icebergfloating mass of freshwater ice that has broken from the seaward end of either a glacier or a polar an ice sheetshelf. Icebergs are typically found in open seas, especially around Greenland and Antarctica. They form mostly during the 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, for example, about 10,000 icebergs are produced each year from the West Greenland glaciers, and an average of 375 flow south of Newfoundland into the North Atlantic shipping lanes, where they are a hazard to navigation.
Formation and distribution
Calving of glaciers and ice sheets

Probably the first mention of icebergs was that of St. Brendan, an Irish monk whose partly fictional writings suggest that he encountered a “floating crystal castle” on the high seas. After calving from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and smaller outlying glaciers, icebergs can move thousands of miles in a few years; those in the Arctic can slip down along the eastern North American coast to be caught up in the Gulf Stream and, while melting, be carried in a few weeks to within several hundred kilometres of England and Ireland or by a combination of wind and current to Bermuda, as happened in 1907 and 1926.

When snow and freezing rain continue to precipitate over a continent in excess of evaporation, glaciers will form and icebergs will break off their ends and appear in the surrounding ocean. At the point where glaciers or large, extensive ice shelves meet the sea, water pressure beneath the ice shelf or glacier tongue interacts with the outward creeping glacier. The tides, which have ranges up to 6 metres (20 feet) in the Arctic, along with small sea-level changes associated with wind and swells, result in an intermittent increase and decrease in force on the protruding end of the glacier or ice shelf resulting in the birth of a large monolith of drifting ice. There are other ways in which an iceberg is formed. One, which is characteristic of southern Greenland glaciers, consists of a melting or evaporation of the surface portions of the glacier near its terminus at a greater rate than the water erosion on its underside. This results in an underwater shelf, and eventually, through the erosion of water and periodic tidal and other hydraulic forces, this is broken off and an iceberg floats to the surface. Icebergs of varying shapes are produced in this way. A third mechanism by which icebergs are formed is through gradual break-off from a hanging glacier or ice shelf. The type of iceberg mechanism is related to the surrounding topography, the climate, and the rate of flow of associated glaciers.

The speed of the ice sheet flow, or creep, over Greenland and the Antarctic varies from zero near their centres to as much as 10 kilometres per year in the ice streams that make up glaciers. For the same inclination relative to gravity, ice moves 1/10,000 as fast as water. The average movement in the Antarctic is 360 metres per year, with most of the measurements between extremes of 110 and 1,100 metres per year. These measurements are made near the coast and are much higher than the average flow rate over the entire Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets.

Arctic icebergs

The western shore of Greenland has the fastest-flowing glaciers on the Earth. The one known as the Quarayaq Glacier flows at a velocity between 20 and 24 metres per day, greater than the velocity of most Alpine glaciers. Jakobshavn Glacier at latitude 70° N, approximately, produces 10 percent of all the Greenland icebergs (approximately 1,350 annually) and flows at about 20 metres per day. The icebergs accumulate in a fjord and periodically spill from this fjord in groups accompanied by noise that can be heard for several kilometres. This greatest iceberg-producing glacier measures only 7 kilometres along its front and is 90 metres above sea level. In contrast to the rapidly moving glaciers, the very wide glaciers that move slowly produce only very small icebergs. Some glaciers, such as the Frederikshåb, Greenland, with a 33-kilometre front, have rates of flow equal to the rate of melting, and thus produce no icebergs. The annual yield of icebergs in the Arctic is, at the most, 15,000, with only 5,000 or so of sufficient size to reach the open ocean intact.

The largest glacier in the Northern Hemisphere is the Petterman Glacier, at 81° Ν 62° W. Although it is only a few metres above seawater, its ice foot extends as far as 40 kilometres out to sea, and it pushes a path through old piled-up sea ice. These long fingers of glacier ice, under severe climatic conditions, break off once every 10 to 20 years. Another glacier of importance is the Jungersen Glacier in northern Greenland. This glacier and the Petterman Glacier produce very large tabular icebergs, known in the Arctic as “ice islands.” They are similar in shape and mode of formation to the large tabular icebergs of the Antarctic but are much smaller.

East Greenland icebergs tend to move northward; they are small and few in number. The icebergs that do leave the fjord and the coast area enter the East Greenland Current, and some join the West Greenland icebergs. The icebergs that reach the North Atlantic Ocean from northern Greenland, Siberia, and the Northwest Territories constitute less than 10 percent of the total icebergs produced in the Northern Hemisphere. They do not affect the sea routes and, other than their formation of ice islands, have no importance to humans. Most icebergs originating from western Greenland are of great importance; of an annual production of about 7,500 bergs (Arctic total is 10,000–15,000), the Labrador Current carries 800 to 1,000 into the open ocean.

Of the 10,000 to 15,000 icebergs calved from glaciers annually in the Arctic, only 375 on the average pass Newfoundland, or latitude 48° N, into the North Atlantic Ocean. In some years more than 1,000 are seen, in others fewer than 30. The yearly average diminished over 20 years until 1972, when 1,400 icebergs were sighted south of 48° N in the North Atlantic.

There are few icebergs in the Arctic Basin proper. The major source area for icebergs in the Barents Sea is Franz Josef Land. Icebergs are not found in the North Pacific except in sounds along the Alaskan-Canadian coast between latitudes 55° and 60° N.

Antarctic icebergs

In the Southern Hemisphere the maximum limit of iceberg drift is 1,600 kilometres farther north than the northern extent of sea ice in the Antarctic. Most icebergs are concentrated south of the Antarctic current convergence at about 60° S. Some icebergs from the ice shelves of Antarctica drift north of latitude 42° S in the Atlantic Ocean but only to latitude 56° S in the South Pacific Ocean. One Antarctic iceberg was sighted only 50 kilometres south of the Cape of Good Hope (Africa) in 1850. The northern limit of ice sighted in the Southern Hemisphere was 26°30′ S.

Size of icebergs

Arctic icebergs vary in size from the size of a large piano, called growlers, to the dimensions of a 10-story building. Icebergs about the size of a small house are called bergy bits. Many icebergs in the Arctic are about 45 metres tall and 180 metres long. Icebergs of the Antarctic not only are far more abundant but are of enormous dimensions compared with those in the Arctic. Ninety-three percent of the world’s mass of icebergs is found surrounding the Antarctic.

Other than Arctic Basin ice islands, the largest iceberg in the Northern Hemisphere was 11 kilometres long and 5.9 kilometres wide; it was sighted near Baffin Land in 1882. The largest Arctic iceberg sighted south of Newfoundland was encountered by a convoy of ships during World War II at 43°10′ N and 49°33′ W. There were multiple collisions and much confusion before all ships safely limped into port. This ice island was 1,370 metres long, 1,100 metres wide, and 18 metres high. These icebergs are similar in size to Antarctic icebergs, but by and large only a few large tabular icebergs are seen in the Arctic as compared with the predominance of the tabular icebergs noted in the Antarctic. The tallest icebergs known were measured at 134 and 158 metres high; the latter was measured and photographed from a helicopter in the late 1950s.


Antarctic icebergs are characterized by their tremendous size and tabular shape. Lengths up to seven kilometres are not unusual, with ice 45 metres above water. The discovery of the origin of these immense tabular bergs was made in 1841 when the Ross Sea was penetrated and the Ross Ice Shelf was discovered to be afloat. Most Antarctic icebergs are formed from the Antarctic continental ice sheet as it thins toward the coast and exudes into the ocean as a great ice shelf with fronts hundreds of kilometres long. The four major ice shelves are the Ronne-Filchner Shelf in the Weddell Sea, the Ross Ice Shelf in the Ross Sea, the Shackleton Ice Shelf in the Indian Ocean sector, and the Larsen Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula (also known as Palmer Land and Graham Land). Antarctic icebergs, if they remain locked in the pack ice, will last for many years. One of the largest icebergs sighted was over 140 kilometres in length. This tabular iceberg was first sighted in 1927, and presumably the same iceberg was later seen in 1931, at which time it was 100 kilometres long. The largest known Antarctic iceberg was measured by the icebreaker USS Glacier in 1956; it had a length of 333 kilometres and a width of 100 kilometres.

Age and melting

Greenland icebergs 300 to 450 metres thick represent several centuries of precipitation. This figure is based on the comparison of the thickness of the ice sheet to the known or average annual precipitation of 20 to 60 centimetres (8 to 24 inches) per year in the source area for icebergs. Age of ice in central Greenland, close to bedrock, is estimated at 30,000 to 150,000 years old. The longest core retrieved from the Greenland ice sheet was 1,370 metres long with a bottom date of 100,000 years. It is probable that the oldest ice melts before reaching the outlet glaciers. From the known amount of precipitation over Greenland, and the assumption that the ice volume and precipitation rate now are approximately the same as they were many centuries ago, it can be estimated that the mean age of icebergs is 5,000 years. Measurements by carbon-14 dating of entrapped air show that icebergs are hundreds to thousands of years old—the oldest actual measurement being 3,000 years. Arctic ice islands and giant Antarctic bergs last as long as 10 years at high latitude. Most western Greenland icebergs melt within two years.

Once an Arctic iceberg has been calved and moves out to the open sea, it sojourns in Baffin Bay for three months to two years, during which time it undergoes some disintegration through melting and calving of small chunks of ice from its perimeter. This results in a decrease in mass of about 90 percent by the time it reaches the coast of Newfoundland and the Grand Banks in the North Atlantic. When the iceberg enters the region of the Grand Banks, where the warm waters of the Gulf Stream meet the colder waters of the Labrador Current, it has only a few days of life remaining. A large iceberg 120 metres long melted within 36 hours in 27° C (80° F) water. The estimated rate of iceberg melting is based on the observations of a number of individuals from the International Ice Patrol. For mild sea conditions an iceberg deteriorates at a rate of height decrease of two metres per day in 0° to 4° C (32° to 39° F) water, and three metres per day in 4° to 10° C (39° to 50° F) water. Destruction of icebergs in warm water is increased during stormy weather, when mechanical erosion of icebergs is added to the thermal effects of air and water. During the erosion process icebergs usually take on the form of a saddle, because erosion at one pole of the major axis of the iceberg results in that point rising, while the other end of the major axis is being eroded. Subsequently the latter end, owing to loss in weight, arises, and this rocking back and forth continues while constant erosion is occurring along the minor axis leading, usually, to a bipeaked or saddle-shaped structure.

Wind and current effects
Drift of icebergs

Iceberg movement is influenced by direct wind push on its exposed area to an extent far greater than commonly assumed. Although the bulk of the iceberg is below water, in many situations wind has a dominant influence on the movement. The wind intensity and direction over Baffin Bay in the spring of one year influences the number of icebergs that slip into the North Atlantic that year and the following year. This can be understood by noting that icebergs pouring out of the Arctic north of Newfoundland in spring will run aground or be trapped in the embayments of western Baffin Bay unless wind and current deflect them to the southeast. Of more importance is the effect of wind over western Greenland, however, where intense offshore early summer winds over the ice fjords drive sea ice-entrapped bergs into the West Greenland Current, thus increasing the number of icebergs that, having made the usual counterclockwise circuit, will arrive off Newfoundland the following spring. There is a reasonable correlation between the atmospheric pressure distribution one year and the number of icebergs drifting south of Newfoundland in the following year.

The day-to-day movement of an iceberg is controlled by the size and shape of the iceberg, previous and present wind, surface wind current, and general ocean current. The most important factor in assessing wind drift of icebergs is size and shape. Although most icebergs have a specific gravity of 0.9, and thus 67 of the mass is below the sea surface, it is not true that this means that a 30-metre-high iceberg is 180 metres deep in all cases. This is true only for the rectangular, blocky, or flat-topped icebergs common to the Antarctic.

Winged icebergs, those with saillike pinnacles around the central mass, are very much influenced by the winds and move at speeds of 1 knot, or 24 nautical miles per day, under the influence of steady winds of 30 knots. The wind force on an iceberg does not result in movement directly downwind, but, because of the rotation of the Earth (Coriolis effect), windage on an iceberg is 30° to 50° to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere.

The momentum of icebergs is so great that once in motion they continue for hours after the wind has abated. It is possible for an iceberg to be driven before a 30-knot wind at 1 knot in a direction 30° to the right of the wind, and after the wind stops the iceberg will slow and circle in what is known as an inertial circle, associated with the rotation of the Earth. An iceberg near the Grand Banks will be moving in a direction opposite to that toward which the wind was blowing about eight hours after the wind stops; however, the speed would be low and such anomalous movement would not be observed unless the initial speed and momentum were great. A careful accounting of berg underbody dimensions and the relationship of wind-current forces and iceberg mass will lead to explanations of anomalous iceberg movements. To emphasize the importance of wind effect and its prediction, one potentially disastrous case will be cited. In 1960 a 60-metre-high, 300-metre-long iceberg was driven off the tail of the Grand Banks into the shipping lanes by northwesterly winds averaging 80 kilometres per hour. This iceberg moved 140 kilometres at as much as 3 knots across the Labrador Current and resulted in an emergency move of the North Atlantic shipping lanes to the south.

The drift of icebergs and pack ice is the result of the ocean current and the wind. When the winds are variable or less than 32 kilometres per hour and the current greater than 0.5 knot, the current predominates, but, when steady 30-knot winds blow for more than 12 hours, the wind effect becomes important even in areas where the ocean current is 1 to 2 knots. In addition to windage on the iceberg and the ocean gradient current, the wind-induced surface current has the effect of increasing drift speed by about 10 percent for small icebergs and increasing the angle of drift direction.

Drift of sea ice

Sea ice drift is better understood, but in some respects it is more complicated than iceberg drift. In addition to size, inertia, and exposed-to-underwater dimensions, important additional information on surface roughness, water drag, and internal resistance due to ice-field concentration is needed to describe the motion. The observations of American and Russian scientists drifting on ice islands in the Arctic Basin, Baffin Bay, and Gulf of St. Lawrence, along with Japanese and Russian long-term ice-field observations, are summarized in the Table. As noted from the table, ice fields consisting of 10 percent ice and 90 percent open water will move at 1 to 8 percent of the surface wind velocity. The angle of drift is from 20° to 40° to the right of the wind in the Northern Hemisphere. The speed will be reduced by a factor of four as the ice becomes packed to 90 percent coverage of the ocean. Smooth ice drifts with less speed than rough ice because the wind has greater effect on a rough surface. Rough or hummocked ice usually is thicker and thus has greater inertia; ice of great inertia takes longer to reach the wind factor speed, but, after the wind stops, the ice continues to move longer than light ice. This phenomenon results in strings of ice floes aligned perpendicular to the wind with small floes packed to windward against larger floes. This wind sorting of ice is a phenomenon of great importance in navigating pack ice, and the strips of open water aligned in a direction approximately perpendicular to the direction of wind explain the successful navigation in ice performed by sailing vessels in the past.

Sediment transportthe oceans surrounding Antarctica, in the seas of the Arctic and sub-Arctic, in Arctic fjords, and in lakes fed by glaciers.
Origin of icebergs
Antarctic icebergs



Arctic icebergs




Iceberg structure



Iceberg size and shape





Erosion and melting





Iceberg distribution and drift trajectories







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 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 in the form of pebbles, cobbles, boulders, and finer material, and even plant and animal life , thousands of miles kilometres from their source area. The distribution of icebergs 10,000 years ago, for example, can be inferred from sediments that are widely disseminated on the ocean floor of the North Pacific Ocean as far south as latitude 48° N and in the South Atlantic Ocean as far north as the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope in the Southern Hemisphere. Ice rafting competes with kelp rafting as an explanation for the occurrence of pebbles and boulders on the seafloor as far south as Baja California and other areas of the world ocean.

Bottom freezing of ice shelves and reduction of the ice surface results in migration of sediments and organisms upward. Layering of sediment can be seen in sea-ice floes and icebergs from ice shelves. Fossil penguin bones have been found as far north as 30° S, and massive banks of boulders have been noted on the seafloor off South Africa. Thicknesses of as much as 130 centimetres of glacial till have been noted on the ocean floor from discharge by icebergs, apparently during the past one million years.

Icebergs are coloured brown, black, and green by a combination of sediment, plankton deposits under the source area ice shelf, and glacial blue ice.

Iceberg detection and destruction

In the open ocean most ice is seen by radar at ranges depending on fragment size, but smaller icebergs or growlers can be detected only when the sea surface is calm, and then only at ranges of about two kilometres. During slight wind conditions, in particular in heavy seas, the echoes from the waves, known as sea return, may completely mask the echoes of large, potentially very hazardous chunks of ice. In addition, radar return from rain and snow obscures the return from ice in either rain, snow, or fog conditions. Neither radar nor sonar can be relied upon for detection of icebergs and pack ice in choppy seas. The reflectivity of ice and snow to light is great, but reflectivity to radar or short radiowaves is very poor. An iceberg seven metres high cannot be detected with modern equipment if the waves are over one metre high. Various innovations since the inception of radar during World War II have not improved significantly the capabilities of radar to detect icebergs; thus ships are still bound by international agreement to proceed at slow speed in fog.

Sonar is effective in detecting icebergs; however, the range of detection is frequently limited by the water conditions and speed of commercial vessels. The likelihood of insufficient warning for high-speed passenger and cargo ships leaves this mode of detection inadequate. Other suggestions of dropping radio transducers or metal reflectors onto icebergs have the common fault that they are subject to icebergs rolling over and calving, which are frequent occurrences as a dying iceberg melts its way deep into the warmer waters of the shipping lanes.

The problem of iceberg protection, therefore, is one of tracking icebergs as they come down the Labrador Current and reporting the whereabouts of these floating menaces to all North Atlantic shipping as often as twice daily. This sometimes involves 300 icebergs and requires a team of iceberg experts, oceanographers, aviators, and seamen. During heavy ice conditions two U.S. Coast Guard planes fly six- to eight-hour reconnaissance missions from Argentia, Nfd., Can., over the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and contiguous areas. Positions of icebergs are plotted and are correlated with previous positions of the same icebergs or groups of icebergs. When dangerous icebergs approach the shipping lanes, a ship departs for the scene to stand by near the iceberg and warn approaching ships.

Once an iceberg is spotted in a position of threat to ships, it should be of no harm if destroyed. Destroying a 200,000-ton block of ice is, however, a task whose difficulties leave it impractical in most situations. The first successful results on breaking up icebergs by explosives were reported in 1929, when a few hundred kilograms of thermite cracked an iceberg into smaller pieces through thermal stress; these then melted more rapidly owing to the greater surface area exposed. Similar thermite experiments on two icebergs in 1959 did not corroborate the original findings, however. Attempts at bombing, torpedoing, shelling, and even ramming have been unsuccessful. With twenty 450-kilogram (1,000-pound) bombs acting as direct hits, or as depth charges, it is possible to chip away about 20 percent of a 250,000-ton iceberg. The International Ice Patrol has even tried painting half of an iceberg with lampblack or charcoal to induce thermal stress by heat absorption, but, like other experiments, these attempts were inconclusive.

The published literature on icebergs is found mainly in U.S. journals and in atlases prepared by the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy for Arctic and Antarctic military and scientific maritime resupply expeditions. A classic discussion of icebergs and sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is The “Marion” Expedition to Davis Strait and Baffin Bay, vol. 3 by E.H. Smith, Arctic Ice (1931). Also of interest is the treatment of the oceanography of the north polar basin by Fridtjof Nansen, The Norwegian North Polar Expedition, 1893–1896: Scientific Results, vol. 3 (1902, reprinted 1969), and Farthest North, 2 vol. (1897, reissued 1967). The importance of ice in the water budget of the planet may be studied by consulting James L. Dyson, The World of Ice (1962, reissued 1972). Robert C. Pritchard (ed.), Sea Ice Processes and Models (1980), a collection of proceedings papers, reports field observations and the development of models in an effort to establish usable flow laws for sea ice. Two reference works are United States Hydrographic Office, A Functional Glossary of Ice Terminology (1952); and World Meteorological Organization, Sea-Ice Nomenclature (1970).

The age of icebergs can be understood by consulting W. Dansgaard et al., “One Thousand Centuries of Climatic Record from Camp Century on Greenland Ice Sheet,” Science, 166(3903):377–381 (1969); and P.F. Scholander et al., “Composition of Gas Bubbles in Greenland Icebergs,” The Journal of Glaciology, 3:813–822 (1961). A major reference work on the proposed use of icebergs as a freshwater source is the collected conference papers in A.A. Husseiny (ed.), Iceberg Utilization (1978)

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. 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.

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 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 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. 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) 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).

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. 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 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 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.

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).