Antarctic Ice Shelves
From The Encyclopedia of Earth
Ross Ice Shelf. Source: NOAA
Figure 1. Antarctica's 10 largest ice shelf areas. (Source: NSIDC)
The Antarctic Ice Shelves are a set of frozen water landforms around the coastal zone of Antarctica. An ice shelf is a thick slab of ice, attached to a coastline and extending out over the ocean as a seaward extension of the grounded ice sheet. Ice shelves range in thickness from about 50 to 600 meters, and some shelves persist for thousands of years. In Antarctica, these ice shelves are generally in contact with the main Antarctic ice sheet. They fringe the continent of Antarctica, and, at their seaward edge, periodically calve tabular icebergs. There are 47 named ice shelves in Antarctica catalogued in the United States Geological Servey (USGS) Geographic Names Information Service (GNIS):
- Abbot Ice Shelf
- Amery Ice Shelf
- Bach Ice Shelf
- Brahms Ice Shelf
- Britten Ice Shelf
- Brunt Ice Shelf
- Cook Ice Shelf
- Cosgrove Ice Shelf
- Crosson Ice Shelf
- Dotson Ice Shelf
- Edward VIII Ice Shelf
- Ekström Ice Shelf
- Filchner Ice Shelf
- Fimbul Ice Shelf
- George VI Ice Shelf
- Getz Ice Shelf
- Gillett Ice Shelf
- Hannan Ice Shelf
- Jelbart Ice Shelf
- Jones Ice Shelf
- Lady Newnes Ice Shelf
- Larsen Ice Shelf (Larsen A and B)
- Lazarev Ice Shelf
- McMurdo Ice Shelf
- Moscow University Ice Shelf
- Müller Ice Shelf
- Nickerson Ice Shelf
- Prince Gustav Ice Shelf
- Publications Ice Shelf
- Quar Ice Shelf
- Rameau Ice Shelf
- Riiser-Larsen Ice Shelf
- Ronne Ice Shelf
- Ross Ice Shelf
- Shackleton Ice Shelf
- Slava Ice Shelf
- Stange Ice Shelf
- Sulzberger Ice Shelf
- Swinburne Ice Shelf
- Venable Ice Shelf
- Verdi Ice Shelf
- Voyeykov Ice Shelf
- West Ice Shelf
- Wilkins Ice Shelf
- Wordie Ice Shelf
- Wyers Ice Shelf
- Zubchatyy Ice Shelf
