ice shelf

In 2002 an ice shelf the size of Rhode Island, which had been stable for at least 10, 000 years, collapsed in just three weeks.

The British Antarctic Survey said the ice shelf was "hanging by a thread" .

The melting of an ice shelf, which is merely a floating projection into the sea, would not affect sea levels.

The last time such a large ice island formed was in 1962 when the Canadian Ward Hunt Ice Shelf calved an island.

So the hypothesis was that it was coming from the ocean, which was melting the ice shelf from below.

As the UN talks inched on, news came that an "ice bridge" yoking the Wilkins ice shelf to the Antarctic Peninsula had snapped.

By the time the Marsh joins the immense Nimrod Glacier, some 35 miles from our camp, the ice is on a rapid charge to the Ross Sea Ice Shelf.

In late Southern Hemisphere summer of 2002, the Larsen B Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula disintegrated into thousands of pieces.

The brown and black stripes you see on the icebergs are created by sediment underneath the ice shelf.

The rest of the Wilkins ice shelf, which is about the size of Connecticut, is holding on by a narrow beam of thin ice.

An iceberg is a piece of an ice shelf that separated and now floats free .

Huge pieces of the ice shelf break off and slowly melt into the sea.

The rest of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, which totals about 14, 500 square kilometers, is holding on by a narrow beam of thin ice.

The ice was on the edge of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and had been there for possibly 1, 500 years.

This floating ice shelf was about 260 feet (80 meters) thick from its exposed surface to its submerged base.

Several huge icebergs broke off from Antarctica's Ross ice shelf and the Ronne ice shelf in 2000 and are now drifting away from Antarctica.

The lakes are under moving sections of ice, called ice streams, that flow into the Ross Ice Shelf.

IN 2008 part of the Wilkins ice shelf on the edge of the Antarctic peninsular suddenly disintegrated.

Several rivers of the West Antarctica ice sheet flow into the ice shelf.

The iceberg that eventually calves from the breaking ice shelf will cover around 880 square kilometres, project scientists said.

Satellite images show an ice bridge that held a huge Antarctic ice shelf in place recently broke apart.

The eighth ice-shelf collapse on the peninsula in 30 years, it is further evidence of an acceleration in warming.

Thinning of the ice shelf at the fringes leads toglaciers moving more quickly.

VIDEO : Watch our videographic on the receding Arctic ice-shelf, and the potential oil and gas reserves beneath.

We're flying to a place called Wilkins Ice Shelf.

More than 180 kilometers [112 miles] long, the glacier flows down from the polar plateau (left) to the Ross Ice Shelf (right).

They would reform, . . . but the ice shelf can't recover in the winter anymore.

An enormous iceberg nestles into an ice shelf in Antarctica.

Much of the vast Larsen Ice Shelf collapsed in 2002, and the smaller Wordie Ice Shelf vanished last April.

That warm water is melting the underside of the ice shelf, reducing thebuttressing effect.

The ice shelf has lost a total of 694 square miles over the past 12 months, representing some 14 per cent of its size.

Melt pools on the Ross Ice Shelf.

Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, which halved in July, lost an additional 22 square kilometers (8. 5 square miles).

The B9 iceberg broke from the Ross Ice Shelf in West Antarctica some time in 1987.

Rheology of the Ronne Ice Shelf, Antarctica, inferred from satellite radar interferometry data using an inverse control method

Effect of Ocean Temperature Variations on the Position of the Lower Boundary of an Ice Shelf

Episodic propagation of a rift on the Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica

Re-definition and Validation of the Grounding Line of Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica

Sediment Core from Beneath the Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica, Suggests Mid-Holocene Ice-Shelf Retreat

Modelling of rift propagation on Ronne Ice Shelf, Antarctica, and sensitivity to climate change

Strong surface melting preceded collapse of Antarctic Peninsula ice shelf

Watch our animation of the receding Arctic ice-shelf and the shipping routes it could unlock

Impact of Antarctic ice shelf basal melting on sea ice and deep ocean properties

Calving of large tabular icebergs from ice shelf rift systems

Global warming blamed for ice shelf collapse

The collapse of the ice shelf