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But you may be struggling to understand some of the finer details of melting ice, such as the difference between icebergs and ice floe. An iceberg is a large mass of freshwater ice that has broken off of a glacier or an ice shelf. An ice floe is a large, flat pack of floating ice.
While it is true that both glaciers and ice floes are large masses of ice that can be found in arctic regions, there is a major difference between them. Basically, glaciers originate on land, and ice floes form in open water and are a form of sea ice.
Fast ice, or land-fast ice, refers to the large, solid ice sheets that are attached to land. The pack ice consists of the smaller, free-floating pieces of sea ice. They may have formed independently, or may have broken off from the fast ice (Figure 14.1.3).
5 lut 2018 · Icebergs are floating pieces that have broken off from larger ice shelves. They can be big enough to sink the Titanic or land a helicopter on, or small enough to fit into a glass. They can also come in many colors, depending on the compression of ice crystals and the presence of dirt, rock, and algae.
8 cze 2018 · ICE FLOES: Plates of floating sea ice, that is, ice formed by freezing of the top layer of the ocean; distinct from icebergs, which are thicker and are produced by the breakup of glaciers flowing into the sea. Any floating plate of ice wider than 6 mi (10 km) is termed an ice field, not an ice floe.
Together they store a volume of ice that, if completely melted, would cause global sea level to rise by around 65 metres. The ice sheets of West and East Antarctica have a combined ice volume of 26.37 million cubic kilometres, and the inland ice of Greenland around three million cubic kilometres.
An ice floe (/ floʊ /) is a large pack of floating ice often defined as a flat piece at least 20 m across at its widest point, and up to more than 10 km across. [1] Drift ice is a floating field of sea ice composed of several ice floes.
