Ice Sheet Drainage
The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest mass of ice on earth, containing a volume of water equivalent to 57 m (187 ft) of global sea level. The ice sheet forms from snow which falls onto the continent and compacts under its own weight. The ice then moves under its own weight toward the edges of the continent. Most of this transport to the sea is by ice streams (faster moving channels of ice surrounded by slower moving ice walls) and outlet glaciers. The Antarctic ice sheet consists of the large, relatively stable, East Antarctic Ice Sheet and a smaller, less stable, West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is drained into the sea by several large ice streams, most of which flow into either the Ross Ice Shelf, or the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf. Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers are two major West Antarctic ice streams which do not flow into a large ice shelf. They are part of an area called the Amundsen Sea Embayment. A total area of 175,000 km2 (68,000 sq mi), 10 percent of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, drains out to the sea via Pine Island Glacier, this area is known as the Pine Island Glacier drainage basin.
Read more about this topic: Pine Island Glacier
Famous quotes containing the words ice and/or sheet:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
“As many lies as will lie in thy paper, although the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)