Sea ice is frozen seawater. Because ice is less dense than its melt, sea ice floats. Sea ice covers about 7% of the Earth’s surface, or about 12% of the world’s oceans. In the North, it is found in the Arctic Ocean, in areas just below it and in other cold oceans, seas and gulfs; in the Antarctic, it occurs in various areas around Antarctica (the continent). Due to the combined action of winds, currents and air temperature fluctuations, sea ice expanses are very dynamic. In the fall and winter, the ice grows progressively thicker, defining floes of various sizes that collide against each other. This activity also goes on in the spring and summer, but during that time part of the ice melts. This ice may be contrasted with icebergs, which are chunks of ice shelves or glaciers that calve into the ocean. Unlike sea ice, which is saline, icebergs are made from fresh water. They may be enclosed within sea ice expanses and drift along with it.
Read more about Sea Ice: Types of Sea Ice, Formation of Sea Ice, Yearly Freeze and Melt Cycle, Monitoring and Observations, Modelling, Ecology, Relationship To Global Warming and Climate Change
Famous quotes containing the words sea and/or ice:
“The trumpets sound, the banners fly,
The glittering spears are ranked ready;
The shouts o’ war are heard afar,
The battle closes thick and bloody;
But it’s no the roar o’ sea or shore
Wad mak me langer wish to tarry;
Nor shout o’ war that’s heard afar,
Its leaving thee, my bonnie Mary.”
—Robert Burns (1759–1796)
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)