What Are Glaciers? Where Do Glaciers Form?

Glaciers are huge masses of ice just like other mass of rock as it travel or move down hill. They showed evidence of being moved as they are huge masses of ice on land. Glaciers are basically divided into two main types on the basis of there shape and size. One is valley glaciers and other is continental glaciers.
A glaciers start with the winter snow fall, which even doesn't melt in summer .that snow or snowfall start converting into ice and it start flowing when it becomes thick enough. The first requirement for the formation of glaciers is low temperature, so that it remains in the ice form at least up to 1 year. These conditions are normally found in high altitudes and latitudes. The higher altitude areas are cold because at higher places distance between the sun ray and earth surface start increasing. So, high will be the altitude smaller amount of sunlight will travel to that point. That's why area of high altitudes is cold even in summers. Glaciers start melting as a result of high temperature. For the formation glaciers moisture and cold environment is also required. They most likely to be formed on the eastern slopes but on the western side has only small amount of snow and ice.

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A glacier is a large, slow moving river of ice, formed from compacted layers of snow, that slowly deforms and flows in response to gravity.

Glacier ice is the largest reservoir of fresh water of Earth, and second only to oceans as the largest reservoir of total water. Glaciers cover vast areas of polar regions but are restricted to the highest mountains in the tropics.

Elsewhere in the solar system, the vast polar ice caps of Mars rival those of the Earth. Geologic heatures created by glaciers include end, lateral, ground and medial maraines that form from glacially transported rocks and debris; U-shaped valleys and corries (cirques) at their heads, and the glacier fringe, which is the area where the glacier has recently melted into water.

The word glacier comes from French via the Vulgar Latin glacia, and ultimately from Latin glacies meaning ice.

The snow which forms temperate glaciers is subject to repeated freezing and thawing, which changes it into a form of granular ice called neve.

Under the pressure of the layers of ice and snow above it, this granular ice fuses into dinser firn. Over a period of years, layers for firn undergo further compaction and become glacial ice.

In addition, a few hours after deposition, snow will begin to undergo metamorphism because of the presence of temperature gradients and/or convex and concave surfaces within individual crystals (causing differential vapour pressure).

This causes the sublimation of ice from smaller crystals and the deposition of water vapour onto larger crystals, so many crystals becomem progressively more rounded over time.
Depending on the type of metamorphism, the snowpack may become stronger or weaker as a result. The distinctive blue tint of glacial ice is often wrongly attributed to Rayleigh scattering which is supposedly due to bubbles in the ice.

The blue color is actually created for the same reason that water is blue, that is, its slight absorption of red light die to an overtone of the infrared OH-stretching mode of the water molecule.

One of the most attractive features of a glacier is the calving that they do. When the ice meets the ocean or lake that it's flowing into the temperatures causes the ice to get fractures in it, and in turn gradually a large chunk of it breaks and falls into the water, creating a splash and waves that radiate away from the glacier.

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