Why are icebergs freshwater not salty?
Show answer & explanation
Answer: Ice forms from compressed snow
Ice forms from compressed snow ✓ — Correct! Icebergs calve (break off) from glaciers, which form on land from accumulated snowfall over thousands of years. Snow is freshwater from evaporated ocean water (evaporation leaves salt behind). Compressed snow becomes ice, flows as glaciers to the coast, breaks into icebergs. That's why they're fresh!
Rain washes salt away — Wrong. Icebergs come from glaciers (compressed snow), which were never salty. Rain doesn't wash them—they're freshwater from the start.
Ocean surface has less salt — Wrong. Surface ocean water has similar salinity. Icebergs are fresh because they form from snow on land, not from frozen ocean water.
Go deeper: Glacier
🚀 Play today's quiz — new questions dailyMore Earth Science questions
- In folded Appalachians, why can one rock layer become a ridge while its neighbor becomes a valley?
- Loose material moves downhill from a fresh fault scarp, rounding it. What sets the smoothing speed?
- Why can a long active fault affect more river basins than a short one?
- Why does erosion happen faster near active faults than in areas with heavy rain?
- Why can quartz sand with beryllium-10 reveal how fast a whole river basin erodes?
- Earthquake shaking lasts seconds. How can it leave rock easier for later rivers to erode?