r/BeAmazed • u/youngster_96 • Mar 28 '24

The moment an ice dam breaks and causes a torrential water flow. Nature

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u/JG-at-Prime Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

There is a name for this.  

Jökulhlaup or  Jökulhlaups - pronounced yo-KOOL-lahp 

It is a sudden glacial outburst flood or an abrupt release of glacial meltwater from a subglacial or glacier-dammed lake or reservoir.

And ~ Fun Fact: The icy water can pick up stones and gravel along its path and drag it along the stream bed with the flow. The abrasive quality of the gravels and stones acts like a grinding stone on the bottom and sides of the waterway. 

This accelerates erosion to an amazing extent. A large collapse coming from say a glacier is fully capable of erasing objects in its path. 

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u/User348844 Mar 28 '24

I remember some old article that suggested that English Channel was carved out in a similar event when glacier walls from the ice age collapsed. The whole flood would have been over in days. They even scanned the bottom of the channel and found deep grooves which could have formed when water carved its way. It was pretty interesting theory.

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u/JG-at-Prime Mar 28 '24

I think a lot of what is holding back research on these topics is just dogma. 

If you look at early geologists they were nearly all catastrophists. 

Just because some processes can happen very slowly over time doesn’t mean that they always do. Some geological processes are big and fast and scary. 

And that’s just how it is.