Seawater

Seawater is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world’s oceans has a salinity of about 3.5%. This means that every kilogram, or every litre, of seawater has approximately 35 grams (1.2 oz) of dissolved salts (mostly, but not entirely, the ions of sodium chloride: Na+, Cl−). The average density of seawater at the ocean surface is 1.025 g/ml; seawater is denser than freshwater (which reaches a maximum density of 1.000 g/ml at a temperature of 4 °C (39 °F)) because of the salts’ added mass. The freezing point of sea water decreases with increasing salinity and is about −2 °C (28.4 °F) at 35 g/l.[1]

Sea ice

Sea ice is largely formed from ocean water that freezes. Because the oceans consist of saltwater, this occurs at about -1.8 °C (28.8 °F). Sea ice may be contrasted with icebergs, which are chunks of ice shelves or glaciers that calve into the ocean. Icebergs are compacted snow and hence fresh water. Rarely, sea ice may be deliberately created or manipulated, see Arctic geoengineering for details.

Land-fast ice, or simply fast ice, is sea ice that has frozen along coasts (“fastened” to them) or to the sea floor over shallow parts of the continental shelf, and extends out from land into sea. Unlike drift ice, it does not move with currents and wind.

Drift ice consists of ice that floats on the surface of the water, as distinguished from the fast ice, attached to coasts. When packed together in large masses, drift ice is called pack ice. Pack ice may be either freely floating or blocked by fast ice while drifting past.

The most important areas of pack ice are the polar ice packs formed from seawater in the Earth’s polar regions: the Arctic ice pack of the Arctic Ocean and the Antarctic ice pack of the Southern Ocean. Polar packs significantly change their size during seasonal changes of the year. Because of vast amounts of water added to or removed from the oceans and atmosphere, the behavior of polar ice packs have a significant impact of the global changes in climate