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Topic: West Ice Shelf

	Ice shelf - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		An ice shelf is a thick, floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface.
		The boundary between floating ice shelf and the grounded (resting on bedrock) ice that feeds it is called the grounding line.
		The primary mechanism of mass loss from ice shelves is iceberg calving, in which a chunk of ice breaks off from the seaward front of the shelf.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Ice_shelf (463 words)

	[No title]
		Ice plugs, such as the Nansen Ice Plug, which are composed of multiyear landfast sea ice, and ice shelves are the source of ice islands, such as HobsonÕs Choice ice island, that drift around the Arctic Ocean.
		Ice island: ÒA form of large tabular iceberg broken away from an ice shelf and found in the Arctic Ocean, having a thickness of 15Ð20 m and an area between a few thousand square meters and 500 sq km or even more.
		The ice shelf is composed of the floating part of Milne Glacier north of the glacier grounding line, and the inner, central, and outer units.
	pubs.usgs.gov /prof/p1386j/iceshelves/iceshelves.txt (8384 words)

	Geography Department, Cambridge » Larsen Ice Shelf
		The flight path crossed the ice shelf, starting north-west of the Mobiloil Inlet, and shows the presence of heavy crevasse rifting close to the ice shelf margins where outlet glaciers flow into the ice shelf.
		Remnant icebergs from the disintegrated Larsen-B Ice Shelf floating in calm waters.The photograph was taken shortly after the ice shelf collapsed rapidly in February 2002 (Photo: Colm Ó Cofaigh).
		The 1990 boundaries of the Larsen-A, -B and —C ice shelf sections are highlighted with blue, green and red borders.
	www.geog.cam.ac.uk /research/projects/larseniceshelf (657 words)

	USATODAY.com - Moving ice creates ice shelves (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Ice moves slowly - a few feet a year - toward the edges of Antarctica much in the way pancake batter spreads out as you pour it on a griddle.
		Much of the West Antarctic Sheet's ice moves onto the Ross and Ronne ice shelves, which are floating on the ocean.
		The shelves could melt while the main ice sheet stays frozen solid because they are in warmer parts of Antarctica and because sea water eats at them from the bottom as well as the edges.
	www.usatoday.com /weather/resources/coldscience/aiceshlf.htm (507 words)

	DAAC Study: Fragment of its Former Shelf
		An ice shelf is a floating platform of ice, usually fed by mountain glaciers or ice sheets.
		The Larsen C Ice Shelf flows from the central portion of the peninsula and represents the southern section of the Larsen shelf complex.
		The researchers theorized that melt water collecting on the ice shelf surface during unseasonably warm summers might be a primary mechanism in ice shelf breakup.
	earthobservatory.nasa.gov /Study/LarsenIceShelf (1978 words)

	Arctic CHAMP Hydrology in the News
		An immediate consequence of the ice shelf's rupture was the loss of almost all of the freshwater from the northern hemisphere's largest epishelf lake, which had been dammed behind it in 30 kilometer [20 mile] long Disraeli Fiord.
		Then, in August 2002, the northern edge of the ice shelf calved, resulting in the loss of six square kilometers [two square miles] of ice islands and 20 square kilometers [eight square miles] of thick multi-year sea ice attached to the ice shelf.
		Jeffries, Mueller and Vincent attribute the disintegration of the Ellesmere Ice Shelf and the breakup of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf to the cumulative effects of long-term warming since the 19th century.
	arcticchamp.sr.unh.edu /wardhunt_iceshelf.shtml (951 words)

	Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapse Captured In Satellite Images
		Scientists worldwide have monitored the Larsen B shelf since November 2001, when a researcher at the Instituto Antártico Argentino warned the community of an impending breakup in the wake of warm spring temperatures and a dramatic 20 percent increase in the ice shelf's flow rate.
		Ice shelves are thick plates of ice, fed by glaciers, that float on the ocean around much of Antarctica.
		Based on studies of shelf ice flow and sediment thickness beneath the ice shelf, the Larsen B is thought to have existed for at least 400 years prior to current events.
	www.spacedaily.com /news/antarctic-02e.html (661 words)

	Fact Sheet: Ice Shelves
		The result is a large, floating shelf of ice affixed to the continent.
		During normal years, the total mass of calvings is an extremely small percentage of the ice cap, and the ice lost through calving equals the mass of snowfall on the continent.
		Three more shelves, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the University of Colorado, have receded past a "point of no return." These three are the Larsen B, the Wilkins, and the George VI Ice Shelves.
	www.asoc.org /general/iceshelve.htm (995 words)

	The Antarctic ice sheet and rising sea levels (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		The contribution to sea level rise of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland over this period is not well established and is subject of conflicting assessments, but it could account for around one third of the present rate of sea level rise which is ~2 mm per annum.
		New snow is constantly added to the ice sheet as snowfall, and ice is constantly being lost through, direct melting into the seas, a small amount of runoff during periods of summer melt, and the calving of icebergs.
		A decade of satellite measurements of the ice sheet surface in West Antarctica have shown that the portion of the ice sheet that drains into the Amundsen Sea is thinning at rates of several centimetres to several metres per year.
	www.antarctica.ac.uk /Key_Topics/IceSheet_SeaLevel/index.html (1176 words)

	GEO-2000: Chapter Two: The State of the Environment - The Antarctic - Land
		With ice shelves, the issue is not local impact but the consequences of climate change at regional and global levels, whether natural or human-induced.
		Recent ice shelf disintegration around the northern and western parts of the Antarctic Peninsula has been associated with regional atmospheric warming (Ward 1995, Vaughan and Doake 1996, Rott and others 1996, Lucchitta and Rosanova 1998, Rott and others 1998, and Skvarca and others 1998) which has been occurring for approximately the past 50 years.
		The processes of (re)formation of ice shelves are probably very different from those influencing their disintegration, and may require time scales of centuries.
	www.grida.no /geo2000/english/0128.htm (475 words)

	Ocean Drilling Program: Leg 188 Preliminary Report
		Prydz Bay is a reentrant in the Antarctic margin between 66%E and 79%E. It is bounded on the southwestern side by the Amery Ice Shelf, on the southeast by the Ingrid Christensen Coast and by Mac.
		In front of the Amery Ice Shelf, the Amery Depression is mostly 600-700 m deep but reaches 1400 m in several closed depressions in the southwestern corner of the bay called the Lambert and Nanok Deeps (Fig.
		This thins to ~400 m at the seaward edge of the Amery Ice Shelf, of which ~40% is snow that accumulates on the ice shelf and seawater ice that freezes onto the base (Budd et al., 1982).
	www-odp.tamu.edu /publications/prelim/188_prel/188region.html (1153 words)

	ScienceDaily: Antarctic Ice Shelf Retreats Happened Before
		The gradual removal of this ice shelf may be causing the glaciers inland to flow faster, which could lead to enhanced drainage of part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and a consequent rise in sea level.
		Antarctic Ice Shelves Breaking Up Due To Decades Of Higher Temperatures (April 9, 1999) -- Two ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula known as the Larsen B and Wilkins are in "full retreat" and have lost nearly 3,000 square kilometers of their total area in the last year, say scientists in...
		Ice shelf -- An ice shelf is a thick, floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface, typically in Antarctica or Greenland.
	www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2005/02/050224115901.htm (1829 words)

	ESA - Observing the Earth - Envisat and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet
		It was obtained from ATSR-2's nadir view, during a day-time pass of the area around the Larsen Ice Shelf, part of the Antarctic Peninsula.
		The dividing line between the ice shelf and the sea ice is clearly visible running from the bottom right up through the centre of the image.
		The oval-shaped piece of ice at the northern extremity of the ice shelf is a large iceberg formed from the disintegration of part of the shelf.
	www.esa.int /esaEO/ESAZPRPZ9NC_index_3.html (132 words)

	Edge of the Arctic Shelf
		These include possible melting of portions of the polar ice cover, changes in export of water to the global ocean, and alteration of the food web with significant consequences for native populations.
		From the physical oceanographic perspective the goal is straightforward: understand how shelf water is transferred, at the continental shelfbreak, to the interior basin in order to help maintain the “cold halocline” of the Arctic Ocean.
		This is the salty layer at mid-depth which shields the surface ice cover from the warm deep water.
	www.whoi.edu /arcticedge/arctic_west04/expedition/index.html (385 words)

	Earth Observatory Feature: Time on the Shelf
		That is, how much ice the sheet accumulates from snowfall over the course of a year minus how much it loses due to melt as well as the periodic calving off of large ice chunks.
		Ice sheets can be good indicators of what the climate is like in a given region; changes in the climate can cause changes in Earth’s ice sheets.
		They focused their studies in West Antarctica where the ice sheet is draped over a layer of marine sediments that is much more slippery than rock.
	earthobservatory.nasa.gov /Study/TimeShelf (1754 words)

	Spaceflight Now \| Breaking News \| Ice may have formed Martian channels
		Ice streams merging with the Ross Ice Shelf in West Antarctica.
		Combined, Lucchitta believes that the channels were created by moving ice as it flowed into an ocean, itself possibly covered by ice, that may have once sprawled over much of the northern regions of the planet.
		Some of that ice may still exist on Mars today, she said, either in dust-covered deposits in Ares Vallis or beneath the smooth plains of the northern portions of the planet that may have been an ocean floor.
	www.spaceflightnow.com /news/n0101/18marsice (904 words)

	Antarctic ice shelf disintegrating (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		He and his colleagues say the abrupt breakup of the huge ice shelf known as Larsen B on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula surprised them with its speed.
		The next year, parts of the Larsen B ice shelf and the Wilkins shelf lost a total of more than 1,100 square miles, and Scambos warned that the two shelves were "in full retreat" that year.
		The Ross Ice Shelf itself is the main outlet for the huge West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which encompasses several large glaciers, Scambos noted -- and if those those glaciers were ever to melt into the ocean, they would add the equivalent of 15 feet of sea level to the world's waters.
	www.sfgate.com /cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/03/20/MN53407.DTL (712 words)

	ICEBERG POSES THREAT TO MARINERS IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		C-16 calved from the Ross Ice Shelf west of 180 longitude, in the C quadrant of Antarctica.
		If C-16 had originated from the Ross Ice Shelf east of 180 longitude in the B quadrant, it would have been given the name B-20.
		It is known to have calved from the Ross Ice Shelf sometime between the 20
	www.natice.noaa.gov /press_release/PR_A43_A44break.htm (340 words)

	One Small Ice Shelf Dies, One Giant Iceberg Born
		The new iceberg calved from the Larsen Ice Shelf and measures 78 km x 37 km, (roughly the size of Oxfordshire), and is around 200 m thick.
		An ice shelf is the floating extension of the grounded ice sheet.
		It is composed of freshwater ice that originally fell as snow, either in situ or inland and brought to the ice shelf by glaciers.
	www.meteor.iastate.edu /gccourse/ocean/ross.html (976 words)

	Ice Core Indicates West Antarctic Ice Has Thinned Less Than Believed
		Part of the puzzle has been whether the ice streams were flowing, whether they carried interior ice to the ice shelf at the end of the last ice age, and whether they began where they do now or receded along with the ice shelf's grounding line.
		Studying the ice core layer by layer, each representing one year's worth of snowfall compacted into a very thin band, researchers were able to extract an isotope record that provided a picture of temperature and snowfall patterns near Siple Dome.
		An ice sheet with such a low profile and gradual decline would have had to have a very slippery bed to maintain its continuous flow, Waddington said, and it appears the ice flowed vigorously despite being relatively thin.
	www.terradaily.com /news/iceage-05j.html (878 words)

	NOAA Paleoclimatology World Data Centers Ice Core Gateway Contacts
		The International Ice Core Data Cooperative was established in 1996, as a means to facilitate storage, retrieval and communication of ice core and related glaciological/glaciochemical data.
		The 906-meter Dome C ice core, a joint French/Russian effort, was retrieved during the 1977-78 Antarctic field season as part of the International Antarctic Glaciological project.
		The Dominion Range is located along the edge of the East Antarctic ice sheet, approximately 500 km from the South Pole and 120 km from the Ross Ice Shelf, at the confluence of Beardmore and Mill Glaciers.
	www.ncdc.noaa.gov /paleo/icecore/iicdc.html (836 words)

	Disintegration of an Antarctic ice shelf
		Thus weakened, the ice shelf is vulnerable to rapid break-up.
		Ice shelves are platforms of ice that go afloat where mountain glaciers and ice sheets flow from the land onto the ocean.
		The speed of the ice depends on shelf thickness and temperature, and the geometry of the bay walls and islands past which it flows.
	web.pdx.edu /~chulbe/science/Larsen/larsen2002.html (1348 words)

	CNN - West Antarctic ice sheet not in jeopardy - December 1, 1998
		The ice sheet is the largest grounded repository of ice on the planet and some scientists caught up in the debate over global warming have argued that the melting of this ice sheet would lead to a dramatic rise in sea levels.
		The international team of scientists, who reported their findings in the journal Science, analyzed five years of satellite radar measurements covering a large part of the Antarctic ice sheet in an effort to determine if there is any direct evidence of the ice sheet melting.
		While the researchers had to devise new algorithms to decipher the raw, ice sheet data and correct for several variables such as radar penetration below the ice surface and snow accumulation, they say the study represents the longest time series for which data is available.
	www.cnn.com /TECH/science/9812/01/icesheet.yoto/index.html (640 words)

	News in Science - Disappearing Antarctic ice unstoppable - 08/10/1999
		The massive West Antarctic ice sheet poses the greatest threat to a large rise in sea levels because of its particular sensitivity to climate change.
		The West Antarctic Ice sheet is approximately 932,000 square kilometres and has been steadily receding for the past 10,000 years.
		It is thought that diatoms need open water to build their colonies so this suggests the area must have been free of ice at some time in the past, perhaps during the period between the last two ice ages 130,000 years ago.
	www.abc.net.au /science/news/stories/s57970.htm (360 words)

	Millennium Ark: Hot News
		Hobart scientists are heading to Antarctica to study the cause of enormous cracks forming in the Amery Ice Shelf.
		The ice shelf itself is moving forwards in a northerly direction at about 1300 meters/yr.
		The fractures threatened to break off a 900-square-kilometre (347-square-miles) piece of the Amery Ice Shelf, which is about the size of Tasmania.
	standeyo.com /NEWS/06_Earth_Changes/061208.Avery.ice.shelf.html (275 words)

	TIMEeurope Magazine \| Breaking The Ice
		In that area of the Davis Sea, west of the Shackleton Ice Shelf, we plan to position ourselves for the solar eclipse.
		We fly out over the ice fields, down vast white and blue canyons, and at one point touch down on the very edge of a high, tabular (flat) berg — then the pilot tips us over the edge, plunging down into a canyon again.
		Down on the ice, it is peculiar to walk near the sea edge on a big floe, with its coating of soft new snow, knowing that we are not on land but adrift in the Southern Ocean.
	www.time.com /time/europe/antarctica/sea.html (1352 words)

	BBC NEWS \| Science/Nature \| Big ice shelf's disappearing act
		Fluctuations in the Ross Ice Shelf are revealed by an early look at cores drilled from the seabed underneath the giant ice slab.
		The long-term aim of the scientists is to find out what the Ross Ice Shelf - a floating slab of ice the size of France - and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet have been doing over the past 10 million years.
		If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and its northern counterpart on Greenland, were both to melt, sea levels around the world would rise about 10 to 12m.
	news.bbc.co.uk /go/rss/-/1/hi/sci/tech/6206672.stm (920 words)

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