Melting dynamics of freely floating ice in calm waters

Predicting floating ice dynamics remains a challenging problem with implications for Earth's climate. While gigantic icebergs have garnered worldwide attention, small ice bodies have been overlooked, and we still lack their mechanistic models. Aided by a novel real-time tracking, we unravel the transient processes of freely floating ice in calm waters—including the kinematics, phase transition, and surrounding fluid dynamics—that govern melting. Combining the convective Stefan problem and our experimental results, we develop and validate a theoretical model for the melt rate, identifying ice geometry and convective regime as key controls. Furthermore, the ice-driven convective volume flux is found to exceed the meltwater flux by orders of magnitude, underscoring the ecological relevance of floating ice; it not only supplies freshwater but also acts as a destabilizing buoyancy source that redistributes mass macroscopically. Our study provides a foundation for developing mechanistic param..., , , # Data from: Melting dynamics of freely floating ice in calm waters

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.2v6wwq023](10.5061/dryad.2v6wwq023)

## Description of the data and file structure

Dataset obtained from laboratory experiments that investigated kinematics and hydrodynamics induced during the melting processes of freely floating ice. This dataset is aimed at reproducing figures used in the article, \"Melting dynamics of freely floating ice in calm waters\" published in Science Advances (doi: 10.1126/sciadv.ady3529). The laboratory experiments were performed by the authors at Penn GEFLOW Lab ([https://web.sas.upenn.edu/geflow-lab/](https://web.sas.upenn.edu/geflow-lab/)).

### Files and variables

#### File: dataset.zip

**Description:** A zip file containing ice tracking log, ice interface, velocity fields in waters, and the final result of melting characterization.

\"weak/\" and \"strong/\" have exactly the same data structure, and these folder names represent that the former is the dataset f...