Thanks for pointing out my mistake in the nomenclature Andreas. Not many bergs or floes here in NZ. We may be fresh faced plebs from the colonies here in NZ but I'd hate to be thought as a "berger".
We did have some giant Bergs visit about ten years ago. Larsen remnants I believe they were believed to be. They actually helicoptered Shrek the rogue merino ram out to be shorn of his ten year 12kg fleece on one as a publicity stunt, would you believe.
Are you sure that the roughness factor is not significant? The constant mobility, pulverisation, slushy mixing in magnitudes more lead area thats been going on all winter suggests to me that a lot of it is barely solid or frozen, loosely bound, waxy rubble, only weeks old. Perhaps more akin to a slushy that's been half-melted, drained, then refrozen. I guess surface area aside, the energy per volume required to melt it is a question.
I suppose that the question could be answered by getting some sea water, freezing it with some partial thaw, mix and and drain cycles at intervals, and comparing melt energy with a sample prepared by undisturbed deep freeze.
Have plenty of seawater myself but no freezer. Refuse to part with any of the solar electrickeries I net for that. Tri-generation system with wind powered refrigeration pumps and a heavy brine cold store, solar thermal heavy brine hot store, with organic Kalina cycle turbine is on the ship to do list and most of the parts and materials are aboard, but there are other priorities right now.
Thanks Jim.
I assumed it was my use of the Suomi imageset on worldview, not the Gods treating us to a snapshot of a parallel time-stream in the multiverse.