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Sea ice. Broken pieces of Arctic sea ice with a snow cover. Sea ice arises as seawater freezes. Because ice is less dense than water, it floats on the ocean's surface (as does fresh water ice, which has an even lower density). Sea ice covers about 7% of the Earth's surface and about 12% of the world's oceans. [1] [2] [3] Much of the world's sea ...
Ice–albedo feedback is a climate change feedback, where a change in the area of ice caps, glaciers, and sea ice alters the albedo and surface temperature of a planet. Because ice is very reflective, it reflects far more solar energy back to space than open water or any other land cover. [1] It occurs on Earth, and can also occur on exoplanets.
To estimate ice area, scientists calculate the percentage of sea ice in each pixel, multiply by the pixel area, and total the amounts. Scientists set a threshold percentage to estimate ice extent, and count every pixel meeting or exceeding that threshold as "ice-covered." The common threshold is 15 %.
The Arctic sea ice covers less area in the summer than in the winter. The multi-year (i.e. perennial) sea ice covers nearly all of the central deep basins. The Arctic sea ice and its related biota are unique, and the year-round persistence of the ice has allowed the development of ice endemic species, meaning species not found anywhere else.
Icebergs or pieces of floating ice smaller than 5 meters above the sea surface are classified as "bergy bits"; smaller than 1 meter—"growlers". [9] The largest known iceberg in the North Atlantic was 168 metres (551 ft) above sea level, reported by the USCG icebreaker Eastwind in 1958, making it the height of a 55-story building.
Sea ice is a complex composite composed primarily of pure ice in various states of crystallization, but including air bubbles and pockets of brine.Understanding its growth processes is important for climate modellers and remote sensing specialists, since the composition and microstructural properties of the ice affect how it reflects or absorbs sunlight.
Arctic sea ice decline accounted for the single largest loss (7.6 trillion tonnes), followed by the melting of Antarctica's ice shelves (6.5 trillion tonnes), the retreat of mountain glaciers (6.1 trillion tonnes), the melting of the Greenland ice sheet (3.8 trillion tonnes) and finally the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet (2.5 trillion ...
Ice algae. Ice algae are any of the various types of algal communities found in annual and multi-year sea, and terrestrial lake ice or glacier ice. On sea ice in the polar oceans, ice algae communities play an important role in primary production. [1] The timing of blooms of the algae is especially important for supporting higher trophic levels ...