Hello ELI5!
Basically, the question is what I wrote in the title. Many major rivers’ sources are glaciers somewhere high up in the mountains. My understanding is that glaciers slowly melt to form said rivers (along with rainwater etc.). This being said, do these glaciers melt all year long (my research didn’t help, also because “glaciers” and “melting” lead to completely different results as you may imagine)? If that is the case, why does this happen even in colder seasons when I suppose temperature would be below 0°C?
Thank you!
In: Planetary Science
Well Glaciers are usually formed in high mountains from snow that doesn’t melt. It gets replenished at the top and then at the bottom, the temperature warms up in the summer and it melts where the temperature is above freezing. In the winter it replenishes at the top with snow like a conveyor belt. In colder places such as far north, they don’t melt as much but falling into warmer sea water contributes to that. Other factors are also at play such as friction and geothermal activity but those aren’t usually as big of an impact.
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