Melt pond

Melt ponds are pools of open water that form on sea ice in the warmer months of spring and summer.

Melt ponds are usually darker than the surrounding ice, and their distribution and size is highly variable.

Water from melt ponds over land surface can run into crevasses or moulins – tubes leading under ice sheets or glaciers – turning into meltwater.

The effect is an increase in the rate of ice flow to the oceans, as the fluid behaves like a lubricant in the basal sliding of glaciers.

[5] Accumulated changes by ponding on ice sheets appear in the earthquake record of Greenland and other glaciers:[6] "Quakes ranged from six to 15 per year from 1993 to 2002, then jumped to 20 in 2003, 23 in 2004, and 32 in the first 10 months of 2005.

As ice melts, the liquid water collects in depressions on the surface and deepens them, forming these melt ponds in the Arctic . These fresh water ponds are separated from the salty sea below and around it, until breaks in the ice merge the two.