Now in its 4th Edition, this classic text covers the physical principles underlying the behavior of glaciers -- terrestrial ice bodies originating as accumulations of snow -- including mountain glaciers, small ice caps, ice sheets, and shelves. New material on climate change includes interactions between ice sheets and the ocean and atmosphere, paleoclimate reconstruction using ice cores, Quaternary climate history and the ice ages, and sea level rise. The book also explores topics of interest to geologists and geophysicists, including glacial connections to geomorphology, sedimentation, isostasy, and tectonics.

1.Introduction 2. Transformation of Snow to Ice 3. Grain-Scale Structures and Deformation of Ice 4. Mass Balance Processes: Overview and Regimes 5. Mass Balance Processes: Surface Ablation and Energy Budget; 6. Glacial Hydrology; 7. Basal Slip; 8. The Flow of Ice Masses; 9. Temperatures in Ice Masses; 10. Large-Scale Structures; 11. Reaction of Glaciers to Environmental Changes; 12. Glacier Surges; 13. Ice Sheets and the Earth System; 14. Ice, Sea Level, and Contemporary Climate Change; 15. Ice Core Studies.