The Recovery Glacier () is a

glacier A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its Ablation#Glaciology, ablation over many years, often Century, centuries. It acquires dis ...

flowing west along the southern side of the

Shackleton Range The Shackleton Range is a mountain range in Antarctica. Rising at Holmes Summit to , it extends in an east–west direction for about between the Slessor and Recovery glaciers. The range was named after Sir Ernest Shackleton, leader of the Br ...

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 ...

. First seen from the air and examined from the ground by the

Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (CTAE) of 1955–1958 was a Commonwealth-sponsored expedition that successfully completed the first overland crossing of Antarctica, via the South Pole. It was the first expedition to reach the South ...

in 1957, it was so named because of the recovery of the expedition's vehicles which repeatedly broke into bridged

crevasse A crevasse is a deep crack, that forms in a glacier or ice sheet that can be a few inches across to over 40 feet. Crevasses form as a result of the movement and resulting stress associated with the shear stress generated when two semi-rigid pie ...

s on this glacier during the early stages of the crossing of Antarctica. It is at least 100 km (60 mi) long and 64 km (40 mi) wide at its mouth. Dana Floricioiu and Irena Hajnsek of the German Aerospace Centre spoke on the radar data showing the interior of the Recovery Glacier at the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium in Cape Town, South Africa, in July 2009. The data comes from the German public-private satellite Terrasar-X and when combined with Radarsat-1 shows the changes in the glacier over 11 years. The Recovery Ice Stream that drains part of the

East Antarctic Ice Sheet The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) is one of two large ice sheets in Antarctica, and the largest on the entire planet. The EAIS lies between 45° west and 168° east longitudinally. The EAIS holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by and ...

into the glacier is nearly long and feeds the

Filchner Ice Shelf Wilhelm Filchner (13 September 1877 – 7 May 1957) was a German army officer, scientist and explorer. He conducted several surveys and scientific investigations in China, Tibet and surrounding regions, and led the Second German Antarctic Expeditio ...

over the

Weddell Sea The Weddell Sea is part of the Southern Ocean and contains the Weddell Gyre. Its land boundaries are defined by the bay formed from the coasts of Coats Land and the Antarctic Peninsula. The easternmost point is Cape Norvegia at Princess Martha ...

. The area contains four

subglacial lake A subglacial lake is a lake that is found under a glacier, typically beneath an ice cap or ice sheet. Subglacial lakes form at the boundary between ice and the underlying bedrock, where gravitational pressure decreases the pressure melting point ...

s, causing the ice flow rate to vary dramatically, ranging between 2 and 50 meters per year. The ice stream drains about 35 billion

ton Ton is the name of any one of several units of measure. It has a long history and has acquired several meanings and uses. Mainly it describes units of weight. Confusion can arise because ''ton'' can mean * the long ton, which is 2,240 pounds ...

s of water and ice into the ocean each year, while the entire East Antarctic ice sheet releases about 57 billion tons a year. The

Blackwall Ice Stream Blackwall Ice Stream () is a slightly S-shaped Antarctic ice stream about long and wide. It descends from about to where it joins Recovery Glacier between the Argentina Range and the Whichaway Nunataks. It was named after Hugh Blackwall Evans ...

joins Recovery Glacier between the

Argentina Range The Argentina Range is a mountain range of rock peaks and bluffs, long, lying east of the northern part of Forrestal Range in the northeastern portion of the Pensacola Mountains of Antarctica. Discovered and photographed on January 13, 1956, in t ...

and the

Whichaway Nunataks Whichaway Nunataks () is a group of rocky nunataks extending for 7 nautical miles (13 km) and marking the south side of the mouth of Recovery Glacier. First seen from the air and visited in 1957 by the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedit ...

References

* Ice streams of Antarctica Glaciers of Coats Land Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf Subglacial lakes {{CoatsLand-glacier-stub

See also

References