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An ice tongue forms when a glacier that is confined by a valley moves very rapidly out into a lake or ocean, relative to other ice along the coastline. When such ice surges past adjacent coastal ice, the boundary experiences physical forces described as "shearing".
Ice tongues are simply floating platforms of ice which are attached to the front of marine-terminating glaciers and extend into the sea. Ice tongues differ from ice shelves as they are confined by valley walls and have a narrow width relative to their length, hence their name (1).
The Drygalski Ice Tongue, Drygalski Barrier, or Drygalski Glacier Tongue is a glacier in Antarctica, on the Scott Coast, in the northern McMurdo Sound of Ross Dependency, 240 kilometres (150 mi) north of Ross Island.
The term ice tongue refers to a geographic phenomenon in which a narrow section of ice forms and projects directly out from the shoreline and into a nearby body of water, such as a lake, sea, or ocean.
Ice tongues emerge when a glacier ice stream flows rapidly (relative to surrounding ice) into the sea or a lake, usually in a protected area. For instance, Capes Evans and Royds extending from Ross Island protect the Erebus Glacier Tongue from the open waters of the Ross Sea.
The Erebus Ice Tongue is the serrated, blue-rimmed “knife” extending toward image center from the upper right out into snow- and ice-covered McMurdo Sound. Beneath the smooth white expanse is the Southern Ocean. An ice tongue forms when a valley glacier moves very rapidly out into the sea or a lake.
The findings suggest that some of the Arctic may melt more quickly in today’s warming climate than previously expected. The sea ice, known as the Petermann ice tongue, stretches across a narrow valley where the large Petermann Glacier meets the Arctic Ocean.
The flow speed of Thwaites has been increasing, while inland snowfall has not changed significantly. Notice the size of the glacier’s main ice tongue in 2001, when the glacier was advancing by about 4 kilometers per year. The large rift across the glacier eventually spawned Iceberg B-22 in 2002.
As ice piles on the glacier, it slides under its own weight to the ocean. The ice doesn't break up when it reaches the ocean; rather, it floats, forming a long tongue of ice. The floating end of the David Glacier is the Drygalski Ice Tongue.
The 43-mile- (70-kilometer-) long Drygalski Ice Tongue juts out from the icy land of Antarctica into McMurdo Sound like a pier, and is a floating extension of the land-based David Glacier. B15-A, 75 miles (120 kilometers) long, had been drifting slowly towards Drygalski for months before this image was taken.