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Some named Antarctic iceshelves. Ice shelf extending approximately 6 miles into the Antarctic Sound from Joinville Island. An ice shelf is "a floating slab of ice originating from land of considerable thickness extending from the coast (usually of great horizontal extent with a very gently sloping surface), resulting from the flow of ice sheets, initially formed by the accumulation of snow ...
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the segment of the continental ice sheet that covers West Antarctica, the portion of Antarctica on the side of the Transantarctic Mountains that lies in the Western Hemisphere. It is classified as a marine-based ice sheet, meaning that its bed lies well below sea level and its edges flow into floating ice ...
Shelf ice is a floating mat of ice, but unlike a pond or a small lake that freezes over, the shelf is not a uniform sheet of ice. Created by the wind and waves, the shelf ice is a jumble of ice chunks, pushed onto each other. It is as if you took a pile of rubble and pushed up against a wall.
Drifting ice station – Research stations built on the ice of the high latitudes of the Arctic Ocean; Iceberg – Large piece of freshwater ice broken off a glacier or ice shelf and floating in open water; Ice shove – Ice pushed onshore due to water movements or wind; Lead (sea ice) – Fracture that opens up in an expanse of sea ice
An ice floe (/ f l oʊ /) is a large pack of floating ice often defined as a flat piece at least 20 m across at its widest point, and up to more than 10 km across. [1] Drift ice is a floating field of sea ice composed of several ice floes. They may cause ice jams on freshwater rivers, and in the open ocean may damage the hulls of ships.
This process produces fast-flowing channels in the ice sheet — these are ice streams. Even stable ice sheets are continually in motion as the ice gradually flows outward from the central plateau, which is the tallest point of the ice sheet, and towards the margins. The ice sheet slope is low around the plateau but increases steeply at the ...
An iceberg is a piece of fresh water ice more than 15 meters (16 yards) long [1] that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open water. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Smaller chunks of floating glacially derived ice are called "growlers" or "bergy bits".
An ice shelf basal channel is a type of subglacial meltwater channel that forms on the underside of floating ice shelves connected to ice sheets. Basal channels are generally rounded cavities which form parallel to ice sheet flow. These channels are found mainly around the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets in places with relatively warm ocean ...