ICE wonderful ICE

Ice.

There is a lot of it in Antarctica.

But did you know that not all ice is the same? That there are many different types of ice.

"Grotto in an iceberg" by National Library of New Zeland photographed during the British Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1913, 5 Jan 1911. Photographer: Herbert Ponting, Alexander Turnbull Library

Fast Ice	Fast Ice (landfast ice) is ice that is attached to the coastline, sea floor or grounded icebergs. It does not move with wind or currents.
	Drift ice is any sea ice that isn’t attached to land. It is moved around by sea currents and wind. When its driven together in a large single mass, its called pack ice. Photo by Jason Auch
New Ice	New ice refers to recently frozen sea water and can refers to frazil and grease ice or a combination of the two
	Frazil ice is the first formation of sea ice. It forms in supercooled water as randomly oriented ice crystals. Photo by Elizabeth Weir
	Grease ice forms at sea and looks like an oil slick. It is a soupy layer of frazil crystals representing the second stage in the formation of sea ice. "GreaseIce2" by Dr. Kathy Kuletz / USFWS
	Nilas ice is frozen sea ice up to 10 cm thick. It bends without breaking. "Nilas Sea Ice" by Brocken Inaglory.
	Pancake Ice is formed when strong wave action that herds slush or grease ice often forms pancake ice. It creates little pancaked of ice with a raise edge. The movement of the sea, bashing each pancake together is what gives pancake ice its shape. Its a little stronger than frazil or grease ice, but its still not very thick. Photo found at Ice Stories
Young ice	Young ice is the transition between nilas ice and first year ice. Its thicker and not flexible, and will break on wave action.
First year ice	First year sea ice is thicker than young ice, but does not last an entire year, melting in the spring.
Old sea ice	Old sea ice is ice that has survived more than one melting season (summer) It can be further classified into second year ice, or multilayer ice.
Deformations-
	Rafted ice is where two floes meet together, and one of them slips on top of the other one. Photo by Polarnix
	Pressure ridges occur when two ice floes collide and cause a stress that pushes block of ice up and down Picture from Britannica
	Stamukha is a grounded accumulation of sea ice rubble that typically develops along the boundary between fast ice and the drifting pack ice. It usually occurs in belts parallel to the shore and is a type of pressure ridge Drawing by  Lusilier
	Rotten ice has started to melt or disintegrate. It contains a lot of liquid water and can be honeycombed. Photo from NOAA.
	Slush ice is a slurry of small ice crystals and liquid water. It is often very dirty, and naturally forms when ice melts. Photo by Jenny Ross, at Live Better
	Sastrugi are sharp irregular grooves or ridges formed on a snow surface by wind erosion, saltation of snow particles, and deposition, and found in polar and temperate snow regions. They form on both land ice and sea ice, and can be several meters tall. Photo by Ted Scambos, NSIDC
	Anchor ice is attached to the bottom of the sea bed. Anchor ice crystals in the Antarctic are generally in the form of thin, circular platelets of 2-10cm in diameter. Large masses of irregularly-oriented crystals form anchor ice formations, which may be as large as 4m in diameter when attached to large immovable objects on the seafloor. Picture from EarthRef.org
	Congelation ice forms underneath already established ice. Picture: "Karnis2" by Kr-val

And that's just the sea ice... lets not forget about the ice on the land. Starting out with

Glacier

Glaciers are made up of fallen snow that, over many years, compresses into large, thickened ice masses. They flow downhill toward the sea like huge rivers.


An ice sheet is a mass of glacier ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi),thus also known as continental glacier. There are only two currently in existence- Antarctica and Greenland.

Ice shelf

An ice shelf is a thick floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface. Ice shelves are only found in Antarctica, Greenland and Canada.
Photo from VIMS

Iceberg

An iceberg is a large piece of freshwater ice that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open water.
Photo "Iceberg at Baffin Bay" by Tech. Sgt. Dan Rea, U.S. Air Force