If water expands when it freezes and ice contracts when it melts, shouldn’t icebergs/ice caps melting bring the water level down?

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Especially since most of an iceberg is under water.

In: Physics

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Seen alot of comments about displacing of water etc so lets clear it up. Icebergs are only partially submerged in water (ocean) this means only the submerged part of the iceberg accounts for displacing water. However as the ice melts it does raise water levels as more water is being added. But if there is less ice as more of it turns to water then there will be less water being displaced by the ice. In short you are correct by your presumption in your question. What’s actually happening is the both are happening and are in constant battle over which process takes precedent, this only true for the short term (partial melting of the ice). However in the long term a complete melting of the iceberg would raise sea level, for example if you put ice in a glass of water and marked the water line then waited for it to melt you would see the water line would now be higher but only slightly. As the ice has already been technically speaking the top layer of ice has not been submerged which accounts for the extra gain in water when it has melted.

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