By the Sea: Maldives
Published: Jan 30, 2012
Photo: Dr S Srinivasan
Abstract: The Maldives with a population of 270,000 has been isolated from the outside world for much of its history. The affable people here have adapted to island life with the main source of nutrition being fish, coconut and imported rice.
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What is ...
A large depression produced by thawing of a huge area of very thick and exceedingly ice-rich permafrost. The sides of an alas are smooth and slippery, hence making navigation difficult. Found in both the Arctic and the Antarctic region.
German for ‘ice on top’, it is a sheet-like mass of layered ice that forms from successive flows of ground water during freezing temperature. Aufeis accumulates in the winters along stream and river valleys in Arctic and subarctic regions.
The crevasse usually formed where glaciers located in armchair like depressions - cirque, moves away from the head wall which may be the solid rock of a mountain slope or a stable glacier.
Alternate bands of light and dark on a glacier, usually found below steep narrow icefalls as the possible result of different flow and ablation rates between summer and winter. Not all icefalls however have band ogives below them.
A nunatak is an exposed, often rocky element of a ridge, mountain, or peak not covered with ice or snow within an ice field or glacier. Nunataks present readily identifiable landmark reference points in glaciers or ice caps and are often named.
An area of open water in pack or sea ice, polynyas may be kept open by constant winds or upwelling of water and so tend to recur in the same location year after year. They are particularly important for wildlife as they allow mammals such as whales and seals to have a breathing hole.
Paleoclimatology (also palaeoclimatology) is the study of changes in climate taken on the scale of the entire history of Earth. It uses a variety of proxy variables to obtain data previously preserved within (e.g.) rocks, sediments, ice sheets, tree rings, corals, shells and microfossils.
The Bellingshausen Sea is an area along the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula, west of Alexander Island, east of Cape Flying Fish on Thurston Island, and south of Peter Island. Bellingshausen Sea has an area of 487,000 km2 and reaches a maximum depth of 4,470 meters.
Permafrost is the soil which has been at or below 0°C for more than two years. Ice is not always present, as may be in the case of nonporous bedrock, but it frequently occurs and it may be in amounts exceeding the potential hydraulic saturation of the ground material.
Arctic haze is the phenomenon of a visible reddish-brown haze in the atmosphere at high latitudes in the Arctic due to air pollution. Due to limited amounts of snow, rain, or turbulent air to displace pollutants from the polar air mass in spring, Arctic haze can linger for more than a month in the northern atmosphere.
Irregular ridges of snow which lie parallel to the direction of the wind. Sastrugi can make travel very awkward. Rarely higher than a foot, they can be quite soft or as hard as ice.
Thick ridges that become grounded in the winter and become part of the fast ice zone. While the rest of the fast ice melts in the summer, stamukhi remains intact throughout the summer attached to the ocean floor.
Maitri is India’s second permanent research station in Antarctica. It was built and finished in 1989, shortly before the first station Dakshin Gangotri was buried in ice and abandoned in 1990-91. Maitri is situated on the rocky mountainous region called the Schirmacher Oasis.