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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.
29 sie 2023 · An iceberg is simply a chunk of ice that has broken off from a glacier or an ice shelf and has floated into open water. They are usually made from compacted snow that has accumulated over a long...
18 sie 2022 · The difference between sea ice and ice shelves is that sea ice is free-floating; the sea freezes and unfreezes each year, whereas ice shelves are firmly attached to the land. Sea ice contains icebergs, thin sea ice and thicker multi-year sea ice (frozen sea water that has survived several summer melt seasons, getting thicker as more ice is ...
5 lut 2018 · Ice shelves are permanent floating ice sheets that extend from icy land masses. They form from ice sheets that slowly flow to the sea after breaking off from glaciers or being carved by ice streams. If they don’t melt when they reach the ocean, they can continue to grow into large thick ice masses.
This is because sea ice is a vast but thin sheet of cover compared to the glacial ice caps that are more localized but may be several kilometers thick. Figure 14.1.1 An iceberg (glacial ice) embedded in a thinner layer of sea ice (NASA / James Yungel [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons).
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.
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.
