ablation

If we stick to its meteorological meaning, this term expresses the loss of snow or ice as a consequence of the combination of three processes that take place in the atmosphere: melting, evaporation, and sublimation. Thinking of a snowpack or the ice of a glacier, although its reduction is usually related to a rise in temperature (more heat implies greater melting), ablation can also occur through the aforementioned sublimation, with the snow or ice passing directly from a solid to a gaseous phase; that is, turning into water vapor. Wind is another factor that very effectively contributes to reducing the thickness of a snow cover, thanks to the high evaporation rates it causes. The opposite process is accumulation (alimentación). In a geomorphological context, the term refers to the loss of soil that occurs in river valleys, due to the dragging of sediments caused by the large floods brought about by torrential rains. Those materials are deposited downstream, in the vicinity of the river mouth and in the sea itself.