Michael A. Stecker
Places Index
Icebergs of Chile
(November, 1988 visit) x Other Chile Pages Chile Home Page Chile Photos . Other Iceberg Page: Icebergs
You Tube
"Chile-Antarctica
1988" slide
show at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DvkRJ4H81E
Slide Show
Icebergs Slide Show
Icebergs can be seen in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern
Chile. They are usually the result of calving glaciers or ice flows and
are therefore made of fresh (non-salt) water. This is in contrast to
sea ice, which is frozen salt or seawater. Icebergs can be brilliant
white, blue, green or turquoise in color. It is not uncommon to see
black or brown components caused by the glacier gauging through rock and
soil. Their unusual shapes are caused by weathering effects - erosion by
waves, wind and melting. Scattering of light in the glacial ice
produces the blue and green hues. After the sunlight is scattered by
enough crystals, most all of the red light is removed, leaving only blue
light. After more scattering, the blue light turns to dark blue, and the
deeper the ice the deeper the blue becomes. Snow and ice crystals
reflect panchromatically giving a white appearance. Though the core of
an iceberg may be composed of very clean ice, the surface of an old berg
can be rather grimy. While it's the tip of the iceberg that we see,
most of the berg itself is submerged. Usually, only about 1/8 of the
mass of an iceberg is above the surface of the water. However, this
doesn't mean that the submerged portion is 7 times deeper then the
height of the above-water ice. If the visible part of an iceberg is
100-ft high (31 m), the submerged part may extend 125 feet (38 m)
beneath the water. The point is, ice is slightly less dense than water
(92% of the density of water), so it floats with most of its mass below
the surface. Car or house-sized icebergs are sometimes called
"growlers", while the smallest
icebergs are known as "bergy bits".
The photos below were all from Parque Nacional Laguna San Rafael and
have their origin in the San Rafael Glacier located in the Asien region
of southern Chile between Chiloe Island and Torres del Paine. This
glacier-filled, 4.2 million acre park in Pacific coastal Patagonia
encompassing some of the most spectacular fjords, mountain scenery and
icebergs in Chile.
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