Ross Ice Shelf
- Ross ( 472,960 km ²)
- Filchner - Ronne Ice Shelf ( 422,420 km ²)
- Amery Ice Shelf ( 62,620 km ²)
- Larsen C ( 48,600 km ²)
- Riiser -Larsen Ice Shelf ( 48,180 km ²)
- Fimbul ( 41,060 km ²)
- Shackleton Ice Shelf ( 33,820 km ²)
- George VI ( 23,880 km ²)
- West ( 16,370 km ²)
- Wilkins Ice Shelf ( 13,680 km ²)
The Ross Ice Shelf is a permanent, several hundred meters thick sheet of ice, the Antarctic Ross Sea half covered.
Nature
The ice shelf has an area of approximately 525,000 km ² (Source: AWI; Other sources speak of 487,800 km ² from ) is only slightly smaller than France and therefore the largest ice shelf area of Antarctica. In comparison, the Ekström Ice Shelf, the seat of the current German polar research station Neumayer III acts, with an area of about 5,000 km ² (other sources speak of more than 8,000 km ²) rather small.
As ice shelf refers to a large floating on the sea ice plate, which is connected by one, they continuously feeding glacier to the mainland. On the landside base, called the grounding line, ice shelves have a thickness of 800 to 1500 meters, however, they are at the front still only 100 to 200 meters thick. The reason for the decreasing thickness of the plates are Abschmelzvorgänge on its underside and flow processes in the ice, thereby losing continuously to ground.
The almost vertical seaward front ( drip line ) of the Ross Ice Shelf plate, the Ross Barrier, extends to a length of 600 to 800 miles and rises 20 to 50 meters above the sea level. About 90 % of the free-floating on the sea ice that is located below the water level. New measurement results on the Ross Ice Shelf illustrate the danger of disintegration of this ice shelf.
Designation
The Ross Ice Shelf is named after the English explorer and navigator James Clark Ross, who discovered it on January 28, 1841. Ross mapped the front of the ice sheet to the east to about 160 ° West. The largest part of the Ross Ice Shelf is the so-called Ross Dependency, which is claimed by New Zealand. 1912, the Ross Ice Shelf to the last resting place for the polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his expedition was.