Iceberg straight ahead! Oh…. Oh yeah…. Good thing we’re not on the Titanic!
Dial it back, Chirpy. We’re in Iceland, not on a ship that’s about to hit an iceberg and sink! Although, I have to admit I have been thinking of that famous disaster as I walk along Jokulsarlon Lagoon.
Icelandic kids play along the the iceberg-filled lagoon.
It’s true. As I look into the water I see that only 1/3 of the iceberg is poking out of the water. 2/3 of it is under the water. That’s A LOT of water frozen solid!
Many gallons of water are captured in the ice of an iceberg.
That got us thinking: Where did these icebergs come from? Where are they going? What happens when the ice melts? We’d have to go EXPLORING (Chirpy’s favorite word) to find out!
Icebergs are broken off bits of glacier floating in water. Some of them are VERY BIG.
It became clear that the icebergs were coming from the glacier on the other side of the lagoon. The glacier is the large field of ice on the land in the background of the picture above. Can you see it? It’s very thick – LOTS of ice – so it’s there all year ’round, even now in the summertime. Part of the glacier melts every summer. As it melts from the bottom, the sheet of ice slides downhill.
Icebergs float in the lagoon.
Parts of the glacier break off and slide into the lagoon. When the ice is floating it’s called an iceberg. We wanted a closer look, so we hopped into a boat to get to the other side of the lagoon.
We had to be careful not to run into the floating ice as we crossed the lagoon in a small inflatable boat.
The view from the boat was incredibly beautiful in the evening.
The wind blowing off the ice was freezing cold, but we didn’t mind because it was all so fascinating and so beautiful.
We came close to the edge of the glacier that’s sliding into the lagoon.
Be careful! Large blocks of ice break off from the glacier and become icebergs.
The lagoon opens into the Atlantic Ocean, so eventually the icebergs float out into the ocean. As they float, they melt. The water, which was once ice on land, now becomes part of the liquid water in the ocean. I’m sure you can see the cause and effect relationship here: land ice into the ocean → more water in the ocean.
Here’s the really important part….
The more water that’s added to the ocean, the higher the water level on land. This is called sea level rise.
In the video below, you’ll see an iceberg that floated out of the Jokulsarlon Lagoon and into the ocean. Now it’s melting rapidly.
The extra water has to go somewhere. Right? When you add ice or water to an already-full glass of water, what happens? The water level gets higher and it overflows the glass! Same with the ocean. When you add more ice and water, the water level gets higher and it overflows onto land.
This isn’t a problem if no one is living near the ocean, but if people are living on the coast (where the land meets the ocean), then that becomes a BIG problem.
In the video below, the animation shows years passing on the right, and what will happen if sea level keeps rising on the left.
As you can see, it’s happening slowly, over the years, but we need to pay attention to sea level rise now, so we can help slow it down. Let’s get to the nitty gritty….
What’s causing the land ice to melt and slide into the ocean? GLOBAL WARMING. We all know that warmer temperature causes ice to melt. That’s a no brainer. As our planet gets warmer, more and more land ice ends up in the ocean. Let’s work together to do something about it.
Click here to find out more about global warming, and what we can do to slow it down and help our planet.
Now I know from this page we are the ones that are making sea level rise go up but very slowly. We should stop this
I think that sea level rise is bad to the earth because it causes lots of flooding and that be a bad thing for the world
Sea level rise is a big problem, but I never knew it was this severe. Hopefully we can fix this problem!
What will happen if you put your hand in that water what will happen. Also I think we should stop polluting because its causing lots of gobal warming.
🙂 😉
Wow this was great information.It is cool that the ice in the ocean went up.That was so cool when you got that close to the glacier.That most have been fun for you.
I never knew that icebergs are from pieces of glaciers floating in the water. I never knew how much ice is in Iceland too. That is a lot of ice, which also could mean lots of water flooding into towns. I think we should slow down climate change to prevent this from happening.
Its really bad that the people/biosphere are polluting the air/atomsphere which is making the earth/geosphere heat up and then ice/hydrosphere melts which means and then sea levels rises.
🙂
It is beautiful to see but is not going to look so good in a few years because of global warming and that ice will float into the ocean and eventually contribute to sea level rise.
Wow when i saw that Chirpy picture that water was high where Chirpy was now i feel bad becuse people that live near the water can floud and why do they make houses near the sea? :??? :confused
It is horibble that the ice is melting and the sea level is rising. We should stop polluting the earth so the sea level will not rise anymore then it has.;]
I have a couple ways to slow down sea level rise: Recycle, if you recycle less carbon dioxide would be put into the air and when the factory’s make new products they release allot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 😛
I think we can do something about climate change and we can slow it down. the hyorosphere effecting the atomsphere over sea leavle rise. WOW. We need to slow this problem beauce there is NO other plan.
WE should stop global warming and sea level rise! All that ice can stop all the global warming and bounce the sun’s heat back to space.If we work together we can stop global warming!!!
😛 😎 🙂 😉
Oh No! I can’t beleive that if all that ice melts we could be in sierous trubel! :{ I hope the ice gets saved by the people of earth because if not all our houses will probaly be under water in a mater of centurys! [even though we will not be alive I still don’t want that to happen]
😛
I cant believe that there is so much ice and because of global warming they will all desipere and because of all the ice melting the sea level will rise and houses will get flooded and i think that people should pay more attention to global warming.
WOW icebergs are so cool its like when we did that science experiment in class!
I think we should do something to slow down sea level rise. I think this because it would help prevent floods, which can lead to wars over land. For example we can recycle instead of throwing everything in the garbage. This would slow down the pollution going into the air. Slowing down the pollution would help because less pollution will take longer to raise temperatures. This will give us time to figure out solutions to slowing down the rising temperatures, caused by melted ice, melted by higher temperatures, caused by pollution from human.
I think it is crucial for global warming to have all that ice melting! that ice can help cool down the earth, and slow down global warming. Now, with all that melting, our earth will heat up even faster, which effects the biosphere because it heats up the planet.This needs to stop.
don’t pollute! 🙂
I thought that the video of the seal in the water was a great way to show how the hydrosphere is affecting the biosphere. The melting ice makes the sea level rise, which affects the fish and mammles in the water that also live on land, like seals, to have less land, causing them to have to swim all the time. This would also affect the breeding grounds of seals. I think that if I want the sea mammles to survive, the the ice burgs need to stop melting.
I think it’s amazing that icebergs can float that far, even out of a lagoon and into the ocean!
These were amazing pictures that you were able to take. It was really fascinating seeing the iceberg melt and the iceberg chirpy was on.
you should pay attention to global warming because in some places it will cause a big flood and the mabey population will go down
I found the video where only the top of the ice burg was showing very interesting. I know that ice burgs are huge, so it was shocking to me! this proves that sea level is rising and that it is a problem.
I never knew that some of the ice that has once been on land can now be part of the Atlantic Ocean! 🙂
I thought that how glaciers fall off mountains and become ice burgs was really cool.
I think this is a very serious and dangerous problem, especially for people who live on coastlines. We all must fight global warming to stop this from happening, but the people who live on the coasts have extra motivation.