Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Icebergs Melting* (*But were afraid to ask)

Iceberg calving accounts for half of the mass discharge from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Through their displacement and progressive melt, icebergs can impact both the regional and large-scale ocean circulation and marine ecosystems. Notwithstanding their importance, our understanding of where and how icebergs melt is limited and their representation in ocean and climate models is oversimplistic. As a result, model-based predictions of iceberg melt rates, of the fate of the meltwater, and of its impact on the ocean are highly uncertain. The focus of this lecture will be on laboratory experiments investigating the influence of the ambient flow, the icebergs’ aspect ratio and the Earth rotation on iceberg melting.