What is the difference between sea ice and land ice?

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Sea ice, as in Arctic ice cap, consists of salt water on the surface of the ocean, which has been frozen. Land ice such as glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets, which are immense glaciers, consist of fresh water from precipitation.  VIDEOGRAPHIC

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00:00 Sea ice, as in the Arctic, consists of salt water on the surface of the ocean which has

00:14 been frozen.

00:17 When temperatures rise in summer, it melts, or partially melts, before refreezing the

00:21 following winter.

00:22 Just like an ice block melting in a glass of water, the melting of sea ice does not

00:26 raise sea levels, but the reduction of sea ice does amplify the heating of the oceans,

00:31 as the darker water absorbs more sunlight than the more reflective ice, an effect known

00:36 as albedo.

00:38 Land ice, such as glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets, which are immense glaciers, consists

00:43 of fresh water from precipitation, sometimes kilometres thick.

00:47 These glacial ice formations flow towards the sea, pushed by the weight of their ice.

00:52 They can extend into the ocean, forming ice shelves.

00:56 There are two ice sheets on Earth, in Antarctica and Greenland, with the smaller ice caps found

01:02 elsewhere such as Iceland.

01:04 Due to the effect of heat, these ice shelves become thinner until they break off and become

01:09 iceberg, a process known as carving.

01:12 In this case of glacial ice, water is transferred from the land to the oceans, which does raise

01:18 sea levels.

01:19 Ice shelves can also act to retain the ice sheet or glacier and slow its movement.

01:23 If the shelves are sufficiently weakened, the movement of the ice sheet will increase,

01:27 releasing even more fresh water into the oceans.

01:30 According to the scientific group known as the IPCC, just the melting of the Antarctic

01:36 ice sheet would raise sea levels by 10 to 30 centimetres by the end of the century.

01:41 -END-

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