noun
definition
A glacial period (colloquially known as an ice age).
synonyms
adjective
definition
Of, or relating to glaciers.
example
Wang Shijin is a glacier expert and director of the Yulong Snow Mountain Glacial and Environmental Observation Research Station.
definition
Very slow.
definition
Cold and icy.
example
After the rain and frost, the pavements were glacial.
definition
Having the appearance of ice.
example
On cold days, glacial acetic acid will freeze in the bottle.
definition
Cool and unfriendly.
example
He gave me a glacial stare.
Examples of glacial in a Sentence
The " northern soils," which are glacial deposits more or less redistributed by water, are much less fertile as a rule, and consist of all possible varieties from a tough boulder clay to loose sand.
Slates and fine-grained sandstones appear here freely through the glacial drift.
Across it, at its head, are the glacial passes which lead to the foot of the Baroghil.
The glacial era has left abundant evidences in the topography of the state.
In some of the larger valleys there are glacial terraces.
Thus the soil of almost the entire state has been derived by glacial action.
There are large deposits of glacial and residual clays and clay shales throughout the state.
Fertile soil in New Hampshire is confined largely to the bottom-lands of the Merrimac and Connecticut rivers, where on deposits of glacial drift, which are generally quite deep in the southern half of the state, there is considerable alluvium.
It is presumed that in the Glacial epoch the genus was exterminated except in the areas in western North America where it still persists.
Glacial action complicated the work of the latest cycle in the northern part of the system.
The basins have been variously ascribed to glacial erosion, to obstruction of normal outlet valleys by barriers of glacial drift, and to crustal warping in connection with or independent of the presence of the glacial sheet.
Although there is no direct evidence of glacial erosion, the area would have been covered during the Ice Age.
The last glacial reached its maximum at about 22,000 yr BP.
Esker A ridge of sediment (often winding) made up of sand and gravel deposited by glacial meltwater.
Sea Rush near the pile of glacial moraine which guarded the second area of marsh behind.
Glacial retreat moraines are in evidence at Gunnerside Bridge, Lower Whita Bridge, below Grinton Bridge and by Ellerton Abbey.
Nepal flood Moving images of a glacial lake outburst flood in Nepal.
The sands and gravels of the alluvial plain originated as glacial outwash from the melting glaciers inland.
Has funicular access to a glacial bowl with wide open cruising pistes.
A glacial recession has occurred during the 20 th century.
Pollan is a fish unique in Western Europe being a glacial relict from the last ice age.
In fact, millions of people living in Asia and South America rely on glacial runoff for drinking water and irrigation.
The remainder of the week was spent with Prof. Ed Derbyshire, looking at various aspects of glacial sedimentology.
From the top of Baildon Moor we had a fine panorama of the surrounding district, including four parallel glacial spillways to the west.
The effect of Quinag on ice flow can be checked by measuring glacial striae on the quartzites.
Topsoil stripping revealed a similar surface to that on Area 1. At the southern end there was an orange brown subsoil overlying glacial gravel.
Much of the karst surface topography has been obscured by thick layers of glacial till.
However, during these glacial periods it is likely that much of the County resembled the tundra of today's arctic provinces.
The repetition of the same species in the arctic regions and in the high mountains of the North Temperate region is generally attributed to the exchange which took place during the glacial period.
The south coast is flat next the sea; but immediately underneath Vatnajokull there is a strip of gravel and sand, brought down and deposited by the glacial streams. The largest low-lying plain of Iceland, lying between Myrdalsjokull and Reykjanes, has an area of about 1550 sq.
West of the Missouri river the sheet of glacial drift is absent, and the lands everywhere show evidence of extensive stream erosion.
Glacial gravels are well seen near Antrim town, and as drumlins between Ballymena and Ballycastle.
The surface is the typical glacial topography, with a few low, rocky hills, less than loo ft.
The morainic belts are arranged in groups of concentric loops, convex southward, because the ice sheets advanced in lobes along the lowlands of the Great Lakes; neighboring morainic loops join each other in re-entrants (north-pointing cusps), where two adjacent glacial lobes came together and formed their moraines in largest volume.
The discovery of this significant looped arrangement of the morainic belts is the greatest advance in interpretation of glacial phenomena since the first suggestion of a glacial period; it is also the strongest proof that the ice here concerned was a continuous sheet of creeping land ice, and not a discontinuous series of floating icebergs, as had been supposed.
The moraines are of too small relief to be shown on any maps but those of the largest scale; yet small as they are, they are the chief relief of the prairie states, and, in association with the nearly imperceptible slopes of the till plains, they determine the course of many streams and rivers, which as a whole are consequent upon the surface form of the glacial deposits.
The complexity of the glacial period and its subdivision into several glacial epochs, separated by interglacial epochs of considerable length (certainly longer than the postglacial epoch) has a structural consequence in the superposition of successive till sheets, alternating with non-glacial deposits, and also a physiographic consequence in the very different amount of normal postglacial erosion suffered by the different parts of the glacial deposits.
When the ice of the last glacial epoch had retreated so far that Its front lay on a northward slope, belonging to the drainage area of the Great Lakes, bodies of water accumulated in front of the ice margin, forming glacio-marginal lakes.
The present site of Chicago was determined by an Indian portage or carry across the low divide between Lake Michigan and the headwaters of the Illinois river; and this divide lies on the floor of the former outlet channel of the glacial Lake Michigan.
Corresponding outlets are known for the glacial lakes Erie, Huron and Superior, and for a very large sheet of water, named Lake Agassiz, which once overspread a broad till plain in northern Minnesota and North Dakota.
The outlet of this glacial lake, called river Warren, eroded a large channel in which the Minnesota river, of to-day is an evident misfit.
Many additional features associated with the glacial period might be described, but space can be given to four only.
The best explanation suggested for bess is that, during certain phases of the glacial period, it was carried as dust by the winds from the flood plains of aggrading rivers, and slowly deposited on the neighboring grass-covered plains.
South-western Wisconsin and parts of the adjacent states of Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota are known as the driftless area, because, although bordered by drift sheets and moraines, it is free from glacial deposits.
The course of the upper Mississippi river is largely consequent i upon glacial deposits.
Its sources are in the morainic lakes in northern Minnesota; Lake Itasca being only one of many glacial lakes which supply the headwater branches of the great river.
Hence even the father of waters, like so many other rivers in the Northern states, owes many of its features more or less directly to glacial action.
The treelessness of the prairies cannot be due to insufficient time for tree invasion since glacial evacuation; for forests cover the rocky uplands of Canada, which were occupied by ice for ages after the prairies were laid bare.
Nevertheless the mountains are of especial interest to the physiographer who wishes to make a comparative study of land forms as affected by normal and by glacial sculpture, in order to give due attention to process as well as to structure and stage in the analysis and description of mountain topography.
In this central region, however, it is only by way of exception that the cirques were so far enlarged by retrogressive glacial erosion as to sharpen the preglacial dome-like summits into acute peaks; and in no case did glacial action here extend down to the plains at the eastern base of the mountains; but the widened, trough-like glaciated valleys frequently descend to the level of the elevated intermont basins, where moraines were deployed forward on the basin floor.