How does climate change affect continental glaciers?
1 Answer
Generally speaking it causes them to melt.
Explanation:
I am working on the assumption the answer you are looking for is based on our current climate change and not climate change in general.
It makes sense that during a warming cycle that continental glaciers would melt, and we do see that in a lot of the world. There are, however, a few areas that glaciers have actually grown. This is because when we talk about global warming we are talking about averages. The average temperature is higher than before, but locally there will be some areas, especially at higher latitudes, where temperatures are lower.
At high latitude, the angle the sun strikes the Earth is much more shallow, so that if the air is slightly warmer than we have less cloud cover. The sun can then shine freely to the glacier but due to the angle of incident it will reflect most of it. Then due to the less cloud cover the reflected sunlight will escape. This is why when a lot of glaciers are melt there are a few in places like Greenland that are actually developing a little.
Keep in mind this has little to do with greenhouse effect. Greenhouse effect traps heat not light.
