How long does it take for an average amount of broken iceberg in Greenland to raise sea levels in all oceans?

If an iceberg floating in the ocean melts, water levels will go down infinitesimally. Water expands when it freezes, contracts when it melts.

You have to define “average amount”. Some iceberg calving is huge, like the size of New Jersey, while some is considerably smaller. I don’t know what the ‘average’ size is. I don’t think there is one, because a lot of calving is not known or observed by people.

Second, I think the answer is infinitesimally small. Let’s say that a 200 square mile piece of iceberg split off. Let’s also assume that about 70% of the earth’s surface is ocean.

Icebergs can vary greatly in size, ranging from very large – greater than 10 million tons and hundreds of metres long – to large, medium, and small bergs. The smallest are termed “bergy bits,” which are the size of a small house, and “growlers,” which are the size of a grand piano. These smaller pieces are hazardous to ships because radar may not pick them up as they bob up and down among the waves. The average weight for a Grand Banks-area iceberg is 100,000–200,000 tons – about the size of a cubic 15-story building

Let’s also assume that oceans cover about 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, which is about 360 million square kilometers of ocean.

400000000 / 3.87500775e+15 (# pounds divided by surface area of the oceans)

equals

1.032256e-7

which is something like .0000001 feet (or about one millionth of a foot)

Bottom line – you wouldn’t notice a difference.

link to iceberg facts

May I ask why your are narrowing your question to Greenland? What about Antarctica, Iceland, Canada? When you throw them all in the pot and they’re all melting year after year, and not refreezing as much as they have in the past, that’s when you’re going to be in trouble.

Did the iceberg originate on land or in water?

@kritiper Hit the nail on the head, if the iceberg slid off of land the water/ice is added to the ocean the water level goes up.
Whereas if the iceberg was already floating it is part of the ocean and water level doesn’t change

An iceberg is a floating mass of ice. According to Archimedes a floating body displaces its own weight of water so when the iceberg melts it won’t displace any more water than it does already.

One small effect to bear in mind is that the iceberg will consist of frozen fresh water while the water it floats in is salt. As salt water is denser than fresh a smaller volume of sea water displaced by the iceberg is equal to its weight, the melted fresh water will take up a slightly larger volume than the displaced salt water. This will result in a small increase in the water level.

Just want to know how fast it raises all water. The compression wave from one part of the world to the far end of the planet.

Tidal effect would outweigh the iceberg in most cases, i.e. Bay Fundy total height change approaches 50 feet, yes fifty.

I think the water would spread out across the globe faster than the ice would melt. The only comparison I can think of are tsunamis which travel at 475 miles per hour across the oceans.

Where are you coming up with these scenarios? @RedDeerGuy1? Are you talking about a glacier calving? And how big of a chunk are you talking about? I guess I’m not exactly following this question.

@Dutchess_III From a news video about a glacier calving in Greenland. I can’t find it. Just a typical amount. Wondering how fast the wave is, and how long it takes to raise the sea level in say Australia. It’s not instantaneous, but is at an average speed. I want to know that speed.

I can’t imagine a calved ice berg creating enough of a wave to even register. I think any wave would die out within a few miles of the original glacier. And coming off of a glacier, sure it would raise the sea level a bit, but not enough to measure.
Also, it would raise the sea level evenly all over the world, not just in one area, like Australia.

I think @elbanditoroso had the best answer.

It is still an interesting question in principle. Unfortunately the amount of change is so small. Imagine you have a pool of water and you gently drop a huge object into it. It doesn’t matter if it melts or floats. It is going to raise the water level. How long does it take to reach the outer limits of the pool?

According to the Tsunami Center (US NOAA) “the deeper the water; the faster the tsunami. In the deep ocean, tsunamis can move as fast as a jet plane, over 500 mph, and can cross entire oceans in less than a day. As the waves enter shallow water near land, they slow to the speed of a car, approximately 20 or 30 mph.”

So if a calving iceberg releases as much energy as an earthquake (which I doubt seriously) then the wave from that action is running at 500 mph, or to get across the world, about 12 hours to go 24000 miles.

But I don’t think that the iceberg breaking up is anywhere near that strong.

Probably as fast as a ripple of waves in a pond would travel.

Eureka.

If the ice cube is already in the bath then in line with Archimedes principle it displaces the same amount of water as when it melts.

If the entire 2,850,000 cubic kilometres (684,000 cu mi) of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 m (24 ft)[2], over 14,000 years at current rates of melting. The Greenland Ice Sheet is sometimes referred to under the term inland ice, or its Danish equivalent, indlandsis. It is also sometimes referred to as an ice cap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet

Ya, sea level rise is not about icebergs (ice already in water) melting. It’s about glaciers on land melting and moving into oceans.

So it’s another impossible confusing question. It amounts to asking “how fast does ice melt?”

@Zaku Thank you! That’s what I tried tosay.

Not fast enough, is your answer @stanleybmanly. People slip sliding away all over the place here today.

My take on it was that it was already in the water. The question refers to “iceberg” which is in the water. Glacier would be different.

Right. That’s what was confusing me, too. Anything added to the ocean is going to raise sea levels, including people swimming in it.

The question is another in the blizzard of questions that can mean damned near anything you choose: “average amount of broken iceberg?” What’s your guess on the meaning of that?

Average = ice cube sized, or average = New Jersey sized?

and broken iceberg?

An iceberg is already broken.