Ross Ice Shelf. Ross Ice Shelf Lambert Glacier. Antarctica

The most unique, famous glaciers.

The glacier is approximately 62 km long, making it the longest glacier in the world outside the polar regions. The glacier is located in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan. Baltoro is surrounded by the Karakoram Mountains and is located between the Baltoro Muztagh ridge from the north and the Masherbrum ridge from the south, the highest mountain in the area is K2 (8611 m). The lower part of the glacier is located at an altitude of 3400 m above sea level, followed by the melting zone of the glacier, which gives rise to the Biafo River.

Antarctica contains the largest amount of ice, and therefore the largest amount of fresh water on the planet. The maximum thickness of ice on the continent is 4800 meters, the average thickness of ice covering the continent is 2600 meters. Moreover, in the central part of Antarctica the ice thickness is greater, and towards the coast it is less. The ice seems to flow from the continent into the ocean. When the ice reaches the ocean, it breaks off into large pieces called icebergs.
The volume of glaciers is 30,000,000 square kilometers, which is 90% of all ice on the planet.

The Kilimanjaro Glacier is not one of the largest glaciers, but its uniqueness is that it is located near the equator in Africa. The Mount Kilimanjaro glacier was formed 11,700 years ago. Since 1912, observations have been made that the area of ​​the glacier began to gradually decrease.
By 1987, the glacier's area had decreased by more than 85% compared to 1912.
Now the absolute area of ​​the glacier is less than 2 square meters. km. According to scientists, the glacier will completely disappear by 2033.

Aletsch Glacier

The Aletsch Glacier is the largest glacier in the Alps. Its length is 23 km, the area of ​​the glacier is 123 square kilometers. The glacier includes 3 adjacent small glaciers. The maximum ice depth is 1000 meters. The glacier has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001 (site no. 1037bis).

Harker Glacier is located on South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic Ocean. The uniqueness of the Harker Glacier is its method of formation. This glacier is a tidal glacier. Discovered in 1901 by a Swedish expedition led by Otto Nordenskiöld and Karl Anton Larsen. The glacier is quite stable in its area and volume, although its outline changes over time.

Jostedalsbreen Glacier

The Jostedalsbreen Glacier is the largest glacier in continental Europe. The length of the glacier is 60 km, the area is about 487 square kilometers. Like most other glaciers in the world, Jostedalsbreen is gradually decreasing in size and volume. In 2006, one of the glacier's branches shrank by 50 meters in a few months.

Vatnajökull Glacier

The Vatnajökull glacier is located in Iceland, it is the largest glacier in Europe, so its area is 8100 square kilometers, the volume of the glacier is estimated at 3100 cubic kilometers. The glacier covers volcanoes, and inside the glacier there are caves formed by geysers - hot springs of water. The maximum ice thickness is about 1000 meters.

Hubbard Glacier is located on the border of Alaska and Canada. The glacier was discovered in 1895. The length of the glacier is 122 kilometers. The glacier ends up in Yakutat Bay. The height of the ice in the bay reaches 120 meters above sea level, the width of the glacier near the bay is from 8 to 15 kilometers, depending on the time of year.

The Franz Josef Glacier is located in New Zealand. The glacier is 12 kilometers long and was discovered in 1859. The glacier has phases of increase and decrease; after 2010, it entered an active phase of decrease (retreat).

The Perito Moreno Glacier is located in the southwestern part of the province of Santa Cruz, Argentina.
The length of the glacier is about 30 km, the area of ​​the glacier is 250 km. square. The glacier moves along the mountain slopes to Lake Argentino at a speed of about 2 meters per day. Periodically, a glacier covers the lake, dividing it into 2 parts. The water in the southern part of the lake, due to rivers and streams, begins to rise compared to the northern part. The difference in levels is more than 30 meters, under the influence of water pressure, the isthmus collapses, and streams of water rush into the northern part of the lake.

Antarctic glaciers are the greatest in the world, as they represent the drainage system of the world's largest ice sheet. Many of the glaciers would be more accurately called ice streams, since they do not have clearly defined boundaries. Where the glacier flows into the bay, reaching the shore, the ice floats and an ice shelf forms. A glacier descending from a flat section of the coast does not form an ice shelf, but, once afloat, continues to flow directly into the sea. This protrusion is called a glacier tongue and is usually very unstable, although the tongue of the Erebus Glacier, which flows into McMurdo Sound, often extends more than 10 km out to sea before breaking off. Antarctica's largest ice shelves, the Ross and Filchner ice shelves, are so large that they are fed by several glaciers and ice streams. The Ratford Glacier, which flows near the Ellsworth Mountains into the southwestern corner of the Ronne Ice Shelf, reaches more than 1.6 km. in thickness in the place where it finds itself afloat, and demonstrates the most powerful floating ice known in the world.

Lambert Glacier - the largest and longest glacier in the world

The Lambert Glacier in East Antarctica flows approximately north along the 90°E meridian through the Prince Charles Mountains into Prydz Bay. Some tourist ships sail close to these places, but to see the glacier, you need to move deeper into the mainland, preferably by helicopter.

The Lambert Glacier in East Antarctica is probably the world's largest glacier. Its width reaches 64 km. where it crosses the Prince Charles Mountains, and its length, including its marine extension, the Amery Ice Shelf, is about 700 km. It collects ice from about a fifth of the East Antarctic ice sheet; if you do the math, it turns out that approximately 12% of the fresh water on Earth passes through the Lambert Glacier. This astounding figure is as difficult to comprehend as the majesty of the Antarctic glacier. The popular image of an Alpine or Himalayan glacier flowing down a slope like an icy river is, strictly speaking, inapplicable to the Lambert Glacier due to its colossal size. Shooting from space is the best way to see enough of it to know that it really is a glacier.

Glaciers move slowly. The fastest, the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland, covers 7 km. per year, while the Lambert Glacier slides down the Prince Charles Mountains at a rate of only 0.23 km. per year, gradually accelerating to 1 km. per year at the Amery Ice Barrier. However, although it does not move quickly, it moves powerfully, since about 35 cubic meters passes through it per year. km. ice.

The surface of a glacier like this, when viewed from a great height, such as from an airplane, is marked by streamlines - natural ridges of the ice that indicate the direction of its movement, like the strokes of a giant brush on the oil of a panoramic painting. From the ground, these ribs are invisible, but they can be identified by areas of parallel cracks. They are created by different speeds of ice movement inside the glacier; they can be formed by unevenness of the glacier bed or obstacles in its path. In this case, a zone of random cracks is formed, as, for example, in places of a sharp change in the angle of inclination of the terrain; this phenomenon is called an icefall and is analogous to a waterfall on a river. Some of the cracks below Gillock Island, formed because the glacier is forced to flow around this island, reach more than 400 m in width and 40 km. in length, surpassing in size some Alpine glaciers.

Snow bridges span these huge cracks, or rifts, instilling timidity in the traveler forced to use them. However, despite their enormous size, crossing them is quite safe, since the additional weight of the tractor is infinitesimal compared to the weight of the snow supported by the bridge. Sir Vivian Fuchs' Transantarctic Expedition (1955-1958) encountered similar cracks upon leaving the South Pole, and is said to have descended the slope to a bridge and climbed the slope again on the other side. The main danger was represented by small cracks at the edge of the bridge itself. Elsewhere, traveling across the glacier can be relatively easy, as long as you avoid known areas of crevasses. Like the rivers of Africa to the pioneers of that continent, the glaciers of Antarctica often offer explorers an obvious route into the interior of the continent. Shackleton discovered the Bridmore Glacier, which provided a direct route from the Ross Ice Shelf to the Polar Plate; Scott and four of his companions chose the same route for their fateful journey to the Pole.

An ice shelf typically forms where glaciers and ice streams flowing from a continental ice sheet flow into a gulf. Having descended along the bottom to a certain depth - usually 300 m - the ice becomes floating and various glaciers merge into a single field. This field continues to grow until it fills the bay. Going beyond the bay, no matter how large it is, the front part of the glacier, having lost the restraining influence of the mouth of the bay, loses stability and becomes vulnerable to the forces of the open ocean. The glacier gradually breaks off along a line connecting the extreme points of the bay, and the glacier “calves” occurs. The ice shelf also loses ice, melting from below and forming cold bottom currents that move north over the ocean floor to then rise to the surface, oxygenating tropical waters. Although the glacier, on the other hand, thickens due to the fall of snow on its surface, the overall result is that it becomes thinner towards the open sea. The ice barrier - the edge of the glacier facing the sea - reaches a thickness of approximately 180 m and rises above sea level by 20-30 m. An object left on the surface of the ice shelf will gradually descend as it approaches the ocean.

Ross Glacier is the largest ice shelf in Antarctica

The Ross Ice Shelf can usually be reached by ship or plane from New Zealand during the transfer of personnel and supplies to the US McMurdo Station and New Zealand's Scott Base. Tourist ships also visit these places, but passengers rarely get to see anything other than the cliff of the ice barrier.

Captain James Cook, during his second voyage, in 1772-1775, became the first person to penetrate the high latitudes of Antarctica, but he never managed to see the continent; all attempts he made to sail further south were thwarted by pack ice. It was only in 1840 that Captain James Clark Ross, by then Britain's most experienced Arctic navigator, sailed south and successfully broke through the belt of pack ice into the waters now known as the Ross Sea. He discovered Ross Island, and to the east of it a ridge, which he called the Victoria Barrier and about which he wrote: “... we had the same chance of overcoming this mass as if we were trying to swim through the rocks of Dover.”
Ross was shocked. Ice cliffs from 46 to 61 m high hung over his ships, and to the south nothing was visible except an endless icy plain. Strictly speaking, the Ross Ice Shelf is an approximately triangular slab of ice whose thickness ranges from 183 m at the ice barrier at its leading edge to 1300 m in the landward part. Its area is 542,344 sq. km. - this is larger than the territory of Spain and almost equal to the area of ​​France; and since it is afloat, it rises and falls under the influence of the tides. Large pieces of shelf ice break off and turn into table icebergs; the largest recorded, with an area of ​​31,080 sq. km, was larger than Belgium.

The Ross Ice Shelf is fed by glaciers. Many of them, such as the Beardmore Glacier, come down from the Transantarctic Mountains, but glacial streams coming from Mary Byrd Land bring more ice. A ship sailing through the Ross Sea in 1950 encountered an iceberg with a corner of a building sticking out of its side, identified as a fragment of a house from one of Admiral Byrd's Little America stations, built about 30 years earlier.

The shelf ice is mostly free of cracks and is easy to move around. It is relatively flat, but the progress of the sled depends on the condition of the surface. Snowy areas are difficult to navigate whether the sled is pulled by people, dogs or tractors. Often there are sastrugi - dense, wind-created ridges of snow that, if their height exceeds 30 cm, can make travel difficult. It’s especially disappointing when the depressions between the ridges are filled with soft snow, the surface appears smooth, but people and tractors fall through.

"Planets of the Solar System"- Mars. The Great Red Spot, a giant hurricane in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Mir station. Neptune. The Mir station is located above the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Sun. Mercury and Earth. The Martian year lasts 687 Earth days. Pluto. The third major planet from the Sun in the Solar System. Pluto is the smallest of the major planets in the solar system.

"Minor planets"- The Moon’s own thermal radiation is insignificant. Venus. Atmosphere and water on Mars. Mercury has a magnetic field. The distance of Mercury from the Earth is from 82 to 217 million km. Dimensions, shape and mass of Mercury. Atmosphere and physical fields on Mercury. The highest peak of Venus is Mount Maxwell - height 12 km.

"Giant Planets"- Involving class students in the general conversation. Later they saw that Saturn had not one ring, not three, but more. The brightest ring, B, is medium, and ring C is very faint. Satellites of Jupiter. Uranus. A bright, very large ring is “put on” the flattened ball. Pluto has a satellite. Jupiter is the largest of all the planets in the solar system.

“Geography 6th grade Glaciers”- Classification of glaciers. Peroto Moreno Glacier (Argentina). Could glaciers form in our area now? Iceberg Ice Shelf. Mountain cover glaciers. The entire area from which the river collects water? How are interstratal waters formed? Which lake is the largest in area? Monument to those killed as a result of the collapse of the Kolka glacier.

"Formation of the Planets"- Calcium. Eagle Nebula. The bulk of the protoplanetary disk leaves the Solar System. "Catastrophic" hypotheses. Magnesium. The emergence of planets. Magnesium silicates, iron and nickel. Let's keep the Earth the way we got it! Formation of planets. The Horsehead Nebula is part of a dark dust cloud.

"Planet of Knowledge textbooks"- “Fine arts”, grades 1-4. Educational and training complex for primary school. "Russian language", grades 2-4. Training sheets. Cognitive activity. Textbooks; workbooks; didactic and methodological aids. Creative tasks. Qualitative tasks. Project activity (grade 2). Unity of approaches to organizing educational and extracurricular activities.