Erebus Glacier () is a glacier draining the lower southern slopes of
Mount Erebus
Mount Erebus () is the second-highest volcano in Antarctica (after Mount Sidley), the highest active volcano in Antarctica, and the southernmost active volcano on Earth. It is the sixth-highest ultra mountain on the continent.
With a summ ...
,
Ross Island
Ross Island is an island formed by four volcanoes in the Ross Sea near the continent of Antarctica, off the coast of Victoria Land in McMurdo Sound. Ross Island lies within the boundaries of Ross Dependency, an area of Antarctica claimed by New ...
,
Antarctica
Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...
. It flows west to
Erebus Bay
Erebus Bay () is a bay about wide between Cape Evans and Hut Point Peninsula, on the west side of Ross Island. The bay was explored by the British National Antarctic Expedition, 1901–04, under Robert Falcon Scott. It was named by Scott's sec ...
where it forms the floating
Erebus Glacier Tongue. It was named in association with Mount Erebus by the
British National Antarctic Expedition, 1901–04
The ''Discovery'' Expedition of 1901–1904, known officially as the British National Antarctic Expedition, was the first official British exploration of the Antarctic regions since the voyage of James Clark Ross sixty years earlier (1839–184 ...
, under
Robert Falcon Scott
Captain Robert Falcon Scott, , (6 June 1868 – c. 29 March 1912) was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the ''Discovery'' expedition of 1901–1904 and the ill-fated ''Terra Nov ...
.
[
A large calving event took place on 1 March 1990, when a substantial portion of the Erebus ]glacier tongue
An ice tongue is a long and narrow sheet of ice projecting out from the coastline. An ice tongue forms when a valley glacier moves very rapidly (relative to surrounding ice) out into the ocean or a lake. They can gain mass from water freezing at t ...
was detached from the main glacier. The piece that was separated was 3.5 km long and its mass was estimated to be 1011 kg.
See also
* List of glaciers in the Antarctic
There are many glaciers in the Antarctic. This set of lists does not include ice sheets, ice caps or ice fields, such as the Antarctic ice sheet, but includes glacial features that are defined by their flow, rather than general bodies of ice. Th ...
* Glaciology
Glaciology (; ) is the scientific study of glaciers, or more generally ice and natural phenomena that involve ice.
Glaciology is an interdisciplinary Earth science that integrates geophysics, geology, physical geography, geomorphology, climato ...
References
Glaciers of Ross Island
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