firn

Recent Examples on the Web The oldest snow heats and cools, maybe losing some mass from some melting (or sublimating -- going straight to gas), but the snow will condense into granules of ice called firn and then ice and finally glacial ice. —Erik Klemetti, Discover Magazine, 15 Aug. 2022 Ice and firn, or dense snow leftover from previous seasons, also disappeared from the ridge. —Kasha Patel, Anchorage Daily News, 18 Aug. 2022 More snow compacts the firn and it is gradually turned into glacial ice. —John Schandelmeier, Anchorage Daily News, 2 Apr. 2022 But some research has suggested that the firn can fill up too quickly during years with high melt rates. —Chelsea Harvey, Scientific American, 2 Aug. 2019 The firn layer in the ice sheet, the boundary between snow and ice, is heating up and becoming denser. —Umair Irfan, Vox, 8 Dec. 2018