GC: n

CT: Where forest cover is present, it alters snow accumulation and ablation processes, mostly by intercepting snowfall and modifying the surface micrometeorology (incoming radiation and wind speed), respectively.

S: WATER – http://www.colorado.edu/geography/geomorph/geog_5241_f10/andreadis_09.pdf (last access: 11 July 2014)

N: 1. Early 15th century, from Latin ablationem (nominative ablatio), “a taking away,” noun of action from past participle stem of auferre “to carry away,” from ab– “off” (see ab-) + ferre (past participle latum; see oblate) “to bear.”
2. Ice sheets lose material by several processes, including surface melting, evaporation, wind erosion (deflation), iceberg calving, and the melting of the bottom surfaces of floating ice shelves by warmer seawater.
3. In Antarctica, calving of ice shelves and outlet glacier tongues clearly predominates among all the processes of ice loss, but calving is very episodic and cannot be measured accurately. The amount of surface melt and evaporation is small, amounting to about 22 centimetres of ice lost from a five-kilometre ring around half the continent. Wind erosion is difficult to evaluate but probably accounts for only a very small loss in the mass balance. The undersides of ice shelves near their outer margins are subject to melting by the ocean water. The rate of melting decreases inland, and at that point some freezing of seawater onto the base of the ice shelves must occur, but farther inland, near the grounding line, the tidal circulation of warm seawater may produce basal melting.

S: 1. OED – http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=ablation&searchmode=none (last access: 11 September 2014). 2 & 3. EncBrit (last access: 11 September 2014).

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S:

CR: albedo, solar radiation.