The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica (an area of roughly 487,000 square kilometres (188,000 sq mi) and about 800 kilometres (500 mi) across: about the size of France). It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than 600 kilometres (370 mi) long, and between 15 and 50 metres (50 and 160 ft) high above the water surface. Ninety percent of the floating ice, however, is below the water surface.
Most of Ross Ice Shelf is in the Ross Dependency claimed by New Zealand.
The ice shelf was named after Captain Sir James Clark Ross, who discovered it on 28 January 1841. It was originally named the Victoria barrier by Ross after Queen Victoria and later the Great Ice Barrier, as it prevented sailing further south. Ross mapped the ice front eastward to 160°W.
Read more about Ross Ice Shelf: Exploration, Composition and Movement
Famous quotes containing the words ross, ice and/or shelf:
“If we did not have such a thing as an airplane today, we would probably create something the size of N.A.S.A. to make one.”
—H. Ross Perot (b. 1930)
“...there was the annual Fourth of July picketing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. ...I thought it was ridiculous to have to go there in a skirt. But I did it anyway because it was something that might possibly have an effect. I remember walking around in my little white blouse and skirt and tourists standing there eating their ice cream cones and watching us like the zoo had opened.”
—Martha Shelley, U.S. author and social activist. As quoted in Making History, part 3, by Eric Marcus (1992)
“The boy seemed to have fallen
From shelf to shelf of someone’s rage.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)