Ice caves occur as static ice caves, such as Durmitor Ice Cave, and dynamic or cyclical ice caves, such as Eisriesenwelt. Temperature mechanisms In most of the world, bedrock caves are thermally insulated from the surface and so common ...
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Glacier Cave
A glacier cave is a cave formed within the ice of a glacier. Glacier caves are often called ice caves, but the latter term is properly used to describe bedrock caves that contain year-round ice. Overview Most glacier caves are started by water running through or under the glacier. This water often originates on the glacier's surface through melting, entering the ice at a moulin and exiting at the glacier's snout at base level. Heat transfer from the water can cause sufficient melting to create an air-filled cavity, sometimes aided by solifluction. Air movement can then assist enlargement through melting in summer and sublimation in winter. Some glacier caves are formed by geothermal heat from volcanic vents or hotsprings beneath the ice. An extreme example is the Kverkfjöll glacier cave in the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland, measured in the 1980s at long with a vertical range of . Some glacier caves are relatively unstable due to melting and glacial motion, and are sub ...
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Dachstein Rieseneishöhle Parzifaldom 20210918
Hoher Dachstein () is a strongly karstic mountain in central Austria and the second-highest mountain in the Northern Limestone Alps. It is situated at the border of Upper Austria and Styria, and is the highest point in each of those states. Parts of the massif also lie in the state of Salzburg, leading to the mountain being referred to as the ''Drei-Länder-Berg'' ("three-state mountain"). The Dachstein massif covers an area of around with dozens of peaks above 2,500 m, the highest of which are in the southern and southwestern areas. The main summit of the Hoher Dachstein is at an elevation of . Seen from the north, the Dachstein massif is dominated by glaciers with rocky summits rising beyond them. By contrast, to the south, the mountain drops almost vertically to the valley floor. Geology The geology of the Dachstein massif is dominated by the ''Dachstein-Kalk'' Formation ("Dachstein limestone"), dating from Triassic times. In common with other karstic areas, the Dachs ...
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Permafrost
Permafrost is ground that continuously remains below 0 °C (32 °F) for two or more years, located on land or under the ocean. Most common in the Northern Hemisphere, around 15% of the Northern Hemisphere or 11% of the global surface is underlain by permafrost, with the total area of around 18 million km2. This includes substantial areas of Alaska, Greenland, Canada and Siberia. It can also be located on mountaintops in the Southern Hemisphere and beneath ice-free areas in the Antarctic. Permafrost does not have to be the first layer that is on the ground. It can be from an inch to several miles deep under the Earth's surface. It frequently occurs in ground ice, but it can also be present in non-porous bedrock. Permafrost is formed from ice holding various types of soil, sand, and rock in combination. Permafrost contains large amounts of biomass and decomposed biomass that has been stored as methane and carbon dioxide, making tundra soil a carbon sink. As global war ...
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Icicle
An icicle is a spike of ice formed when water falling from an object freezes. Formation and dynamics Icicles can form during bright, sunny, but subfreezing weather, when ice or snow melted by sunlight or some other heat source (such as a poorly insulated building), refreezes as it drips off under exposed conditions. Over time continued water runoff will cause the icicle to grow. Another set of conditions is during ice storms, when rain falling in air slightly below freezing slowly accumulates as numerous small icicles hanging from twigs, leaves, wires, etc. Thirdly, icicles can form wherever water seeps out of or drips off vertical surfaces such as road cuts or cliffs. Under some conditions these can slowly form the "frozen waterfalls" favored by ice climbers. Icicles form on surfaces which might have a smooth and straight, or irregular shape, which in turn influences the shape of an icicle. Another influence is melting water, which might flow toward the icicle in a s ...
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Glacier
A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its Ablation#Glaciology, ablation over many years, often Century, centuries. It acquires distinguishing features, such as Crevasse, crevasses and Serac, seracs, as it slowly flows and deforms under stresses induced by its weight. As it moves, it abrades rock and debris from its substrate to create landforms such as cirques, moraines, or fjords. Although a glacier may flow into a body of water, it forms only on land and is distinct from the much thinner sea ice and lake ice that form on the surface of bodies of water. On Earth, 99% of glacial ice is contained within vast ice sheets (also known as "continental glaciers") in the polar regions, but glaciers may be found in mountain ranges on every continent other than the Australian mainland, including Oceania's high-latitude oceanic island countries such as New Zealand. Between lati ...
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Sublimation (chemistry)
Sublimation is the transition of a substance directly from the solid to the gas state, without passing through the liquid state. Sublimation is an endothermic process that occurs at temperatures and pressures below a substance's triple point in its phase diagram, which corresponds to the lowest pressure at which the substance can exist as a liquid. The reverse process of sublimation is deposition or desublimation, in which a substance passes directly from a gas to a solid phase. Sublimation has also been used as a generic term to describe a solid-to-gas transition (sublimation) followed by a gas-to-solid transition ( deposition). While vaporization from liquid to gas occurs as evaporation from the surface if it occurs below the boiling point of the liquid, and as boiling with formation of bubbles in the interior of the liquid if it occurs at the boiling point, there is no such distinction for the solid-to-gas transition which always occurs as sublimation from the surface. At ...
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Plasticity (physics)
In physics and materials science, plasticity, also known as plastic deformation, is the ability of a solid material to undergo permanent Deformation (engineering), deformation, a non-reversible change of shape in response to applied forces. For example, a solid piece of metal being bent or pounded into a new shape displays plasticity as permanent changes occur within the material itself. In engineering, the transition from Elasticity (physics), elastic behavior to plastic behavior is known as Yield (engineering), yielding. Plastic deformation is observed in most materials, particularly metals, soils, Rock (geology), rocks, concrete, and foams. However, the physical mechanisms that cause plastic deformation can vary widely. At a crystalline scale, plasticity in metals is usually a consequence of dislocations. Such defects are relatively rare in most crystalline materials, but are numerous in some and part of their crystal structure; in such cases, plastic crystallinity can res ...
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Evaporative Cooling
An evaporative cooler (also known as evaporative air conditioner, swamp cooler, swamp box, desert cooler and wet air cooler) is a device that cools air through the evaporation of water. Evaporative cooling differs from other air conditioning systems, which use vapor-compression or absorption refrigeration cycles. Evaporative cooling exploits the fact that water will absorb a relatively large amount of heat in order to evaporate (that is, it has a large enthalpy of vaporization). The temperature of dry air can be dropped significantly through the phase transition of liquid water to water vapor (evaporation). This can cool air using much less energy than refrigeration. In extremely dry climates, evaporative cooling of air has the added benefit of conditioning the air with more moisture for the comfort of building occupants. The cooling potential for evaporative cooling is dependent on the wet-bulb depression, the difference between dry-bulb temperature and wet-bulb temperature ...
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Condensation
Condensation is the change of the state of matter from the gas phase into the liquid phase, and is the reverse of vaporization. The word most often refers to the water cycle. It can also be defined as the change in the state of water vapor to liquid water when in contact with a liquid or solid surface or cloud condensation nuclei within the atmosphere. When the transition happens from the gaseous phase into the solid phase directly, the change is called deposition. Initiation Condensation is initiated by the formation of atomic/molecular clusters of that species within its gaseous volume—like rain drop or snow flake formation within clouds—or at the contact between such gaseous phase and a liquid or solid surface. In clouds, this can be catalyzed by water-nucleating proteins, produced by atmospheric microbes, which are capable of binding gaseous or liquid water molecules. Reversibility scenarios A few distinct reversibility scenarios emerge here with respect to the n ...
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Evaporation
Evaporation is a type of vaporization that occurs on the surface of a liquid as it changes into the gas phase. High concentration of the evaporating substance in the surrounding gas significantly slows down evaporation, such as when humidity affects rate of evaporation of water. When the molecules of the liquid collide, they transfer energy to each other based on how they collide. When a molecule near the surface absorbs enough energy to overcome the vapor pressure, it will escape and enter the surrounding air as a gas. When evaporation occurs, the energy removed from the vaporized liquid will reduce the temperature of the liquid, resulting in evaporative cooling. On average, only a fraction of the molecules in a liquid have enough heat energy to escape from the liquid. The evaporation will continue until an equilibrium is reached when the evaporation of the liquid is equal to its condensation. In an enclosed environment, a liquid will evaporate until the surrounding air is ...
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Latent Heat
Latent heat (also known as latent energy or heat of transformation) is energy released or absorbed, by a body or a thermodynamic system, during a constant-temperature process — usually a first-order phase transition. Latent heat can be understood as energy in hidden form which is supplied or extracted to change the state of a substance without changing its temperature. Examples are latent heat of fusion and latent heat of vaporization involved in phase changes, i.e. a substance condensing or vaporizing at a specified temperature and pressure. The term was introduced around 1762 by Scottish chemist Joseph Black. It is derived from the Latin ''latere'' (''to lie hidden''). Black used the term in the context of calorimetry where a heat transfer caused a volume change in a body while its temperature was constant. In contrast to latent heat, sensible heat is energy transferred as heat, with a resultant temperature change in a body. Usage The terms ″sensible heat″ and ″laten ...
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