Does the ice in the Arctic go down to the seabed, or does it float on liquid water?

Question

If the continent sized block of ice keeps melting, and has nothing left to anchor it, it would almost certainly rotate slower than the planet due to friction. Then it would start crashing into land masses causing earthquakes, and perhaps would de-stabilized the Earth's Axis of Rotation noticably. RIGHT ?

Answer 1

Floats - it's sea ice.

Answer 2

No. The sea ice does not have enough mass to cause earthquakes or destabilize the Earth's rotation.

The Arctic ice does move. it moves constantly in sections, causing ice ridges to form where the ice floes pile on top of each other, and opening gaps of open water in-between. This was a hazard to polar explorers.

The ice moves mainly because of polar currents and winds, not just because of the Earth's rotation.

But proof that the ice does not go down to the sea floor is the fact that both U.S. and Russian submarines use the Arctic ice to hide beneath.

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BTW, ice sometimes piles up on the shores of Arctic islands too, when it is driven there by currents or storms..

Answer 3

The Arctic and Antarctic have two main kinds of ice: sea ice and glacial ice. people get them confused.

Sea ice comes and goes with the seasons., and is generally only a few meters thick. Sea ice does NOT make icebergs.

Polar glacial ice sits on the land (mainly Antarctica in South and Greenland in the north), and slides down to the sea, where large chunks break off to form icebergs. The interior ice caps in Antarctica and Greenland are several kilometers thick.

Glaciers can also feed into large bays, where they form ice shelfs hundreds of feet thick, and sometimes as big as countries. This is NOT sea ice, though it semi-floats in those bays. Go look at the Ross Ice Shelf on the map of Antarctica. These ice shelfs can sometimes break off into icebergs as big as a small state.

Answer 4

I don't think ice is that large, heavy, or dense enough 2 touch the seabed. Besides, submarines travel beneath the ice regularly, notably one Russian sub that just dropped a capsule w/ their flag inside atop the North Pole. As a matter of fact, there's a lil hype over exploration beneath the ice, such as Denmark hoping 2 claim a underwater mountain range extends southward to their territory of Greenland.

Answer 5

It floats but also rests on land at the edges. It's much lighter than the rest of the earth so it wouldn't affect it's rotation.

Answer 6

It floats.
Ummmmm.....no......you have your physics all wrong. Remember inertia? Not to mention rotational inertia.....