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About 98 percent of the surface of Antarctica—the coldest, driest, and southernmost continent on Earth—is covered in a thick, dense layer of ice. Some of this ice moves to the Southern Ocean surrounding the continent and breaks into icebergs. Antarctica is of profound interest to scientists because of its impact on the world’s oceans and climate and as a rich source of data about Earth’s history.

Ice shelves are the seaward extensions of continental ice sheets. They are found extending from 50 percent of the coast of Antarctica and account for 11 percent of the mass of ice of the Antarctic Ice Sheets. The two largest ice shelves—Ross (472,960 square kilometers) and Ronne-Filchner (422,420 square kilometers)—together represent 67 percent of the total area of Antarctic ice shelves. Ice shelves are typically thinner at their seaward edge; the largest shelves reach a depth of 1,300 meters near the grounding line (the location where the ice begins to float), but thin to 200 meters at the leading edge.