When Icebergs Melt and Pieces Break Off, Sea Levels Rise?

[Dan]

If we stick with fresh water for our experiment, the water level will rise when we put the ice cube in, and the level will not change as the ice cube melts. It is not like leveling dirt.

That’s why I use the scenario of sea water & ice. As the ice melted, the sea water get diluted, less dense, bigger volume.

Jill was talking about above water part of those ice berg pieces were huge and tall. Such volume surely would add to the rising sea level when melted & diluting the salt concentration in the surrounding sea water.

There are evidences of rising & lowering the sea level during ice age periods recorded like every few thousands of years apart by flat spots tips of stalactites inside the cenotes.

How cenotes in yucatan were formed ? | Cenotes Riviera Maya by AluxDiver.com

 

[greeniguana]

They're seeing the same thing in the Everglades; driving down from the main entrance to Flamingo you will spot mangroves growing in what used to be completely freshwater marshes. Then there are the king tides where bits of the coastline flood, and since the underground utilities in some areas are now getting regularly inundated with seawater it seems like Miami and Fort Lauderdale have had a cavalcade of sewage main breaks lately.

Yep. And I have nightmares about the Turkey Point nuclear power plant. They should have shut that place down 10 years ago. It's like a slow motion Fukushima. One Cat4 in a bad spot....

 

[Dan]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ne...41-melting-icebergs-boost-sea-level-rise/amp/

“When an ice cube melts in a glass, the overall water level does not change from when the ice is frozen to when it joins the liquid. Doesn’t that mean that melting icebergs shouldn’t contribute to sea-level rise? Not quite.

Although most of the contributions to sea-level rise come from water and ice moving from land into the ocean, it turns out that the melting of floating ice causes a small amount of sea-level rise, too.

Globally, it doesn’t sound like much – just 0.049 millimetres per year – but if all the sea ice currently bobbing on the oceans were to melt, it could raise sea level by 4 to 6 centimetres.

Fresh water, of which icebergs are made, is less dense than salty sea water. So while the amount of sea water displaced by the iceberg is equal to its weight, the melted fresh water will take up a slightly larger volume than the displaced salt water. This results in a small increase in the water level.

Diluted oceans
Andrew Shepherd and colleagues from the University of Leeds, UK, used iceberg surveys to analyse the amount of ice floating on the world’s oceans. Taking into account melting ice shelves, melting Arctic sea ice, and the increase of Antarctic sea ice – which removes water from the oceans – they estimate that about 746 cubic kilometres of ice are melting each year, overall.

“The ice melting is diluting the oceans, decreasing its density and raising sea levels as a consequence,” says Shepherd.

The team calculate that the melting of floating ice accounts for a small amount of the 0.3 millimetres per year unaccounted for in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s best model of sea-level rise, currently measured at about 3.1 millimetres per year.

David Holland of New York University’s Center for Atmosphere Ocean Science says the work is a useful contribution to understanding the details of sea-level rise. “Global sea-level change from floating ice is small, but perhaps in a regional sense detectable,” he says.

Journal reference: Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2010GL042496 (in press)”

 

[Jill Heinerth]

I’m traveling and don’t have time or bandwidth to read the entire thread. In a nutshell... I was speaking about icebergs that calve from the Greenland Ice Sheet that transfer glacier (land) ice to ocean thus creating sea level rise as they melt.

 

[wedivebc]

I’m traveling and don’t have time or bandwidth to read the entire thread. In a nutshell... I was speaking about icebergs that calve from the Greenland Ice Sheet that transfer glacier (land) ice to ocean thus creating sea level rise as they melt.

Thanks for weighing in on that Jill. I think almost all of us surmised that was the case.

 

[Brian G]

I’m traveling and don’t have time or bandwidth to read the entire thread. In a nutshell... I was speaking about icebergs that calve from the Greenland Ice Sheet that transfer glacier (land) ice to ocean thus creating sea level rise as they melt.

I really appreciate you coming on here to post Jill, and maybe there's opportunity here for better communication. A point that some have to tried to make clear is that an iceberg does not have to melt for it to create sea level rise. The fact that the iceberg is now displacing seawater is enough. The actual melting of the iceberg contributes a negligible amount of sea rise.

I love watching your videos, and safe travels.

 

[axluba]

To Jill- The icebergs that have calved off of mainland ice sheets do NOT significantly increase sea levels as they melt.

You're still making the same mistake.

(I really am just trying to help. )

You mean that they don’t increase significantly as they melt but they do at the time when they detach from the mainland icesheet? (Because of that icesheet melting)

Just trying to parce through what bothers you in the wording.

I don’t think there is much to argue about

 

[The Chairman]

I’m traveling and don’t have time or bandwidth to read the entire thread. In a nutshell... I was speaking about icebergs that calve from the Greenland Ice Sheet that transfer glacier (land) ice to ocean thus creating sea level rise as they melt.

Dear friend, thank you for taking the time to clarify your thoughts for us. I left the Keys for many reasons. One was the constant threat of being flooded. I remember packing the car for a trip to the airport to go diving in Curacao. I was walking through knee deep water in my drive way to get to the car. The water actually flooded the house while we were gone. The subsequent mold was horrid. I have since moved to a spot in Suwannee County where the seas would have to rise 68 ft in order to flood me. I love the water, but I don't want to live in it.

 

[wedivebc]

I The actual melting of the iceberg contributes a negligible amount of sea rise.

Once an iceberg is release from it's parent land based ice sheet it floats because it displaces an amount of water. That amount that it displaces does not change when it melts.

 

[The Chairman]

That amount that it displaces does not change when it melts.

It changes by the amount of ice above the water line. It's the same reason why it takes 33ft of saltwater to make an atmosphere and almost 34 ft of fresh water to do the same. Sea ice (same density) barely brakes the surface of the ocean or bay it's found in. The same weight of fresh water has a little less than 3% more volume, so icebergs stick out much higher than sea ice due to Archimedes Principle. Scientist Jill is correct in her statements. Really, do you think all that water just disappears when it melts?