Ice shelf
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An ice shelf is a large platform of glacial ice floating on the ocean, fed by one or multiple tributary glaciers. Ice shelves form along coastlines where the ice thickness is insufficient to displace
View of the Larsen Ice Shelf grounding line along the Foyn Coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. The floating ice shelf is in the left foreground, and the grounding line is visible as an abrupt change in surface slope due to flexure caused by the buoyancy force where the ice reaches flotation.
Some named Antarctic iceshelves.
Ice shelf extending approximately 6 miles into the Antarctic Sound from Joinville Island
Panorama of Ross Ice Shelf
Iceberg
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An iceberg is a piece of fresh water ice more than 15 meters long that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open water. Smaller chunks of floating glacially derived ice a
Ice shelf
…will extend forward for years or decades between major calving events (calving is the sudden release and breaking away of 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…
An iceberg in the Arctic Ocean
Tabular iceberg
Iceberg from overhead showing above and submerged ice
Northern edge of Iceberg B-15A in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, 29 January 2001