ice-shelves

Standing water on ice shelves is often a sign that they are close to collapse as the water can widen existing cracks in the ice.

Global warming is forcing ice shelves to calve, producing icebergs like this monolith jutting into the waters of the Antarctic Peninsula.

"We have now reached a threshold where (the environment) is too warm for these ice shelves to exist anymore, " he said.

Thinning penetrated deep into the interior of the ice sheets and continues to spread as ice shelves melt into the sea.

Long-term monitoring of the vibrations induced by ocean waves in Antarctic ice shelves is a recent phenomenon.

Glaciers form ice shelves along about half of the coastline, and floating ice shelves constitute 11% of the area of the continent.

Icebergs are large pieces of freshwater ice that break off snow-formed ice shelves or glaciers and float in open water.

In the Southern Hemisphere, the calving occurs around Antarctica from ice shelves and glaciers.

Large, flat sheets of the icecap called ice shelves float in water near Antarctica .

Wilkins has almost no pent-up glaciers behind it, but ice shelves further south hold back vast volumes of ice.

Ice shelves make up nearly half of the Antarctic coastline and have level or gently undulating surfaces.

But higher ocean temperatures cause icebergs and ice shelves to melt, which raises sea level.

The ice shelves currently insulate the Antartic continent from wind.

Usually the ice shelves would use the winter to recover from the previous summer.

As ice shelves break up, this accelerates movement of land ice to the ocean.

The loss of ice shelves does not raise sea levels significantly because the ice is floating and already mostly submerged by the ocean.

Icebergs are born when they calve off of glaciers or break off of ice shelves.

Antarctica, if you include the ice shelves, is twice the size of Australia -- it's a big place.

A variety of animal life rely on these ice shelves.

Ice shelves are used by animals such as polar bears as platforms for hunting seals and other sea creatures.

rising sea level itself tends to lift marine ice shelves that buttress land ice , unhinging them from anchor points

Antarctic Ice Shelves Said Breaking Up Fast

Role of small ice shelves in sea-level rise