New Discoveries Concerning Glaciers

THE EARTH'S ROTATION AND GLACIERS

One day I got to thinking, if the rotation of the earth affects the course of ocean current and winds, why should it not affect the movements of glaciers? I looked online and in books but saw no reference to any such thing.

On maps, I saw that the eastward rotation of the earth did indeed seem to affect the course of the majority of glacial movments, judging by the glacial lakes that it carved out. But there appeared to have been enough glaciers that did not show this effect of rotation to conceal it. Due to the nature of a sphere, the rotation of the earth will have much more effect close to the pole than further south.

On a map of the Canadian province of Manitoba, it is easy to see that Lakes Winnipeg and nearby Winnipegosis were carved by a glacier on a north-south axis but that both have a slant of about 20 degrees eastward. Lake Muskoka, to the north of Toronto, shows the same eastward slant. In northern Minnesota is a series of large lakes with the same eastward slant going southward.

I believe this to be caused by the eastward rotation of the earth adding it's momentum to the southward motion of the glacier.

The path of a very large glacier may be seen not in the shapes of individual lakes but in a chain of lakes. All across Canada, starting with the Northwest Territories going southward, such a chain of lakes can be seen with a definite eastward slant.

Across the ocean, the same phenomenon can be seen. Lake Peipus in Estonia shows the same southeast slant as the large North American lakes. The path of a glacier from northern Sweden to southern Finland can easily be seen in the multitude of lakes it has carved. This chain of lakes continues into Russia with Lakes Ladoga and Onega. North of these two lakes, in Russia's Karelian region are a couple of other glacial lakes with the same definite south-east slant.

The same southeast momentum can be seen in a glacier moving southward from Quebec. The Ungava Peninsula, in the far north of Quebec, is known for it's erratics, large boulders left on the ground by the glaciers. To the south, in New Hampshire, Lake Winnipesaukee and Newfound Lake display exactly the same southeastward slant as the others. The large lakes in Maine, New Hampshire, eastern Quebec and, western Labrador show the familiar southeast slant.