The Amery Ice Shelf () is a broad ice shelf in

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

at the head of Prydz Bay between the Lars Christensen Coast and Ingrid Christensen Coast. It is part of Mac. Robertson Land. The name "Cape Amery" was applied to a coastal angle mapped on 11 February 1931 by the British Australian New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE) under

Douglas Mawson Sir Douglas Mawson (5 May 1882 – 14 October 1958) was a British-born Australian geologist, Antarctic explorer, and academic. Along with Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, and Sir Ernest Shackleton, he was a key expedition leader during ...

. He named it for William Bankes Amery, a civil servant who represented the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

government in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

(1925–28). The

Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (ACAN or US-ACAN) is an advisory committee of the United States Board on Geographic Names responsible for recommending commemorative names for features in Antarctica. History The committee was established ...

interpreted this feature to be a portion of an ice shelf and, in 1947, applied the name Amery to the whole shelf. In 2001 two holes were drilled through the ice shelf by scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division and specially designed seabed sampling and photographic equipment was lowered to the underlying seabed. By studying the fossil composition of sediment samples recovered, scientists have inferred that a major retreat of the Amery Ice Shelf to at least 80 km landward of its present location may have occurred during the mid-Holocene climatic optimum (about 5,700 years ago). In December 2006, it was reported by the

Australian Broadcasting Corporation The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s principal public service broadcaster. It is funded primarily by grants from the federal government and is administered by a government-appointed board of directors. The ABC is ...

that Australian scientists were heading to the Amery Ice Shelf to investigate enormous cracks that had been forming for over a decade at a rate of three to five metres a day. Scientists wanted to discover what was causing the cracks, as there has not been similar activity since the 1960s. However, the head of research stated that it is too early to attribute the cause to

global warming Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes ...

as there is the possibility of a natural 50-60 year cycle being responsible. Lambert Glacier flows from Lambert Graben into the Amery Ice Shelf on the southwest side of Prydz Bay. The Amery Basin () is an undersea basin north of the Amery Ice Shelf. The Chinese Antarctic Zhongshan Station and Russian Progress Station are located near this ice shelf. The Amery Ice Shelf is the third largest ice shelf in Antarctica, after the

Ross Ice Shelf The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica (, an area of roughly and about across: about the size of France). It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than long, and between high ...

and the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf.

Calving

In September 2019, a large

iceberg An iceberg is a piece of fresh water ice more than 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 are called "growlers" or "bergy bits". Much of an i ...

known as D-28 calved from the ice shelf. It was in size and with an estimated weight of 315 billion tonnes. As of October 2019, it continues to be monitored due to the threat it could pose to shipping channels. An adjacent ice formation, nicknamed the "loose tooth", was originally predicted to calve from the ice sheet between 2010 and 2015. In February 2020, D-28 was lodged against the edge of the shelf, and slowly drifting northwards. By May 2021, the iceberg had drifted 46 degrees west to the King Baudouin Ice Shelf, colliding with and destroying the Dog's Head Landing Site, an ice floe used for several years as a landing stage by the Belgian Antarctic Program.

References

External links

Coastal-change and Glaciological Map of the Amery Ice Shelf Area, Antarctica: 1961-2004
Ice shelves of Antarctica King Edward VII Land Ingrid Christensen Coast {{MacRobertsonLand-geo-stub

Calving

See also

References

External links