SWEET Ontology Realm Cryosphere

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This zone usually occurs at higher elevations and generally overlaps the conversion of snow to glacial ice.

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Congelation ice usually forms through the fusion/coalescence of platelets into solid ice.

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Typically 3 to 4 millimeters in diameter. These new ice classes refer to both marine water and fresh water ice. If using this term for annotation, use it in conjunction with another envo term to express whether the ice is in a marine, freshwater, or other system.

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The composition of an ice core can be used to reconstruct past climates and climate change; typically removed from an ice sheet (Antarctica and Greenland) or from high mountain glaciers elsewhere.

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Land ice is any part of the Earth's seasonal or perennial ice cover that has formed over land as the result, principally, of the freezing of precipitation; opposed to sea ice formed by the freezing of seawater. Thus, an iceberg or tabular iceberg is land ice as well as its parent glacier, ice sheet, or ice shelf. The two major concentrations of land ice are the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. Glaciers and ice caps are the other important forms; however, some members of the glaciology community hold that glaciers (i.e. rock glaciers) need not have any ice.

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Has related synonym drift ice. Prior to approximately 2014, pack ice was used for all ranges of drift ice concentrations, thus the terms were in close synonymy.

In the United States, NOAA sea ice operations does not include superstructure icing as being sea ice. In sea ice operations however, sea ice is any form of ice found at sea which has originated from the freezing of sea water. It presents the main kind of floating ice encountered at sea. Except where it forms ridges, sea ice is up to a few metres thick, in which respect it differs from shelf ice. Sea ice may be discontinuous pieces (ice floes) moved on the ocean surface by wind and currents (pack ice), or a motionless sheet attached to the coast (land-fast ice). In brief, it forms first as lolly ice (frazil crystals), thickens into sludge, and coagulates into sheet ice, pancake ice, or into floes of various shapes and sizes. Thereafter, sea ice may develop into pack ice and/or become a form of pressure ice. Sea ice less than one year old is called first-year ice. Perennial ice is sea ice that survives at least one summer. It may be subdivided into second-year ice and multi-year ice, where multiyear ice has survived at least two summers.

Sea ice develops from young ice; thickness from 0.3 to 2 meters (1 to 6.6 feet). Sea ice be subdivided into thin first-year ice (white ice), medium first-year ice, and thick first-year ice. First-year ice is distinguished from older ice primarily by having a higher salinity. Undeformed first-year ice differs from older ice in that it is smoother and lacks refrozen melt ponds. Characteristically level where undisturbed by pressure, but where ridges occur, they distinguished by being larger, more angular, and more porous than multiyear ridges.

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Newly formed tabular icebergs have nearly vertical sides and flat tops. In the Antarctic, they may be tens of kilometers wide, up to 160 km (100 miles) long, and as much as 300 m (1000 ft) thick, with about 30 m (100 ft) exposed above the sea surface. In the Arctic, large icebergs of this type are called ice islands, but they are considerably smaller than the largest of the antarctic variety. Has synonyms tabular berg, table iceberg. Formerly called barrier iceberg.

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