The Amery Ice Shelf () is a broad

ice shelf An ice shelf is a large platform of glacial ice floating on the ocean, fed by one or multiple tributary glaciers. Ice shelves form along coastlines where the ice thickness is insufficient to displace the more dense surrounding ocean water. T ...

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 Prydz Bay is a deep embayment of Antarctica between the Lars Christensen Coast and Ingrid Christensen Coast. The Bay is at the downstream end of a giant glacial drainage system that originates in the East Antarctic interior. The Lambert Glac ...

between the Lars Christensen Coast and

Ingrid Christensen Coast The Ingrid Christensen Coast is that portion of the coast of Antarctica lying between Jennings Promontory, in 72°33′E, and the western end of the West Ice Shelf in 81°24′E. It is located in the western half of Princess Elizabeth Land, just ...

. It is part of

Mac. Robertson Land Mac. Robertson Land is the portion of Antarctica lying southward of the coast between William Scoresby Bay and Cape Darnley. It is located at . In the east, Mac. Robertson Land includes the Prince Charles Mountains. It was named by the Britis ...

. The name "Cape Amery" was applied to a coastal angle mapped on 11 February 1931 by the

British Australian New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition The British Australian (and) New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE) was a research expedition into Antarctica between 1929 and 1931, involving two voyages over consecutive Austral summers. It was a British Commonwealth initiative, d ...

(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 William Bankes Amery CBE (26 October 1883 – 26 November 1951) was a British civil servant and accountant, also known as W. Bankes Amery and W. Bankes-Amery. The Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica was named after him by Douglas Mawson. Life The elde ...

, 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 The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) is a division of the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment & Water. The division undertakes science programs and research projects to contribute to an understanding of Antarctica and the S ...

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 Lambert Glacier is a major glacier in East Antarctica. At about 80 km (50 mi) wide, over 400 km (250 mi) long, and about 2,500 m (8,200 ft) deep, it is the world's largest glacier. It drains 8% of the Antarctic ice sheet to the e ...

flows from

Lambert Graben Lambert Graben is a graben in Antarctica. It intersects the coast at Prydz Bay and contains the largest glacier in the world, Lambert Glacier. The graben is a Permian rift which contains coal beds. The graben has been correlated with the coal bea ...

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 Zhongshan Station () is the second Chinese research station in Antarctica and was opened on February 26, 1989. Overview ''Zhongshan Station'' is named after Sun Yat-sen, who served as the provisional first president of the Republic of China in 1 ...

and Russian

Progress Station Progress () is a Russian (formerly Soviet) research station in Antarctica. It is located at the Larsemann Hills antarctic oasis on the shore of Prydz Bay. The station was established by the 33rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition on April 1, 1988, and ...

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 The King Baudouin Ice Shelf (also called Roi Baudouin Ice shelf, from French: Plateforme de glace Roi Baudouin) in Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica, is within the Norwegian part of Antarctica. It is named after King Baudouin of Belgium (1 ...

, 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 Belgium was one of the 12 countries that initially negotiated and signed the Antarctic Treaty (Washington, 1959).

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