Let's talk about snow. Most snow as we know it is actually 90% air as it falls from the sky. It's geodesic patterns and elaborate symmetrical designed flakes loose their shape as they come into contact with objects on Earth. When its builds up on these surfaces, the snow compacts itself into granular ice and then into firn as it gets into a dense form. Glacial ice is the most compact form next to ice containing 20% air composition. As we know as Mainer's, accumulation is the amount of measured snowfall, the same is true in geology but they see it as accumulated snowfall annually on a glacier. The total amount of of ice that glacier looses annually is called ablation and it takes into account the aspects of melting, sublimation, iceberg calving
