Hi everyone,
So today I'm reading this article about the Thwaites glacier and how divers have swam underneath it with sonar devices to explore the ice thickness and that it is thinning and may crack and the oceans will go crazy high. So, I looked up some images of the Thwaites glacier and it is entirely afloat. It is not some glacier running off the side of some land mass. Now, it has always been my understanding that when ice, that is floating in water melts, it does not change the water level because the area that the ice displaces by its weight is the same area as the ice will take when it melts to water.
In other words the ice is larger than the area that it displaces because the water, in ice form, is not as dense.
I even looked it up and found this:
When ice melts, the resulting water is denser, so a particular mass of what had been solid ice will have a smaller volume when it becomes liquid water. This change in volume exactly offsets the small percentage of ice that is above the water's surface. Therefore, melting sea ice does not affect sea levels. From exploratorium.edu
And as I perused the page I noticed a lot of sites making the same claim. In fact, I couldn't find a single one that said differently.
So why? Why is a huge floating block of ice the size of Florida not also displacing the water beneath it in the same way that every other floating block of ice in water does?
Any answers? I'd post the article but it's WaPo and they have a pay wall. But if anyone cares to Google, just googel 'thwaites glacier melts'.
God bless,
Ted
So today I'm reading this article about the Thwaites glacier and how divers have swam underneath it with sonar devices to explore the ice thickness and that it is thinning and may crack and the oceans will go crazy high. So, I looked up some images of the Thwaites glacier and it is entirely afloat. It is not some glacier running off the side of some land mass. Now, it has always been my understanding that when ice, that is floating in water melts, it does not change the water level because the area that the ice displaces by its weight is the same area as the ice will take when it melts to water.
In other words the ice is larger than the area that it displaces because the water, in ice form, is not as dense.
I even looked it up and found this:
When ice melts, the resulting water is denser, so a particular mass of what had been solid ice will have a smaller volume when it becomes liquid water. This change in volume exactly offsets the small percentage of ice that is above the water's surface. Therefore, melting sea ice does not affect sea levels. From exploratorium.edu
And as I perused the page I noticed a lot of sites making the same claim. In fact, I couldn't find a single one that said differently.
So why? Why is a huge floating block of ice the size of Florida not also displacing the water beneath it in the same way that every other floating block of ice in water does?
Any answers? I'd post the article but it's WaPo and they have a pay wall. But if anyone cares to Google, just googel 'thwaites glacier melts'.
God bless,
Ted