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Dr. Universe: What Creates Icebergs? \u2014 Kenton, 8, Washington state<\/p>\nDr. Universe: What Creates Icebergs? \u2014 Kenton, 8, Washington state<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dear Kenton,<\/p>\n
When I think about the Arctic, I picture frigid waters filled with narwhals, polar bears, and icebergs.<\/p>\n
I asked my friend Von Walden how those icebergs got there. He\u2019s a polar scientist at Washington State University. He told me a glacier is a huge mass of ice on land. But glaciers don\u2019t just sit there. They move. A glacier is like a slow-moving river of ice. It\u2019s made of heavy, compacted snow. It flows over the land because of its own weight. An iceberg is a broken-off piece of a glacier. To be an iceberg, that broken-off chunk must be about twice the size of a house. A mini-iceberg\u2014about the size of a piano\u2014is called a growler. Ice chunks in between those sizes are called bergy bits.<\/p>\n
\u201cImagine you have a glacier that\u2019s sitting in a valley\u2014and at the end of that valley is a lake,\u201d Walden said. \u201cA piece of the glacier at the end may break off. Then it\u2019s no longer held to the glacier, so it can float around in the lake.\u201d Or an iceberg may break off a glacier by the ocean. That iceberg probably falls into the ocean. Once the iceberg plops off a glacier and into water, it floats around like an ice cube in a drink. The solid iceberg is less dense than the liquid salt water\u2014so it stays on top of the water.<\/p>\n
When a chunk of ice breaks off a glacier, that\u2019s called calving. That can happen if the glacier gets warm or some other force makes a piece split off. The end of the glacier\u2014where the iceberg slides off\u2014is called the terminus.<\/p>\n
Sometimes glaciers move slowly. But sometimes they move super-fast\u2014like half a mile a day. That might happen in the summer when it\u2019s a little bit warmer. The bottom of the glacier may melt a little. That makes the ground under the glacier slippery, so the glacier can move quickly. That\u2019s called a glacial surge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have a glacier that\u2019s terminating at an ocean, and that glacier surges, it\u2019s going to shove all that water out over the ocean,\u201d Walden said. \u201cFor a while, there will be a big tongue of ice out over the ocean. And then\u2014pfft\u2014it just breaks up. It disintegrates into hundreds of icebergs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cool thing about icebergs is that they\u2019re always fresh water\u2014even when they\u2019re floating in the salty ocean. Both glaciers and icebergs are part of Earth\u2019s water cycle. Some of their water will naturally wisp off as water vapor. It will float up into the atmosphere and form clouds. When those clouds slip over the mountains\u2014which are high and cold\u2014some of the water will fall as snow.<\/p>\n
It could wind up back on the top of a glacier, adding to its mass and helping it flow n-icely.<\/p>\n
Sincerely,<\/p>\n
Dr. Universe<\/p>\n
Ask Dr. Universe is a science-education project from Washington State University. Visit AskDrUniverse.wsu.edu to read more Q&A\u2019s, or to send in a science question of your own \u2013 or that of a kid you know \u2013 for a chance to be featured in a future Q&A. Or you can write to: Ask Dr. Universe Washington State University ITB 2013B Pullman, WA 99164<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr. Universe: What Creates Icebergs? \u2014 Kenton, 8, Washington state \u00a0 Dear Kenton, When I think about the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-154946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-queens","12":"tag-queens-headlines","13":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}