Sea ice terminology. Describes the initial stage of fast ice formation consisting of nilas or young ice; its width varying from a few metres up to 200 metres from the shoreline.
The initial stage of fast ice formation consisting of nilas or young ice, its width varying from a few yards (meters) up to 110 to 220 yd (100-200 m) from the shoreline.
The period from approximately 10 800 to 9600 BC when climate in the region around Greenland cooled by 5-7C within a few decades and recovered with similar rapidity at the end of the period; named for
the expansion of the geographic range of the arctic herb Dryas octopetala. Evidence is accumulating for a wider, perhaps global, extent, but the Younger Dryas was most strongly felt around the North Atlantic Ocean. Changes in the thermohaline circulation of the oceans are widely believed to be implicated in the onset and ending of the Younger Dryas cooling. These were in turn associated with a switch to the St. Lawrence River as the major route for meltwater reaching the North Atlantic from the retreating continental ice cap. Other similarly rapid oscillations in climate are recorded through much of the last glacial in ice cores from Greenland and in marine sediment cores from the North Atlantic (Dansgaard-Oeschger events). The period since the Younger Dryas (the Holocene) lacks such extreme excursions.
A period 12.85 to 11.65 ka (thousand years before 1950), during the deglaciation, characterized by a temporary return to colder conditions in many locations, especially around the North Atlantic.
Ice in the transitioning stage between nilas and first year ice, 4 to 12 inches (10-30 cm) in thickness. May be subdivided into gray ice and gray-white ice.
Sea ice terminology which describes ice in the transition stage between nilas and first-year ice. It is of between 10 cm and 30 cm in thickness, and may be subdivided into grey ice and grey-white ice.