Frost weathering

The process may act on a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, from minutes to years and from dislodging mineral grains to fracturing boulders.

It is most pronounced in high-altitude and high-latitude areas and is especially associated with alpine, periglacial, subpolar maritime, and polar climates, but may occur anywhere at sub-freezing temperatures (between −3 and −8 °C (27 and 18 °F)) if water is present.

When ice growth induces stresses in the pore water that breaks the rock, the result is called hydrofracture.

[6][8] Nowadays researchers such as Matsuoka and Murton consider the "conditions necessary for frost weathering by volumetric expansion" as unusual.

[6] However the bulk of recent literature demonstrates that that ice segregation is capable of providing quantitative models for common phenomena while the traditional, simplistic volumetric expansion does not.