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Ice, Ice & More Ice Quick
Facts |
 QUICK FACTS - Ice, Ice & More Ice |
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- This is how Admiral Richard E Byrd, described icebergs when he first saw them: `Stricken fleets of ice bigger by far than all the navies in the world, wondering hopelessly through a smoking gloom'.
- Antarctica contains about 90% of the world's ice and scientists think it has endured a continuous ice age for millions of years.
- Sea ice cover in the Southern Ocean affects not only the marine ecosystem but the weather patterns of the whole southern hemisphere,
- The movement or drift of icebergs around and away from Antarctica is controlled by sea ice cover, wind speed, shelf depth, wind direction, surface currents and the size and depth of the iceberg.
- There have been suggestions that icebergs could be pushed to New Zealand, where the ice would be melted with the resulting water being sold to countries like Australia or the Middle East to help their drought problems. This idea is still an idea!
- Ice-breaking vessels like HMS Endurance have powerful engines and strong hulls that allow them to make their way through thick ice. Ice breakers do not push the ice aside; the powerful engines push the ship's bow onto the ice and the weight of the bow crushes the underlying ice. The Ship reverses, and the powers ahead before running up onto the ice again to repeat the process.
- Two thousand trillion tonnes (2,000,000,000,000,000) of ice leave Antarctica each year in the form of icebergs.
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