Mass-balance quantities at specific points on a glacier as defined in [IHD] (1970) relate either to annual maxima or minima in ice mass at that point (the stratigraphic system), or to values at the beginning and end of a hydrologic year (the annual or fixed-date system). Most quantities measured in the field relate to summer surfaces, which correspond to the annual minima at the measurement points. When stratigraphic system point values are integrated over a whole glacier, the result may be meaningless because annual maxima and minima and summer surfaces may form at different times at different places.

The combined system utilizes several kinds of data to derive meaningful area-average results that can be directly related to other hydrologic and meteorologic information. Measurements to summer surfaces at certain specific times, including the beginning and end of a hydrologic year, are added together with proper recognition of the types of material involved: old firn and ice, snow and superimposed ice of the year under study, new firn formed during that year, and late snow deposited toward the end of the year. Other “balance increment” terms relate values at the beginning and end of a hydrologic year to corresponding area-average balance minima. As a result, two types of “net balance” and many other terms are given precise meaning for a glacier as a whole. The scheme is sufficiently versatile to be used on any glacier, although the terms relating to summer surfaces are not defined on a glacier in which ablation or accumulation is continuous throughout a year.

The closure of water-filled glacier bore holes is considered and it is concluded that freezing due to conduction to the surrounding ice is usually the dominant process. On this basis englacial temperatures are obtained from a bore hole near the equilibrium line of Blue Glacier, U.S.A., where the ice thickness is about 125 m. Temperatures range from −0.03° C near the surface to −0.13° C at a depth of 105 m, with an estimated uncertainty of 0.02 or 0.03 deg. On the average the temperature is about 0.05 deg colder than the equilibrium temperature of ice and pure water. It is shown that at this temperature small amounts of water-soluble impurities play an important role in the thermal behavior of the ice. This leads to a new definition of temperate ice in terms of its effective heat capacity. The effective heat capacity of the Blue Glacier ice is apparently much larger than that of pure ice at the same temperature.

Ten-meter temperature measurements show that Athabasca Glacier is temperate in the accumulation area but not in the ablation area. An important factor in determining whether all the ice will reach a temperature of 0° C by the end of summer is how much of the layer of ice, cooled during the previous winter, is removed by ablation. However, calculations show that, even when allowance is made for ablation, not enough heat is conducted into the ice to bring it all to the melting point. As recent work suggests that ice at 0° C is permeable to water, latent heat released by refreezing of percolating melt water is considered; it appears likely that this process is an insignificant heat source in the ablation area. Available data show that the penetration of solar radiation can probably also be neglected. The question of how widespread temperate glaciers are is discussed; it is predicted that in most, if not all, glaciers there is a region below the equilibrium line where, because ablation is low, the glacier is not strictly temperate.

Analysis of glaciologial data indicates that grounding of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf and its conversion into an ice rise was primarily the result of local thickening of a floating ice shelf and the availability of a very gently sloping sea floor on which the ice shelf came to rest. Application of heat conduction theory to a series of thermal profiles through the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, and the Ward Hunt, Camp Creek and Cape Discovery ice rises shows that present heat flow in this area of northern Ellesmere Island is more than twice normal, and that the outer and intermediate parts of the Ward Hunt ice rise grounded 250–350 years ago, during a cycle of climatic deterioration. Development and localization of ice rises along northern Ellesmere Island are strongly influenced by topography, and all ice rises we have studied seem to have formed within the past 1 600 years, possibly with major growth in the interval from 1 000 to 150 years ago.

In 1970 water pressure was measured in several moulins on the White Glacier. Pressure variations in some moulin channels extended over the full measuring range of the instruments (0–1 and 0–2 bar above atmospheric pressure), even at depths of less than 50 m below the surface. Measurements at different depths showed that total pressure variations were sometimes greater than this. The pressure data are compared with variations in the surface velocity of the glacier.

The rate of snow accumulation at “Byrd” station, Antarctica, was measured by various methods. Surface measurements yield a mean accumulation of 117 kg m−2 year−1 for the time interval 1962–70, within a 10 m radius of the station. The distribution of fission products with depth indicates a rate of 67 ± 4 kg m−2 year−1 for the period 1955–68 and of 100 ± 10 kg m−2 year−1 for the period 1965–68. The 210Pb method yields a 60 year average of 110 ± 10 kg m−2 year−1.

The existing theory of kinematic waves on glaciers does not account for self-induced instability of the flow, or for surges which are not the result of external disturbances. Surges do however have much in common with kinematic waves. Unstable behaviour of glaciers can be explained by a straightforward modification of kinematic wave theory. In this modification the relation between the ice flow and the ice depth is not the same when the ice is accelerating as when it is slowing down. A similar effect has previously been shown to explain observed instabilities in the flow of highway traffic, a phenomenon which is otherwise adequately described by a simple kinematic wave theory.

Data from Norwegian glaciers and statistical tests are presented which suggest that vertical net-budget gradient, ablation gradient and equilibrium-line altitude can be taken as characteristic for any particular glacier. The usefulness of these conceptual models as predictive techniques for the regional determination of glacier net budget when only a small sample is available, and in palaeo-net-budget studies, is shown to be limited.

Polycrystalline ice at the melting point has been observed in the laboratory to contain veins of water at the places where three grains meet. Under uniaxial compression lenticular water inclusions appeared at grain boundaries perpendicular to the stress, while the nearby vein began to freeze. A similar effect occurred in tension on grain boundaries parallel to the stress. When the stress on the plane of the boundary was a pure shear stress, no effect was observed. The water lenses produced by stress increased in size and decreased in number after the stress was removed. The effect under compression is explained quantitatively by the combined effects of curvature and pressure on the melting point of an ice–water interface. The rate of formation of the lenses and of their coarsening is greatly reduced by the internal pressures set up in the lenses as a result of expansion on freezing and contraction on melting; transient creep to accommodate volume changes is an essential part of the process. The effect in a grain boundary under tension may arise from pressure caused by sliding on other grain boundaries; it was absent in a bicrystal.

It is concluded that internal melting and freezing at grain boundaries and veins will occur in temperate glacier ice, with some effect, not discussed here, on its permeability to water. Any pure solid at its melting point which has a dihedral angle for the liquid phase in contact with a grain boundary between 0° and 60° should show similar behaviour, in that non-hydrostatic stress should cause liquid to move away from triple junctions between grains and into grain boundaries. There may be implications for the Frank theory of the upwelling of melt fluid in the Earth’s upper mantle.

Techniques for making precise uniaxial tests for strength and deformability of ice are described. Results are given for tests made in uniaxial tension and uniaxial compression at constant displacement rate, using bubbly polycrystalline ice. These results include stress/strain curves, elastic moduli, rupture or yield strengths, and failure strains, all for a range of strain-rates. A few results for ice doped with hydrogen fluoride are also given. The fracture mechanism for ice is discussed, and the test results are compared with data reported by previous investigators.

The absorption of radio waves propagating through naturally occurring waters varies greatly with the electrical conductivity. Glacier melt water is very transparent and the attenuation by melt water layers is due to reflexion of power, whereas the attenuation of sea-water layers is due to absorption. The attenuation of soaked firn is usually prohibitive if the liquid is brine but it should not be a serious obstacle to radio echo strength if the liquid is rain-water or melt water. However, the magnitude of the scattered power can become greater than that from continuous (bedrock) reflectors if the size of the irregularities in the medium is large (approaching the radio wavelength in ice). Echo power formulae show that ice lenses may have the most serious effect and that low radio frequencies will be necessary to combat this.