pipkrake

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English

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Ice needles (pipkrake) pushing soil particles upwards in Shiga Kōgen, Japan.

Etymology

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From Swedish pipkrake, from pip (tube) +‎ krake (thin, fine, weak), coined by Swedish botanist Henrik Hesselman in 1907.

Noun

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pipkrake (countable and uncountable, plural pipkrakes)

  1. Needle ice; ice structures formed when the air temperature is below 0℃ and the soil is not.
    • 1979, E. Derbyshire, Geomorphological Processes, Routledge, →ISBN, page 208:
      The most widespread and familiar example of this process is that associated with the growth of needle ice or pipkrake (Figure 5.15), needles of clear ice commonly exceeding 5 cm in length. Growth of pipkrake is favoured by supercooling of the soil in conditions of marked radiative heat loss from the surface []

Further reading

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