Austfonna glacier seen from Hinlopen strait

Austfonna is an ice cap located on

Nordaustlandet Nordaustlandet (Anglicised as North East Land) is the second-largest island in the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, with an area of . It lies north east of Spitsbergen, separated by Hinlopen Strait. Much of Nordaustlandet lies under large ice ca ...

in the

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), previously known as Spitsbergen or Spitzbergen, is a Norway, Norwegian archipelago that lies at the convergence of the Arctic Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. North of continental Europe, mainland Europe, it lies about midway be ...

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. Covering an area of 7,800 km², it is Europe's third-largest glacier by area and volume, after the Severny Island ice cap of Novaya Zemlya,

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

, and Vatnajökull in

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

. The combined area of Austfonna and the Vegafonna ice cap is 8,492 km². Austfonna has a thickness of up to 560 metres (235 meters average thickness), and is 200 km in circumference. The ice dome reaches an elevation of 783 meters above sea level. The southern third of Austfonna is sometimes called Sørfonna, which is a separate ice cap, separated from the main part of Austfonna by a long, ice-filled depression, and forming a separate crestal dome. Vegafonna ice cap in the southwest is also connected to Austfonna proper, specifically to Sørfonna, and is separated from it by ''Erica Valley''. Vegafonna also forms a separate dome. Immediately west of Vegafonna is Glittne ice cap, which is considered part of the former. Vestfonna in the northwest of the island is a totally separate ice cap (the third largest of Svalbard and Norway).

References

External links

Spatial and temporal variability in snow accumulation on Austfonna, Svalbard.
* http://www.cig.ensmp.fr/~iahs/sapporo/abs/jsh01/020760-1.html * http://www.cpom.org/research/largeice.htm
Map of Nordaustlandet
Glaciers of Nordaustlandet {{Nordaustlandet-glacier-stub

See also

References

External links