Ronne Ice Shelf

The figure shows an ERS-1 SAR image acquired on 30-1-1992. The main part of the image is made up by a floating sea ice and small icebergs (bright) in the Weddell Sea. The lower part shows the northeastern boundary of Ronne Ice Shelf which is heavily ruptured due to differential ice motion and has a thickness of about 300 m at the ice edge.

The lobe in the lower right corner is grounded ice at the slope of Berkner Island. The grounded ice moves very slowly, whereas the ice in the lower left corner of the image, on Ronne Ice Shelf, moves towards the sea with a velocity of about 1 km per year.

The complex pattern of rifts between Berkner Island and the main part of Ronne Ice Shelf is not only an effect of differential motion, but also due to grounded ice (the Hemmen Ice Rise) not visible in the image, just upstream of the system of rifts.

The rifts are filled with sea ice and partly with small icebergs broken off from the ice shelf.

H. Rott, Innsbruck, Austria

Keywords: ESA European Space Agency - Agence spatiale europeenne, observation de la terre, earth observation, satellite remote sensing, teledetection, geophysique, altimetrie, radar, chimique atmospherique, geophysics, altimetry, radar, atmospheric chemistry