Ice Calving

Ice calving, also called glacier calving or iceberg calving, is the sudden breaking away of a chunk of ice from the edge of a glacier, ice shelf, or similar ice mass where it meets open water. It occurs wherever glaciers terminate in the ocean or in freshwater lakes, and it is a major and highly visible contributor to glacier mass loss: Greenland's glaciers alone produce an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 icebergs a year through calving, and calving events at sites such as Alaska's Johns Hopkins Glacier and various Antarctic ice shelves can generate waves large enough to keep boats several kilometers away. When the rate of ice lost to calving outpaces the glacier's supply of new ice from accumulation, the glacier retreats, making calving an important process for understanding both glacier retreat and its contribution to sea level change. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/