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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.
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.
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). Figure 14.1.3 Fast ice (left) and pack ice (right).
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.
Ice floes. Home > About Antarctica > Ice and atmosphere > Sea ice > Pack ice > Ice floes. Adélie penguins on ice floe in Newcomb Bay Photo: Tess Egan. An ice floe is any contiguous piece of sea ice. Floes are subdivided according to horizontal extent.
Arctic ice can be divided into two different types, classified by their method of formation. Icebergs are chunks of floating ice that have "calved" (broken off) from a glacier. Since they are formed from compacted snow, they are composed entirely of fresh water, like big floating ice cubes.
A floe occurs when pack ice breaks up and floats away. There are official size designations for floes: Small (less than 100 metres wide) Medium (less than 300 metres) Large (less than 2 kilometres) Vast (less than 10 kilometres) Giant (greater than 10 kilometres wide) Frazil ice is what you get when ice first starts to form across an ocean’s ...