Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Beauty And Splender Of Icebergs

Icebergs are enormous. They can be taller than the Statue of Liberty and as big as a small state. Normally, only a tiny part of an iceberg can be seen from the surface of the water. Thousands of these massive glacial chunks are formed each year and many are carried hundreds of miles by ocean currents until they gradually melt away.
An iceberg is a large piece of ice from freshwater that has broken off from a snow-formed glacier or ice shelf and is floating on open water. It may subsequently become frozen into pack ice. Alternatively, it may come to rest on the seabed in shallower water, causing ice scour or becoming an ice island.Icebergs are monitored worldwide by the U.S. National Ice Center (NIC), established in 1995, which produces analyses and forecasts of Arctic, Antarctic, Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay ice conditions. More than 95% of the data used in its sea ice analyses are derived from the remote sensors on polar-orbiting satellites that survey these remote regions of the Earth.The NIC is the only organization that names and tracks all Antarctic Icebergs.


























































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