An ice tongue is a long and narrow sheet of

ice Ice is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaq ...

projecting out from the coastline. An ice tongue forms when a valley

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 ...

moves very rapidly (relative to surrounding ice) out into the

ocean The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the wo ...

or a

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

. They can gain mass from water freezing at their base, or by snow falling on top of them. Mass is then lost by calving or by melting. Ice tongues can range in length from to .

Icebergs An iceberg is a piece of freshwater ice more than 15 m long that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open (salt) water. Smaller chunks of floating glacially-derived ice are called "growlers" or "bergy bits". The ...

are often formed when ice tongues break off in part or wholly from the main glacier. Two examples of ice tongues are the

Erebus Ice Tongue The Erebus Ice Tongue (more often called "Erebus Glacier Tongue") is a mountain outlet glacier and the seaward extension of Erebus Glacier from Ross Island. It projects into McMurdo Sound from the Ross Island coastline near Cape Evans, Antarc ...

and the

Drygalski Ice Tongue The Drygalski Ice Tongue, Drygalski Barrier, or Drygalski Glacier Tongue is a glacier in Antarctica, on the Scott Coast, in the northern McMurdo Sound of Ross Dependency, north of Ross Island. The Drygalski Ice Tongue is stable by the standar ...

References

* Bodies of ice Glaciers {{glaciology-stub