7 - Sea ice
from Part II - The marine cryosphere
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
History
The earliest account of sea ice is due to Pytheas, a Greek sailor who encountered it southeast of Iceland in 325 BC (Sturm and Massom, 2010). Later encounters were made by Celtic monks in the northwest North Atlantic in CE 550 and 800 (Weeks, 1998). In the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, whalers and sealers operated in Arctic waters of the North Atlantic, Barents Sea, and Greenland Sea and Scoresby (1820), a whaling captain, published a notable book on ice and ocean conditions in the Greenland Sea. A remarkable expedition was F. Nansen’s drift across the Arctic Ocean in the Fram, 1893–1896; his observations of the vessel’s motion led to V. W. Ekman’s theory of the spiral of ocean currents with depth. The first book on the physics of sea ice was written by Malmgren (1927) based on observations made during the Norwegian Maud north polar expedition, 1918–1925.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Global CryospherePast, Present and Future, pp. 221 - 275Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011