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Know Your Ice

Land Ice

Water Vapor

Snow

A precipitation of ice crystals, most of which are branched

Firn
Old snow which has been transformed into a dense material. It is not snow; it's particles are joined. It is not ice; it has communicating air interstices.


Ice Sheet
A mass of ice and snow of considerable thickness and large area on rock or floating on water. An ice sheet of greater than 50,000 square Km is called an ice cap.

Sea Ice


Sea water

Frazil Ice
Fine spicules or plates of ice in suspension in water.

Grease Ice
A later stage of freezing than frazile ice; coagulated spicules and plates.

Glacier
A mass of snow and ice continuously moving from higher to lower ground, or if afloat, constantly spreading.

Ice Berg
A large mass of floating ice, more than 5 meters above sea level that has broken away from a glacier.

Ice Shelf
A floating ice sheet of considerable thickness attached to a coast. The seaward side is the ice front.

Tabular Berg
A flat topped ice berg formed by breaking off from and ice shelf.

Shuga
An accumulation of spongy white lumps, a few centimeters across formed from slush or grease ice.

Ice Rind
A brittle, shiny crust formed on a quiet surface by direct freezing or from grease ice less than 5 centimeters thick.

Slush
Snow, saturated with water floating after a heavy snowfall.

Nilas
A thin elastic crust of floating ice bending on waves up to 10 centimeters thick.

Bergy Bits
A piece of floating ice less than 5 meters above sea level and not more than about 10 meters across. Growler A piece of floating ice, smaller than a bergy bit, almost awash.

Pancake Ice
A piece of new ice approximately circular, 30 centimeters to 3 meters across, with raised rims. Formed from freezing together of grease ice, slush or shuga or the break up of ice rind or nilas.

Fast Ice
Sea ice which remains fast along the coast where it is attached to the shore; an ice front, ice wall or over shoals or between grounded ice bergs.

Pack Ice
Any area of sea ice other than fast ice no matter the form or disposition.

Floe
A piece of floating ice other than fast ice or glacier ice. There are five sizes:

Ice Cake - less than 10 meters across
Small - 10 to 100 meters across
Medium - 100 to 1000 meters across
Big - 1 to 10 kilometers across
Vast - Over 10 kilometers across



Brash
Accumulation of floating ice made up of fragments not more than 2 meters across.
The wreckage of other forms of ice

Sea Water

 
 

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