“Ice floats, so if the glacier is free-floating, then it melting doesn’t cause a sea level rise”
A thing I recently learned: this is only true of ice floating on fresh water.
Salt water is more dense than fresh (and the ice itself is still mostly fresh even if it formed out of sea water) so ice floating on the sea floats a little higher than it would float on freshwater. This reduces its displacement and means that melting it does somewhat increase the water level.
Along with ice melting, the other main cause of sea level rise is the thermal expansion of ocean water. Until more recently, the two effects were about equal in magnitude.
“Ice floats, so if the glacier is free-floating, then it melting doesn’t cause a sea level rise”
A thing I recently learned: this is only true of ice floating on fresh water.
Salt water is more dense than fresh (and the ice itself is still mostly fresh even if it formed out of sea water) so ice floating on the sea floats a little higher than it would float on freshwater. This reduces its displacement and means that melting it does somewhat increase the water level.
Along with ice melting, the other main cause of sea level rise is the thermal expansion of ocean water. Until more recently, the two effects were about equal in magnitude.