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ICE SHELF
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Ice that is attached to land but projects out to sea
Synonyms:
ice shelf; shelf ice
Classified under:
Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)
Hypernyms ("ice shelf" is a kind of...):
ice (the frozen part of a body of water)
Context examples:
"There is a speed limit in the study that shows that an ice shelf can't collapse ridiculously fast," said co-author Alison Banwell, a glaciology researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder.
(Reframing the dangers Antarctica's meltwater ponds pose to ice shelves and sea level, National Science Foundation)
The danger comes if water pools up in surface depressions on the ice shelf to form large lakes.
(Surface lakes cause Antarctic ice shelves to ‘flex’, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
It’s difficult because there are not enough measurements available on either the forces acting on the rift or the composition of the ice shelf.
(Massive Iceberg Breaks Off from Antarctica, NASA)
Its magnitude, and the fact that thinning of the ice shelf will speed up the flow of Antarctica's ice sheets into the ocean, means that increased melting of the shelf carries significant potential for sea level rise.
(Study in Antarctic waters reveals why Ross Ice Shelf melts in summer, National Science Foundation)
The potential for increasing melt rates in this region has implications for ice shelf stability due to the shape of the ice shelf.
(Rapid melting of the world’s largest ice shelf linked to solar heat in the ocean, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
What is not fully known is the extent to which surface water might destabilise an ice shelf, especially in warmer summers when more meltwater is produced.
(Surface lakes cause Antarctic ice shelves to ‘flex’, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
In 2014, a crack that had been slowly growing into the ice shelf for decades suddenly started to spread northwards, creating the nascent iceberg.
(Massive Iceberg Breaks Off from Antarctica, NASA)
Rapid melting identified by the study happens beneath a thin and structurally important part of the ice shelf, where the ice pushes against Ross Island.
(Rapid melting of the world’s largest ice shelf linked to solar heat in the ocean, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
“It is this filling and draining of lakes that causes the ice shelf to flex, and if the stresses are large enough, fractures might also develop.”
(Surface lakes cause Antarctic ice shelves to ‘flex’, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
Larsen C, a floating platform of glacial ice on the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula, is the fourth largest ice shelf ringing Earth’s southernmost continent.
(Massive Iceberg Breaks Off from Antarctica, NASA)
