iceberg

iceberg
/uys"berrg/, n.
1. a large floating mass of ice, detached from a glacier and carried out to sea.
2. Informal. an emotionally cold person.
3. Australian Informal. a person who swims or surfs regularly in winter.
4. tip of the iceberg, the first hint or revelation of something larger or more complex: The new evidence in the case is just the tip of the iceberg.
[1765-75; half Anglicization, half adoption of D ijsberg ice mountain; c. G Eisberg, Sw isberg]

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Floating mass of ice that has broken from the seaward end of a glacier or a polar ice sheet.

Icebergs are typically found in open seas, especially around Greenland and Antarctica. They form mostly during each hemisphere's spring and summer, when warmer weather increases the rate of calving (separation) of icebergs at the boundaries of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and smaller outlying glaciers. In the Northern Hemisphere, about 10,000 icebergs are produced each year from the Greenland glaciers, and an average of 375 flow into the North Atlantic shipping lanes, where they are a hazard to navigation, especially because only about 10% of an iceberg is exposed above the surface of the sea.

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Introduction
  floating mass of Freshwater ice that has broken from the seaward end of either a glacier or an ice shelf. Icebergs are found in the oceans surrounding Antarctica, in the seas of the Arctic and sub-Arctic, in Arctic fjords (fjord), and in lakes (lake) fed by glaciers.

Origin of icebergs

Antarctic (Antarctica) icebergs
 Icebergs of the Antarctic calve from floating ice shelves (ice shelf) and are a magnificent sight, forming huge, flat “tabular” structures. A typical newly calved iceberg of this type has a diameter that ranges from several kilometres to tens of kilometres, a thickness of 200–400 metres (660–1,320 feet), and a freeboard, or the height of the “berg” above the waterline, of 30–50 metres (100–160 feet). The mass of a tabular iceberg is typically several billion tons. Floating ice shelves (ice shelf) are a continuation of the flowing mass of ice that makes up the continental ice sheet. Floating ice shelves fringe about 30 percent of Antarctica's coastline, and the transition area where floating ice meets ice that sits directly on bedrock is known as the grounding line. Under the pressure of the ice flowing outward from the centre of the continent, the ice in these shelves moves seaward at 0.3–2.6 km (0.2–1.6 miles) per year. The exposed seaward front of the ice shelf experiences stresses from subshelf currents (ocean current), tides (tide), and ocean swell in the summer and moving pack ice during the winter. Since the shelf normally possesses cracks and crevasses (crevasse), it will eventually fracture to yield freely floating icebergs. Some minor ice shelves generate large iceberg volumes because of their rapid velocity; the small Amery Ice Shelf, for instance, produces 31 cubic km (about 7 cubic miles) of icebergs per year as it drains about 12 percent of the east Antarctic Ice Sheet.

 Iceberg calving may be caused by ocean wave (wave) action, contact with other icebergs, or the behaviour of melting water on the upper surface of the berg. With the use of tiltmeters (tools that can detect a change in the angle of the slope of an object), scientists monitoring iceberg-calving events have been able to link the breaking stress occurring near the ice front to long storm-generated swells originating tens of thousands of kilometres away. This bending stress is enhanced in the case of glacier tongues (long narrow floating ice shelves produced by fast-flowing glaciers that protrude far into the ocean). The swell causes the tongue to oscillate until it fractures. In addition, on a number of occasions, iceberg calving has been observed immediately after the collision of another iceberg with the ice front. Furthermore, the mass breakout of icebergs from Larsen Ice Shelf between 1995 and 2002, though generally ascribed to global warming, is thought to have occurred because summer meltwater on the surface of the shelf filled nearby crevasses. As the liquid water refroze, it expanded and produced fractures at the bases of the crevasses. This phenomenon, known as frost wedging, caused the shelf to splinter in several places and brought about the disintegration of the shelf.

Arctic icebergs
      Most Arctic icebergs originate from the fast-flowing glaciers (glacier) that descend from the Greenland Ice Sheet. Many glaciers are funneled through gaps in the chain of coastal mountains (mountain). The irregularity of the bedrock and valley wall topography both slows and accelerates the progress of glaciers. These stresses cause crevasses to form, which are then incorporated into the structure of the icebergs. Arctic bergs tend to be smaller and more randomly shaped than Antarctic bergs and also contain inherent planes of weakness, which can easily lead to further fracturing. If their draft exceeds the water depth of the submerged sill at the mouth of the fjord, newly calved bergs may stay trapped for long periods in their fjords of origin. Such an iceberg will change shape, especially in summer as the water in the fjord warms, through the action of differential melt rates occurring at different depths. Such variations in melting can affect iceberg stability and cause the berg to capsize. Examining the profiles of capsized bergs can help researchers detect the variation of summer temperature occurring at different depths within the fjord. In addition, the upper surfaces of capsized bergs may be covered by small scalloped indentations that are by-products of small convection cells that form when ice melts at the ice-water interface.

 The Arctic Ocean's equivalent of the classic tabular iceberg of Antarctic waters is the ice island. Ice islands can be up to 30 km (19 miles) long but are only some 60 metres (200 feet) thick. The main source of ice islands used to be the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf on Canada's Ellesmere Island near northwestern Greenland, but the ice shelf has been retreating as ice islands and bergs continue to calve from it. (The ice shelf is breaking into pieces faster than new ice can be formed.) Since the beginning of observations in the 1950s, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf has virtually disappeared. The most famous of its ice islands was T-3, which was so named because it was the third in a series of three radar targets detected north of Alaska. This ice island carried a manned scientific station from 1952 to 1974. Ice islands produced by Ellesmere Island calve into the Beaufort Gyre (Beaufort Sea) (the clockwise-rotating current system in the Arctic Ocean) and may make several circuits of the Canada Basin before exiting the Arctic Ocean via Fram Strait (an ocean passage between Svalbard and Greenland).

 A third source of ice islands, one that has become more active, is northeastern Greenland. The Flade Isblink, a small ice cap on Nordostrundingen in the northeastern corner of Greenland, calves thin tabular ice islands with clearly defined layering into Fram Strait. Observations in 1984 showed 60 grounded bergs with freeboards of 12–15 metres (40–50 feet) off Nordostrundingen in 37–53 metres (120–175 feet) of water. Similar bergs acted as pinning points for pressure ridges, which produced a blockage of the western part of Fram Strait for several years during the 1970s. In 2003 the multiyear cover of fast ice (see sea ice) along the northeastern Greenland coast broke out. This allowed a huge number of tabular icebergs to emerge from the fast-flowing Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden Glacier and Zachariae Isstrøm in northeastern Greenland. Some of these reached the Labrador Sea two to three years later, while others remained grounded in 80–110 metres (260–360 feet) of water on the Greenland shelf.

Iceberg structure
      A newly calved Antarctic (Antarctica) tabular iceberg retains the physical properties of the outer part of the parent ice shelf. The shelf has the same layered structure as the continental ice sheet from which it flowed. All three features are topped with recently fallen snow that is underlain by older annual layers of increasing density. Annual layers are often clearly visible on the vertical side of a new tabular berg, which implies that the freeboard of the iceberg is mainly composed of compressed snow rather than ice. Density profiles through newly calved bergs show that at the surface of the berg the density might be only 400 kg per cubic metre (25 pounds per cubic foot)—pure ice has a density of 920 kg per cubic metre (57 pounds per cubic foot)—and both air and water may pass through the spaces between the crystal grains. Only when the density reaches 800 kg per cubic metre (50 pounds per cubic foot) deep within the berg do the air channels collapse to form air bubbles. At this point, the material can be properly classified as “ice,” whereas the lower- density material above the ice is more properly called “firn.” Corresponding to a layer some 150–200 years old and coinciding approximately with the waterline, the firn-ice transition occurs about 40–60 metres (130–200 feet) below the surface of the iceberg. Deeper still, as density and pressure increase, the air bubbles become compressed. Within the Greenland Ice Sheet, pressures of 10–15 atmospheres (10,100–15,200 millibars) have been measured; the resulting air bubbles tend to be elongated, possessing lengths up to 4 mm (0.2 inch) and diameters of 0.02–0.18 mm (0.0008–0.007 inch). In Antarctic ice shelves and icebergs, the air bubbles are more often spherical or ellipsoidal and possess a diameter of 0.33–0.49 mm (0.01–0.02 inch). The size of the air bubbles decreases with increasing depth within the ice.

 As soon as an iceberg calves, it starts to warm relative to its parent ice shelf. This warming accelerates as the berg drifts into more temperate regions, especially when it drifts free of the surrounding pack ice. Once the upper surface of the berg begins to melt, the section above the waterline warms relatively quickly to temperatures that approach the melting point of ice. Meltwater at the surface can percolate through the permeable uppermost 40–60 metres (130–200 feet) and refreeze at depth. This freezing releases the berg's latent heat, and the visible part of the berg becomes a warm mass that has little mechanical strength; it is composed of firn and thus can be easily eroded. The remaining mechanical strength of the iceberg is contained in the “cold core” below sea level, where temperatures remain at −15 to −20 °C (5 to −4 °F). In the cold core, heat transfer is inhibited owing to the lack of percolation and refreezing.

Iceberg size and shape
       Iceberg size categories Iceberg size categoriesFor many years, the largest reliably measured Antarctic (Antarctica) iceberg was the one first observed off Clarence Island (one of the South Shetland Islands) by the whale catcher Odd I in 1927; it was 180 km (110 miles) long, was approximately square, and possessed a freeboard of 30–40 metres (100–130 feet). In 1956 an iceberg was sighted by USS Glacier off Scott Island (a small island about 500 km [300 miles] northeast of Victoria Land in the Ross Sea) with unconfirmed length of 335 km (210 miles) and width of 100 km (60 miles). However, recently there have been many calvings of giant icebergs in the Ross and Weddell seas (Weddell Sea) with dimensions that have been measured accurately by satellite. In 2000 iceberg B-15 broke off the Ross Ice Shelf with an initial length of 295 km (about 185 miles). Although B-15 broke into two fragments after a few days, B-15A—the larger portion, measuring 120 km (75 miles) long by 20 km (12 miles) wide—obstructed the entrance to McMurdo Sound and prevented the pack ice in the sound from clearing out in the summer. In October 2005 B-15A broke up into several large pieces off Cape Adare in Victoria Land because of the impact of distant swell. Iceberg C-19 was an even larger but narrow iceberg that broke off the Ross Ice Shelf in May 2002. It fragmented before it could drift far.

 The Antarctic Peninsula has been warming significantly in recent decades (by 2.5 °C [4.5 °F] since the 1950s). Three ice shelves on the peninsula, the Wordie and Wilkins ice shelves on the west side of the peninsula and the Larsen Ice Shelf on the east side, have been disintegrating. This has caused the release of tremendous numbers of icebergs. The Larsen Ice Shelf has retreated twice since 2000; each event involved the fracture and release of a vast area of shelf ice in the form of multiple gigantic icebergs and innumerable smaller ones. The breakout of 3,250 square km (1,250 square miles) of shelf over 35 days in early 2002 effectively ended the existence of the Larsen B portion of the shelf. Although these events received much attention and were thought to be symptomatic of global warming, the Ross Sea sector does not seem to be warming at present. It is likely that the emission of giant icebergs in this zone was an isolated event. Intense iceberg outbreaks, such as the one described above, may not necessarily be occurring with a greater frequency than in the past. Rather, they are more easily detected with the aid of satellites.

      In the typically ice-free Southern Ocean, surveys of iceberg diameters show that most bergs have a typical diameter of 300–500 metres (1,000–1,600 feet), although a few exceed 1 km (0.6 mile). It is possible to calculate the flexural (bending) response of a tabular iceberg to long Southern Ocean swells, and it has been found that a serious storm is capable of breaking down most bergs larger than 1 km into fragments.

       Arctic bergs are generally smaller than Antarctic bergs, especially when newly calved. The largest recorded Arctic iceberg (excluding ice islands) was observed off Baffin Island in 1882; it was 13 km (8 miles) long by 6 km (4 miles) wide and possessed a freeboard, or the height of the berg above the waterline, of 20 metres (65 feet). Most Arctic bergs are much smaller and have a typical diameter of 100–300 metres (330–1,000 feet). Owing to their origin in narrow, fast-flowing glaciers, many Arctic bergs calve into random shapes that often develop further as they fracture and capsize. Antarctic bergs also evolve by the erosion of the weak freeboard or via further calving into tilted shapes. Depending on the local shape of the ice shelf at calving, the surfaces of icebergs, even while still predominantly tabular, may be domed or concave.

Erosion and melting
  Most of the erosion taking place on Antarctic (Antarctica) icebergs occurs after the bergs have emerged into the open Southern Ocean. Melt and percolation through the weak firn layer bring most of the freeboard volume to the melting point. This allows ocean wave action around the edges to penetrate the freeboard portion of the berg. Erosion occurs both mechanically and through the enhanced transport of heat from ocean turbulence. The result is a wave cut that can penetrate for several metres into the berg. The snow and firn above it may collapse to create a growler (a floating block about the size of a grand piano) or a bergy bit (a larger block about the size of a small house). At the same time, the turbulence level is enhanced around existing irregularities such as cracks and crevasses (crevasse). Waves eat their way into these features, causing cracks to grow into caves whose unsupported roofs may also collapse. Through these processes, the iceberg can evolve into a drydock or a pinnacled berg. (Both types are composed of apparently independent freeboard elements that are linked below the waterline.) Such a berg may look like a megalithic stone circle with shallow water in the centre.

      In the case of Arctic icebergs, which often suffer from repeated capsizes, there is no special layer of weak material. Instead, the whole berg gradually melts (thermal fusion) at a rate dependent on the salinity (the salt concentration present in a volume of water) and temperature at various depths in the water column and on the velocity of the berg relative to the water near the surface.

      On the basis of their observations of iceberg deterioration, American researchers W.F. Weeks and Malcolm Mellor have proposed a rough formula for predicting melt loss:

Z = K D,
where Z = loss in metres per day from the walls and bottom of the iceberg, K = a constant of order 0.12, and D = mean water temperature in °C averaged over the draft of the iceberg. This yields a loss of 120 metres (400 feet) from iceberg sides and bottom during 100 days of drift in water at 10 °C (50 °F)—a rate that corresponds quite well to survival times of icebergs in waters off the coast of Newfoundland (Newfoundland and Labrador) as measured by the International Ice Patrol. It has been suggested that if the melt rate could be reduced by interposing a layer of fabric between the ice and water, an iceberg could theoretically survive long enough to be towed across the Atlantic Ocean from Newfoundland to Spain for use as a water and power source.

      In Arctic icebergs, erosion often leads to a loss of stability and capsizing. For an Antarctic tabular berg, complete capsize is uncommon, though tiltmeter measurements have shown that some long, narrow bergs may roll completely over a very long period. More common is a shift to a new position of stability, which creates a new waterline for wave erosion. When tabular icebergs finally fragment into smaller pieces, these smaller individual bergs melt faster, because a larger proportion of their surface relative to volume is exposed to the water.

Iceberg distribution and drift trajectories
 In the Antarctic, a freshly calved iceberg usually begins by moving westward in the Antarctic Coastal Current, with the coastline on its left. Since its trajectory is also turned to the left by the Coriolis force owing to Earth's rotation, it may run aground and remain stationary for years before moving on. For instance, a large iceberg called Trolltunga calved from the Fimbul Ice Shelf near the Greenwich meridian in 1967, and it became grounded in the southern Weddell Sea for five years before continuing its drift. If a berg can break away from the coastal current (as Trolltunga had done by late 1977), it enters the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, or West Wind Drift. This eastward-flowing system circles the globe at latitudes of 40°–60° S. Icebergs tend to enter this current system at four well-defined longitudes or “retroflection zones”: the Weddell Sea, east of the Kerguelen (Kerguelen Islands) Plateau at longitude 90° E, west of the Balleny Islands at longitude 150° E, and in the northeastern Ross Sea. These zones reflect the partial separation of the surface water south of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current into independently circulating gyres, and they imply that icebergs found at low latitudes may originate from specific sectors of the Antarctic coast.

      Once in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the iceberg's track is generally eastward, driven by both the current and the wind. Also, the Coriolis force pushes the berg slightly northward. The berg will then move crabwise in a northeasterly direction so that it can end up at relatively low latitudes and in relatively warm waters before disintegrating. In November 2006, for instance, a chain of four icebergs was observed just off Dunedin (at latitude 46° S) on New Zealand's South Island. Under extreme conditions, such as its capture by a cold eddy, an iceberg may succeed in reaching extremely low latitudes. For example, clusters of bergs with about 30 metres (100 feet) of freeboard were sighted in the South Atlantic at 35°50′ S, 18°05′ E in 1828. In addition, icebergs have been responsible for the disappearance of innumerable ships off Cape Horn (Horn, Cape).

 In the Arctic Ocean, the highest latitude sources of icebergs are Svalbard archipelago north of Norway and the islands of the Russian Arctic. The iceberg production from these sources is not large—an estimated 6.28 cubic km (1.5 cubic miles) per year in a total of 250–470 cubic km (60–110 cubic miles) for the entire Arctic region. An estimated 26 percent originates in Svalbard, 36 percent stems from Franz Josef Land, 32 percent is added by Novaya Zemlya, about 6 percent begins in Severnaya Zemlya, and 0.3 percent comes from Ushakov Island. Many icebergs from these sources move directly into the shallow Barents (Barents Sea) or Kara seas (Kara Sea), where they run aground. Looping trails of broken pack ice are left as the bergs move past the obstacles. Other bergs pass through Fram Strait and into the East Greenland Current. As these icebergs pass down the eastern coast of Greenland, their numbers are augmented by others produced by tidewater glaciers (glacier), especially those from Scoresby Sund. Scoresby Sund is an inlet that is large enough to have an internal gyral circulation. Water driven by the East Greenland Current enters on the north side of the inlet and flows outward on the south side. This pattern encourages the flushing of icebergs from the fjord. In contrast, narrower fjords offer more opportunities for icebergs to run aground; they also experience an estuarine circulation pattern where outward flow at the surface is nearly balanced by an inward flow at depth. An iceberg feels both currents because of its draft and thus does not move seaward as readily as sea ice generated in the fjord.

      As the increased flux of icebergs reaches Cape Farewell, most bergs turn into Baffin Bay, although a few “rogue” icebergs continue directly into the Labrador Sea, especially if influenced by prolonged storm activity. Icebergs entering Baffin Bay first move northward in the West Greenland Current and are strongly reinforced by icebergs from the prolific West Greenland glaciers. About 10,000 icebergs are produced in this region every year. Bergs then cross to the west side of the bay, where they move south in the Baffin Island Current toward Labrador. At the northern end of Baffin Bay, in Melville Bay, lies an especially fertile iceberg-producing glacier front produced by the Humboldt Glacier, the largest glacier in the Northern Hemisphere.

 Some icebergs take only 8–15 months to move from Lancaster Sound to Davis Strait, but the total passage around Baffin Bay can take three years or more, owing to groundings and inhibited motion when icebergs are embedded in winter sea ice. The flux of bergs that emerges from Davis Strait into the Labrador Current, where the final part of the bergs' life cycle occurs, is extremely variable. The number of bergs decreases linearly with latitude. This reduction is primarily due to melting and break-up or grounding followed by breakup. On average, 473 icebergs per year manage to cross the 48° N parallel and enter the zone where they are a danger to shipping—though numbers vary greatly from year to year. Surviving bergs will have lost at least 85 percent of their original mass. They are fated to melt on the Grand Banks or when they reach the “cold wall,” or surface front, that separates the Labrador Current from the warm Gulf Stream between latitudes 40° and 44° N.

      Much work has gone into modeling the patterns of iceberg drift, especially because of the need to divert icebergs away from oil rigs. It is often difficult to predict an iceberg's drift speed and direction, given the wind and current velocities. An iceberg is affected by the frictional drag of the wind on its smooth surfaces (skin friction drag) and upon its protuberances (form drag). Likewise, the drag of the current acts upon its immersed surfaces; however, the current changes direction with increasing depth, by means of an effect known as the Ekman spiral. Another important factor governing an iceberg's speed and direction is the Coriolis force, which diverts icebergs toward the right of their track in the Northern Hemisphere and toward the left in the Southern Hemisphere. This force is typically stronger on icebergs than on sea ice, because icebergs have a larger mass per unit of sea-surface area. As a result, it is unusual for icebergs to move in the same direction as sea ice. Typically, their direction of motion relative to the surface wind is some 40°–50° to the right (Northern Hemisphere) or left (Southern Hemisphere). Icebergs progress at about 3 percent of the wind speed.

Iceberg scour and sediment transport
      When an iceberg runs aground, it can plow a furrow several metres deep in the seabed that may extend for tens of kilometres. Iceberg scour marks have been known from the Labrador Sea and Grand Banks since the early 1970s. In the Arctic, many marks are found at depths of more than 400 metres (1,300 feet), whereas the deepest known sill, or submerged ridge, within Greenland fjords (fjord) is 220 metres (about 725 feet) deep. This unsolved anomaly suggests that icebergs were much deeper in the past or that sedimentation rates within the fjords are so slow that marks dating from periods of reduced sea level have not yet been filled in. It is also possible that an irregular berg can increase its draft by capsizing, though model studies suggest that the maximum gain is only a few percent. Since not all iceberg-producing fjords have been adequately surveyed, another possibility is that Greenland fjords exist with entrances of greater depth. In the Antarctic, the first scours were found in 1976 at latitude 16° W off the coast of Queen Maud Land in the eastern Weddell Sea, and further discoveries were made off Wilkes Land and Cape Hallett at the eastern entrance to the Ross Sea.

      In addition, iceberg scour marks have been found on land. On King William Island in the Canadian Arctic, scour marks have been identified in locations where the island rose out of the sea—the result of a postglacial rebound after the weight of the Laurentide Ice Sheet was removed. Furthermore, Canadian geologist Christopher Woodworth-Lynas has found evidence of iceberg scour marks in the satellite imagery of Mars. Scour marks are strong indicators of past water flow.

      Observations indicate that long furrows like plow marks are made when an iceberg is driven by sea ice, whereas a freely floating berg makes only a short scour mark or a single depression. Apart from simple furrows, “washboard patterns” have been seen. It is thought that these patterns are created when a tabular berg runs aground on a wide front and is then carried forward by tilting and plowing on successive tides. Circular depressions, thought to be made when an irregular iceberg touches bottom with a small “foot” and then swings to and fro in the current, have also been observed. Grounded bergs have a deleterious effect on the ecosystem of the seabed, often scraping it clear of all life.

      Both icebergs and pack ice transport sediment (marine sediment) in the form of pebbles, cobbles, boulders, finer material, and even plant and animal life thousands of kilometres from their source area. Arctic icebergs often carry a top burden of dirt from the eroded sides of the valley down which the parent glacier ran, whereas both Arctic and Antarctic bergs carry stones and dirt on their underside. Stones are lifted from the glacier bed and later deposited out at sea as the berg melts. The presence of ice-rafted debris (IRD) in seabed-sediment cores is an indicator that icebergs, sea ice, or both have occurred at that location during a known time interval. (The age of the deposit is indicated by the depth in the sediment at which the debris is found.) Noting the locations of ice-rafted debris is a very useful method of mapping the distribution of icebergs and thus the cold surface water occurring during glacial periods and at other times in the geologic past. IRD mapping surveys have been completed for the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Southern oceans (Southern Ocean). The type of rock in the debris can also be used to identify the source region of the transporting iceberg. Caution must be used in such interpretation because, even in the modern era, icebergs can spread far beyond their normal limits under exceptional conditions. For instance, reports of icebergs off the coast of Norway in spring 1881 coincided with the most extreme advance ever recorded of East Greenland sea ice. It is likely that the bergs were carried eastward along with the massive production and outflow of Arctic sea ice.

      It is ice-rafted plant life that gives the occasional exotic colour to an iceberg. Bergs are usually white (the colour of snow or bubbly ice) or blue (the colour of glacial ice that is relatively bubble-free). A few deep green icebergs are seen in the Antarctic; it is believed that these are formed when seawater rich in organic matter freezes onto the bottoms of the ice shelves (ice shelf).

Climatic impacts of icebergs

Impacts on ice sheets and sea level
      Apart from local weather effects, such as fog production, icebergs have two main impacts on climate. Iceberg production affects the mass balance of the parent ice sheets, and melting icebergs influence both ocean structure and global sea level.

      The Antarctic (Antarctica) Ice Sheet has a volume of 28 million cubic km (about 6.7 million cubic miles), which represents 70 percent of the total fresh water (including groundwater) in the world. The mass of the ice sheet is kept in balance by a process of gain and loss—gain from snowfall over the whole ice sheet and ice loss from the melting of ice at the bottom of the ice shelf and from the calving of icebergs from the edges of the ice shelf. The effect of summer runoff and from sublimation off the ice surface is negligible.

      Annual snowfall estimates for the Antarctic continent start at 1,000 cubic km (240 cubic miles). If the Antarctic Ice Sheet is in neutral mass balance, the annual rate of loss from melting and iceberg calving must be close to this value; indeed, estimates of iceberg flux do start at this value, though some run much higher. Such apparently large fluxes are still less than the mean flow rate of the Amazon River, which is 5,700 cubic km (about 1,370 cubic miles) per year. In Antarctica the annual loss amounts to only one ten-thousandth of its mass, so the ice sheet is an enormous passive reservoir. However, if losses from iceberg calving and ice-shelf melting are greater than gains from snowfall, global sea levels will rise. At present, the size, and even the sign, of the contribution from Antarctica is uncertain. Consequently, Antarctic ice flux has not been included as a term in the sea-level predictions of Climate Change 2007, the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). What is more certain is that the retreat of glaciers (glacier) in the Arctic and mountain regions has contributed about 50 percent to current rates of sea-level rise. (The rest is due to the thermal expansion of water as the ocean warms.) An increasing contribution is coming from a retreat of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and part of this contribution is occurring as an iceberg flux.

Impact on ocean structure
      In considering the effect of iceberg melt upon ocean structure, it is found that the total Antarctic melt is equivalent to the addition of 0.1 metre (0.3 foot) of fresh water per year at the surface. This is like adding 0.1 metre of extra annual rainfall. The dilution that occurs, if averaged over a mixed layer 100–200 metres (330–660 feet) deep, amounts to a decrease of 0.015–0.03 part per thousand (ppt) of salt. Melting icebergs thus make a small but measurable contribution to maintaining the Southern Ocean pycnocline (the density boundary separating low-salinity surface water from higher-salinity deeper water) and to keeping surface salinity in the Southern Ocean to its observed low value of 34 ppt or below.

      It is interesting to note that the annual production of Antarctic iceberg ice is about one-tenth of the annual production of Antarctic sea ice. Sea ice has a neutral effect on overall ocean salinity, because it returns to liquid during the summer months. Nevertheless, when sea ice forms, it has an important differential effect in that it increases ocean salinity where it forms. This is often near the Antarctic coast. Increased salinity encourages the development of convection currents and the formation of bottom water (masses of cold and dense water). Icebergs, on the other hand, always exert a stabilizing influence on the salinity of the water column. This stabilizing influence manifests itself only when the icebergs melt, and this occurs at lower latitudes.

      Individual Arctic icebergs, although similar in numbers to Antarctic bergs (10,000–15,000 emitted per year), are smaller on average, so the ice flux is less. This, however, was not necessarily the case during the last glacial period (ice age). It has been postulated that, during the first stage of the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet of North America, a large ice-dammed glacial lake (Lake Agassiz (Agassiz, Lake)) formed in Canada over much of present-day Manitoba. When the ice dam broke, an armada of icebergs was suddenly released into the North Atlantic. As the icebergs melted, they added so much fresh water at the surface that the normal winter convection processes were turned off in the North Atlantic Ocean. As a result, the Gulf Stream was weakened, and northern Europe was returned to ice-age conditions for another millennium—the so-called Younger Dryas event (see Climatic variation and change (climate change)).

Iceberg detection, tracking, and management
      An iceberg is a very large object that can be detected in the open sea both visually and by radar. In principle an iceberg can also be detected by sonar. In the open sea, an iceberg produces squealing, popping, and creaking sounds caused by mechanical stresses and cracking, and these sounds can be detected underwater up to 2 km (more than a mile) away. In summer, bergs can also produce a high-pitched hissing sound called “bergy seltzer,” which is due to the release of high-pressure air bubbles from the ice as it melts in the warmer water.

      The discovery of an iceberg depends on the alertness of a ship's watchkeepers, and a decaying iceberg poses additional hazards because of its trail of growlers and bergy bits. Although small in size, they have masses (up to 120 tons for growlers; up to 5,400 tons for bergy bits) that are capable of damaging or sinking ships. As they drop into the sea, icebergs often roll over and lose their snow layers. In a heavy sea, the bergs' smooth wetted ice surfaces produce a low radar cross section. This makes them difficult to discriminate by eye against foam and whitecaps. Because a ship may steer to avoid a large parent berg, it may be in greater danger from undetected growlers or bergy bits drifting nearby.

      The problem of protecting shipping from icebergs is most critical in two regions, the high-latitude Southern Ocean and the northwestern section of the North Atlantic. The Southern Ocean threat is increasing because large container ships—those unable or unwilling to use the Panama Canal—can reach high southern latitudes on transit from Australia or New Zealand to Cape Horn (Horn, Cape). No special measures are currently in place to protect such vessels. In the North Atlantic, the International Ice Patrol was established in 1914 following the loss of the RMS Titanic to an iceberg in April 1912. Its task is to track icebergs as they enter shipping lanes via the Labrador Current and to keep a continuous computer plot of the known or estimated whereabouts of every berg. Reports are transmitted twice a day to ships. In the past, iceberg positions were sited by ships or aircraft; however, it is becoming more common that icebergs are sited by the interpretation of satellite (Earth satellite) imagery.

      The most useful type of sensor is synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which combines high resolution with day-and-night weather-independent capability. Tools with a pixel size of about 20 metres (65 feet) are capable of resolving most bergs. The new generation of SAR in the early 21st century, such as the Canadian RADARSAT and the European ENVISAT, also surveys wide swaths (up to 400 km [250 miles] wide) in every orbit and thus is capable of surveying the entire danger zone once per day.

      During the 1950s and 1960s, attempts were made by the U.S. Coast Guard (United States Coast Guard) to find ways of fragmenting icebergs that posed a threat to shipping. All were unsuccessful. explosive techniques were particularly so, since ice and snow are so effective at absorbing mechanical shock. Often the yield of fragmented ice was no greater than the mass of explosive used. Because of the need to defend offshore drilling and production platforms from icebergs, the viability of explosive techniques has been readdressed more recently. It was found that very cold ice, such as the type found in the lower part of an iceberg, can be fragmented successfully by the use of slow-burning explosives such as Thermit. Thermit can be implanted by drilling; however, implantation is a dangerous process because of the possibility of capsize. Until these techniques are perfected, icebergs cannot be destroyed. Current protocols call for the location and tracking of threatening icebergs. Iceberg trajectories are then predicted by increasingly sophisticated computer models. If necessary, icebergs are captured and towed out of the way of their targets.

Peter Wadhams

Additional Reading
Michael Hambrey and Jürg Alean, Glaciers, 2nd ed. (2004), provides extensive background on glaciers and the processes that give birth to icebergs. Peter Wadhams, Ice in the Ocean (2000), offers a moderately technical treatment of icebergs, sea ice, and the impacts of both on Earth's climate system. Methods of detecting icebergs by surface, airborne, and satellite radar are described in Simon Haykin et al. (eds.), Remote Sensing of Sea Ice and Icebergs (1994). A comprehensive resource that charts the distribution of icebergs emitted from islands in the Russian Arctic is Valentin Abramov, Atlas of Arctic Icebergs: The Greenland, Barents, Kara, Laptev, East-Siberian, and Chukchi Seas and the Arctic Basin, ed. by Alfred Tunik (1996). Other literature on the physical and climatic properties of icebergs is found in specialist journals such as Journal of Geophysical Research (weekly); The Journal of Glaciology (quarterly); and Cold Regions Science and Technology (quarterly).Peter Wadhams

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Universalium. 2010.

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