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From
snow to ice
Snow crystals are stares out of water, with symmetry of six arms.
When the
snow has lied on the ground for a while, the snow flakes has transformed into
small ice particles. This transformation happens when the outer part of arms
melts (or evaporates) away, and the small drops of water freezes again in the
centre of the crystal. The speed of this process varies from glacier to glacier.
In countries where the change between melt and freeze weather, the
transformation happens quite fast during the winter. On Greenland or Arctic it
can take up to 50 years or more, because melt weather rarely appears. These ice
particles or “firn” as it’s called as well becomes to glaciers when pressed
together of new amounts of snow on the top. This happens when the ice particles
melts a little where they touch each other. The melt water runs into crakes and
freezes all over again to form bigger ice crystals that becomes glaciers at
last. The transformation from ice particles to glacier takes a few years, in a
Island climate, and up to thousands of years in central Antarctic.
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