23900484

3rd Hour
Mrs. Bammel

ADI Lab Investigation Report - Glaciers

Section 1: Introduction and Guiding Question

For our project, my group and I created and conducted an experiment that would
answer the guiding question, How do climate conditions affect the size of a glacier?
Our goal was to find out what happens to the size of a glacier as the temperature is
increased. To begin, a glacier is a large, moving mass of ice that forms near high,
mountainous elevations and Earths poles. They occupy about 10% of the Earths
surface and have gradually decreased over the past years. Glaciers form when the
fallen snow that has not melted gradually builds up in an area called a snowfield which
causes the thickness of the snow to increase over the years. The pressure of the weight
of the top layers compresses the glacier which makes the snow recrystallize into ice.
Glaciers develop in any location under the right conditions and can be put into two
groups, valley glaciers and continental glaciers. Valley glaciers are glaciers that form in
valleys in high, mountainous areas. Continental glaciers are glaciers that cover broad,
continent-sized areas.

Section 2: Method
The experiment that my group and I conducted was designed to test what happens to
the length and depth of a glacier as the temperature is gradually increased. We kept the
average snowfall at 2.5ft because it was the middle amount since the scale ranged from
0 to 5ft, and changed the temperature to five different points; 55.4 oF, 58oF, 61.9oF, 65oF,
and 65.7oF. We chose these points because they include the highest and lowest values

on the scale, along with other data amounts in between that we felt would showcase our
data well. We waited until the glacier came to a complete halt and stopped moving to
record the length and depth at the line of equilibrium. The data that was collected was
put into a table in which it showed the length and depth of the glacier corresponding to
the temperature. When we put our observations into the table, we analyzed it by looking
for a trend or pattern within the temperatures and overall in the change in the glacier.
We came to the conclusion that as the temperature increases, depth and length
decrease.

Section 3: The Argument

I believe that as temperature increases, the depth and the length of the glacier
decrease. My group and I recorded our evidence in the form of a table seen on the
following page. In our table, the temperature begins at 55.4 oF, the coolest temperature
on the scale, and has a depth of 1,348.9ft and a length of 183,268 ft. When the
temperature is increased to 58oF, the depth was recorded to be 1,273.4ft and the length
was 163,189ft. As the temperature continues to rise, the depth and length continue to
decrease. When the temperature was at 65.7oF, the warmest temperature on the scale,
the depth was 186.1ft and the length was 4,462ft. Because the temperature became
warmer, the corresponding depth and length gradually decreased. This causes the
glacier to shrink to a smaller size because the increase in temperature causes the snow
to melt, which doesnt allow the glacier to compress into ice and therefore melts the
already available ice into water, declining the measured depth and length. Due to global
warming, temperatures all around the world have drastically increased. The fallen snow
that makes up glaciers freezes into thick ice under the right conditions, such as cold
temperatures. When global warming (the rise in temperatures) occurs, the snow cant
harden into ice and form a glacier and instead melts. This causes the size of the glacier
to overall decrease.

Temperature

Depth

Length

55.4oF

1,348.9ft

183,268ft

58oF

1,273.4ft

163,189ft

61.9oF

1,119.5ft

126,608ft

65oF

766.9ft

57,710.9ft

65.7oF

186.1ft

4,462ft