Especially since most of an iceberg is under water.
In: Physics
A floating object displaces an amount of fluid equal to it’s weight.
Let’s say you have an iceberg that weighs 100,000 tonnes. It would displace 100,000 tonnes of water, and the rest of the iceberg would be above the water line.
If the iceberg were to completely melt, it would fill in exactly the amount of water it was displacing.
The problem with the melt is that not all the ice is floating. A lot of it is at least partially supported by land masses, whether it’s the Canadian Archipelago, or the Antarctican continent.
The problem is compounded that ice and snow reflect sunlight back out into space, whereas water will help to absorb sunlight. As we lose our polar caps, more of the sun’s light becomes absorbed by the Earth, so we gain that much more energy over time, causing more global average warming.
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