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44-459: The Abbot Ice Shelf ( 72°45′S 96°00′W  /  72.750°S 96.000°W  / -72.750; -96.000  ( Abbot Ice Shelf ) ) is an ice shelf 250 nautical miles (460 km; 290 mi) long and 40 nautical miles (74 km; 46 mi) wide, bordering Eights Coast from Cape Waite to Pfrogner Point in Antarctica. Thurston Island lies along the northern edge of

88-415: A "hotspot of global warming". It broke over a period of three weeks or less, with a factor in this fast break-up being the powerful effects of water; ponds of meltwater formed on the surface during the near 24 hours of daylight in the summertime, flowed down into cracks and, acting like a multitude of wedges, levered the shelf apart. Other likely factors in the break-up were the higher ocean temperatures and

132-515: A huge ice island in 2017. From 31 January 2002 to March 2002 the Larsen B sector partially collapsed and parts broke up, 3,250 km (1,250 sq mi) of ice 220 m (720 ft) thick, an area comparable to the US state of Rhode Island . In 2015, a study concluded that the remaining Larsen B ice-shelf would disintegrate by 2020, based on observations of faster flow and rapid thinning of glaciers in

176-594: A large crack in the Ward Hunt shelf had begun to form, and in 2003 it was announced that the ice sheet had split completely in two in 2002, releasing a huge pool of freshwater from the largest epishelf lake in the Northern Hemisphere, located in Disraeli Fjord. In April 2008, scientists discovered that the shelf fractured into dozens of deep, multi-faceted cracks. On August 13, 2005, The Ayles Ice Shelf , which

220-439: A mass of ice from a glacier , iceberg , ice front , ice shelf, or crevasse ). Snow accumulation on the upper surface and melting from the lower surface are also important to the mass balance of an ice shelf. Ice may also accrete onto the underside of the shelf. The effects of climate change are visible in the changes to the cryosphere , such as reduction in sea ice and ice sheets , and disruption of ice shelves. In

264-536: A slow melt rate, in contrast to the undefended western portion. According to the American Geophysical Union in a 2021 study, the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf (TEIS) buttresses one-third of Thwaites glacier . Removal of the shelf has the potential to increase the contribution of Thwaites glacier to sea level rise by up to 25%. As of 2021 , the ice shelf appears to be losing its grip on

308-454: A submarine shoal that acts as a pinning point and the shear margin that separates the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf from the Thwaites glacier Tongue has extended, further weakening the ice shelf connection to the pinning point. A sequence of Sentinel-1 radar imagery shows that parallel wing and comb cracks have recently formed rifts at high angles to the main shear margin and are propagating into

352-516: Is about 1028 kg/m and that of glacial ice from about 850 kg/m to well below 920 kg/m , the limit for very cold ice without bubbles. The height of the shelf above the sea can be even larger, if there is much less dense firn and snow above the glacier ice. A large portion of the Antarctic coastline has ice shelves attached. Their aggregate area is over 1,550,000 square kilometers (600,000 square miles). It has been found that of all

396-785: Is at its eastern end. Fletcher Peninsula separates it from the Venable Ice Shelf to the east. The Abbot Ice Shelf shelf was sighted by members of the United States Antarctic Service in flights from the ship Bear , in February 1940. Its western portion was delineated from air photos taken by the United States Navy (USN) Operation Highjump , 1946–47. The full extent was mapped by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) from USN air photos of 1966. It

440-604: Is one of the biggest ice shelves in West Antarctica , though it is highly unstable and disintegrating rapidly. Since the 1980s, the Thwaites Glacier , nicknamed the "Doomsday glacier", has had a net loss of over 600 billion tons of ice, though pinning of the Thwaites Ice Shelf has served to slow the process. The Thwaites Ice Shelf has acted like a dam for the eastern portion of glacier, bracing it and allowing for

484-737: The Bellingshausen Sea . It occupies the whole of Peacock Sound in its western part. The Demas Ice Tongue extends into the Amundsen Sea from the west end of the ice shelf. Islands embedded in the bbott Ice Shelf include the Trice Islands, Sherman Island, Carpenter Island, Johnson Island, Lepley Nunatak and Dendtler Island. It is to the north of King Peninsula and Jones Mountains on the Eights Coast , Cape Waite on King Peninsula lies at its western end, and Pfrogner Point on Fletcher Peninsula

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528-584: The Karpinsky Ice Cap to the south and the Rusanov Ice Cap to the north. In 2012 it ceased to exist. In the last several decades, glaciologists have observed consistent decreases in ice shelf extent through melt, calving , and complete disintegration of some shelves. Well studied examples include disruptions of the Thwaites Ice Shelf , Larsen Ice Shelf , Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf (all three in

572-634: The Markham Ice Shelf broke up in 2008. The remaining ice shelves have also lost a significant amount of their area over time, with the Milne Ice Shelf being the last to be affected, with it breaking off in August 2020. The Matusevich Ice Shelf was a 222 square kilometers (86 square miles) ice shelf located in Severnaya Zemlya being fed by some of the largest ice caps on October Revolution Island ,

616-538: The Ross Ice Shelf and the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica. The movement of ice shelves is principally driven by gravity -induced pressure from the grounded ice. That flow continually moves ice from the grounding line to the seaward front of the shelf. Typically, a shelf front will extend forward for years or decades between major calving events (calving is the sudden release and breaking away of

660-463: The Southern Ocean around the continent of Antarctica . The term captured ice shelf has been used for the ice over a subglacial lake , such as Lake Vostok . Ice shelves are thick plates of ice, formed continuously by glaciers, that float atop an ocean. The shelves act as "brakes" for the glaciers. These shelves serve another important purpose—"they moderate the amount of melting that occurs on

704-779: The Amundsen Sea. Discovered by members of the USAS in flights from the Bear, February 1940, and named after E.J. Demas (d. 1979), member of the ByrdAE of 1928-30 and 1933-35. Ice shelf Ice shelves are found in Antarctica and the Arctic ( Greenland , Northern Canada , and the Russian Arctic ), and can range in thickness from about 100–1,000 m (330–3,280 ft). The world's largest ice shelves are

748-596: The Antarctic) and the disruption of the Ellesmere Ice Shelf in the Arctic. The effects of climate change are visible in the changes to the cryosphere , such as reduction in sea ice and ice sheets , and disruption of ice shelves. Thwaites Ice Shelf (), is an Antarctic ice shelf in the Amundsen Sea . It was named by ACAN after Fredrik T. Thwaites, a glacial geologist and geomorphologist . The Thwaites Ice Shelf

792-548: The Eights Coast. The sound is not navigable by ships, it being occupied by the western part of Abbot Ice Shelf. The feature was discovered by members of the USAS in flights from the ship Bear in February 1940, and was further delineated from air photos taken by United States Navy Operation Highjump in December 1946. The sound was first noted to parallel the entire south coast of Thurston Island, thereby establishing insularity, by

836-537: The Ellesmere Ice Shelf had been in place for at least 3,000 years. During the twentieth century, the Ellesmere Ice Shelf broke up into six separate shelves. From west to east, these were the Serson Ice Shelf , Petersen Ice Shelf , Milne Ice Shelf , Ayles Ice Shelf , Ward Hunt Ice Shelf , and Markham Ice Shelf . The smaller pieces continued to disintegrate. In April 2000, satellite images revealed that

880-574: The Milne Ice Shelf, also ultimately experienced a major breakup at the end of July 2020, losing over 40% of its area. The Ellesmere Ice Shelf was the largest ice shelf in the Arctic, encompassing about 9,100 square kilometres (3,500 square miles) of the north coast of Ellesmere Island , Nunavut , Canada. The ice shelf was first documented by the British Arctic Expedition of 1875–76, in which Lieutenant Pelham Aldrich 's party went from Cape Sheridan to Cape Alert . The continuous mass of

924-566: The November 2006 sighting of several large icebergs from the coast of the South Island of New Zealand , the first time since 1931 that any icebergs had been observed from the New Zealand mainland. A large group of small icebergs (the largest some 1000 metres in length), were seen off the south-east coast of the island, with one of them drifting close enough to shore to be visible from the hills above

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968-870: The United States Navy Bellingshausen Sea Expedition in February 1960. Named after the sloop of war Peacock in which Captain William L. Hudson, in company with the tender Flying Fish under Lieutenant William M. Walker, both of the USEE, 1838-42, sailed along the edge of the pack ice to the north of Thurston Island for several days in March 1839. 72°49′S 91°10′W  /  72.817°S 91.167°W  / -72.817; -91.167 . An ice-covered island, about 38 nautical miles (70 km; 44 mi) long and 10 nautical miles (19 km; 12 mi) wide, lying between McNamara and Dendtler Islands in

1012-400: The area. Larsen B was stable for at least 10,000 years, essentially the entire Holocene period since the last glacial period. By contrast, Larsen A was absent for a significant part of that period, reforming about 4,000 years ago. Despite its great age, the Larsen B was clearly in trouble at the time of the collapse. With warm currents eating away the underside of the shelf, it had become

1056-453: The central part of the ice shelf at rates as high as 2 km per year. Satellite data, ground-penetrating radar, and GPS measurements taken in 2021 indicate that collapse of the ice shelf may be initiated by intersection of rifts with hidden basal crevasse zones as soon as 2026. Two sections of Antarctica's Larsen Ice Shelf broke apart into hundreds of unusually small fragments (hundreds of meters wide or less) in 1995 and 2002, Larsen C calved

1100-714: The city of Dunedin . If these were indeed the remnants of this calving, then over the course of five and a half years they had travelled slowly north and also east around over half the globe, a journey of some 13,500 km. From January 12 and January 13, 2010, an area of sea ice larger than the state of Rhode Island , or one-seventh the size of Wales , broke away from the Ronne–Filchner Ice Shelf and shattered into many smaller pieces. The Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites captured this event in this series of photo-like images. In May 2021, Iceberg A-76 broke off

1144-457: 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, and often filling embayments in the coastline of an ice sheet." In contrast, sea ice is formed on water, is much thinner (typically less than 3 m (9.8 ft)), and forms throughout the Arctic Ocean . It is also found in

1188-512: The decline of the ice of the peninsula. In October 1998, the iceberg A-38 broke off the Filchner–Ronne ice shelf. It had an extent of roughly 150 by 50 km and was thus larger than Delaware . It later broke up again into three parts. A similar-sized calving in May 2000 created an iceberg 167 by 32 km in extent, dubbed A-43 – the disintegration of this is thought to have been responsible for

1232-647: The east part of Abbot Ice Shelf between Farwell Island and Fletcher Peninsula. Mapped by USGS from surveys and United States Navy air photos, 1960-66. Named by US-ACAN for Major Robert Dendtler, United States Army, coordinating officer on the staff of the Commander, United States Navy Support Force, Antarctica, during Deep Freeze 1967 and 1968. 72°22′S 103°20′W  /  72.367°S 103.333°W  / -72.367; -103.333 . Conspicuous ice tongue, about 20 nautical miles (37 km; 23 mi) long, extending west from Abbot Ice Shelf of Peacock Sound into

1276-680: The east part of Abbot Ice Shelf. The feature was positioned by parties from the USS Glacier and Stolen Island in February 1961, and was mapped by USGS from United States Navy air photos of 1966. Named by US-ACAN for Captain A.F. Farwell, Chief of Staff to the Commander, United States Naval Support Force, Antarctica, during Deep Freeze 1968 and 1969. 72°38′S 100°00′W  /  72.633°S 100.000°W  / -72.633; -100.000 . An ice-covered island about 32 nautical miles (59 km; 37 mi) long and 10 nautical miles (19 km; 12 mi) wide, lying south of Thurston Island in

1320-509: The floating ice is above the ocean surface, depending on how much pressurized air is contained in the bubbles within the glacial ice, stemming from compressed snow. The formula for the denominators above is 1 / [ ( ρ seawater − ρ glacial ice ) / ρ seawater ] {\textstyle 1/[(\rho _{\text{seawater}}-\rho _{\text{glacial ice}})/\rho _{\text{seawater}}]} , density of cold seawater

1364-1138: The general level of Abbot Ice Shelf which occupies the sound. First mapped from air photos taken by United States Navy OpHjp, .1946-47. Named by US-ACAN for Jack L. Trice, meteorologist at Byrd Station, 1964-65. 72°39′S 98°03′W  /  72.650°S 98.050°W  / -72.650; -98.050 . An oval-shaped island, 7 nautical miles (13 km; 8.1 mi) long, within the Abbot Ice Shelf of Peacock Sound. It lies 17 nautical miles (31 km; 20 mi) due east of Sherman Island. Mapped by USGS from surveys and United States Navy air photos, 1960-66. Named by US-ACAN for Donald L. Carpenter, radio scientist at Byrd Station, 1966-67. 72°51′S 93°55′W  /  72.850°S 93.917°W  / -72.850; -93.917 . An ice-covered island, about 9 nautical miles (17 km; 10 mi) long and 5 nautical miles (9.3 km; 5.8 mi) wide, lying within Abbot Ice Shelf, about 14 nautical miles (26 km; 16 mi) southeast of Dustin Island. The feature

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1408-535: The glaciers' surfaces. Once their ice shelves are removed, the glaciers increase in speed due to meltwater percolation and/or a reduction of braking forces, and they may begin to dump more ice into the ocean than they gather as snow in their catchments. Glacier ice speed increases are already observed in Peninsula areas where ice shelves disintegrated in prior years." The density contrast between glacial ice and liquid water means that at least ⁠ 1 / 9 ⁠ of

1452-473: The ice shelf. The Ellesmere ice shelf was reduced by 90% in the twentieth century, leaving the separate Alfred Ernest , Ayles , Milne , Ward Hunt , and Markham ice shelves. A 1986 survey of Canadian ice shelves found that 48 km (3.3 cubic kilometres) of ice calved from the Milne and Ayles ice shelves between 1959 and 1974. The Ayles Ice Shelf calved entirely on August 13, 2005. The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf,

1496-422: The ice shelves on Earth, nearly all of them are in Antarctica. In steady state, about half of Antarctica's ice shelf mass is lost to basal melt and half is lost to calving , but the relative importance of each process varies significantly between ice shelves. In recent decades, Antarctica's ice shelves have been out of balance, as they have lost more mass to basal melt and calving than has been replenished by

1540-448: The influx of new ice and snow. The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica (as of 2013 , an area of roughly 500,809 square kilometres (193,363 sq mi) and about 800 kilometres (500 mi) across: about the size of France). It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than 600 kilometres (370 mi) long, and between 15 and 50 metres (50 and 160 ft) high above

1584-669: The inner part and east end of Abbot Ice Shelf. First sighted on February 9, 1961 from helicopters of the USS Glacier and Staten Island . Named by US-ACAN for Larry K. Lepley, oceanographer of the United States Navy Hydrographic Office, who with three others was marooned at this nunatak, February 12-15, 1961, by a severe wind and snowstorm. 72°58′S 89°57′W  /  72.967°S 89.950°W  / -72.967; -89.950 . An ice-covered island, 14 nautical miles (26 km; 16 mi) long, lying in

1628-550: The largest remaining section of thick (>10 meters (33 feet)) landfast sea ice along the northern coastline of Ellesmere Island, lost 600 square kilometers (230 square miles) of ice in a massive calving in 1961–1962. It further decreased by 27% in thickness (13 meters (43 feet)) between 1967 and 1999. In the summer of 2002, the Ward Ice Shelf experienced another major breakup, and other instances of note happened in 2008 and 2010 as well. The last remnant to remain mostly intact,

1672-479: The last several decades, glaciologists have observed consistent decreases in ice shelf extent through melt, calving , and complete disintegration of some shelves. Well studied examples include disruptions of the Thwaites Ice Shelf , Larsen Ice Shelf , Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf (all three in the Antarctic) and the disruption of the Ellesmere Ice Shelf in the Arctic. An ice shelf is "a floating slab of ice originating from land of considerable thickness extending from

1716-587: The middle of Peacock Sound. The feature rises above Abbot Ice Shelf which occupies the sound. Delineated from aerial photographs taken by United States Navy OpHjp in December 1946. Named by US-ACAN for Admiral Forrest Sherman, United States Navy, Chief of Naval Operations, 1949-51, when preparations were being made for United States Naval support during the forthcoming IGY operations. 72°25′S 99°48′W  /  72.417°S 99.800°W  / -72.417; -99.800 . A group of small ice-covered islands lying just west of Evans Point. The group rises above

1760-424: The northwest corner of the shelf. At 4320 km , it is larger than Majorca , several times larger than Iceberg A-74 which calved in the same year, or approximately 14% the size of Belgium . The ice of the Filchner–Ronne ice shelf can be as thick as 600 m; the water below is about 1400 m deep at the deepest point. The international Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf Programme (FRISP) was initiated in 1973 to study

1804-537: The water surface. Ninety percent of the floating ice, however, is below the water surface. All Canadian ice shelves are attached to Ellesmere Island and lie north of 82°N. Ice shelves that are still in existence are the Alfred Ernest Ice Shelf , Ward Hunt Ice Shelf , Milne Ice Shelf and Smith Ice Shelf . The M'Clintock Ice Shelf broke up from 1963 to 1966; the Ayles Ice Shelf broke up in 2005; and

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1848-413: The western half of this ice shelf; other sizable islands (Sherman Island, Carpenter Island, Dustin Island , Johnson Island, McNamara Island , Farwell Island and Dendtler Island) lie partly or wholly within this shelf. Download coordinates as: The Abbott Ice Shelf extends to the south of Thurston Island , Dustin Island , McNamara Island , and Farwell Island all of which lie between the ice shelf and

1892-545: Was named by the United States Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (US-ACAN) for Rear Admiral James Lloyd Abbot Jr. , Commanding Officer, U.S. Naval Support Force, Antarctica, February 1967 to June 1969. 72°45′S 99°00′W  /  72.750°S 99.000°W  / -72.750; -99.000 . An ice-filled sound, 135 nautical miles (250 km; 155 mi) long and 40 nautical miles (74 km; 46 mi) wide, separating Thurston Island from

1936-474: Was observed and roughly positioned as an "ice rise" by parties from the USS Glacier in February 1961. Remapped by USGS from United States Navy air photos, 1966. Named by US-ACAN for Theodore L. Johnson, electrical engineer at Byrd Station, 1964-65. 73°07′S 90°23′W  /  73.117°S 90.383°W  / -73.117; -90.383 . A small conspicuous rocky nunatak 2 nautical miles (3.7 km; 2.3 mi) southwest of Dentler Island, lying near

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