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Science 28 March 1980:
Vol. 207. no. 4438, pp. 1463 - 1465
DOI: 10.1126/science.207.4438.1463
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Articles

Core Drilling Through the Ross Ice Shelf (Antarctica) Confirmed Basal Freezing

IGOR A. ZOTIKOV 1, VICTOR S. ZAGORODNOV 1, and JURIY V. RAIKOVSKY 1

1 Institute of Geography, U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, Staromonetny 29, Moscow 109017, U.S.S.R.

New techniques that have been used to obtain a continuous ice core through the whole 416-meter thickness of the Ross Ice Shelf at Camp J-9 have demonstrated that the bottom 6 meters of the ice shelf consists of sea ice. The rate of basal freezing that is forming this ice is estimated by different methods to be 2 centimeters of ice per year. The sea ice is composed of large vertical crystals, which form the waffle-like lower boundary of the shelf. A distinct alignment of the crystals throughout the sea ice layer suggests the presence of persistent long-term currents beneath the ice shelf.

Submitted on June 25, 1979
Revised on October 23, 1979


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Sedimentation associated with Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves: implications for palaeoenvironmental reconstructions of glacimarine sediments.
J. Evans, J. Evans, and C. J. Pudsey (2002)
Journal of the Geological Society 159, 233-237
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Marginal-marine glacial sedimentation in the late Precambrian succession of East Greenland.
A. C. M. Moncrieff and M. J. Hambrey (1990)
Geological Society, London, Special Publications 53, 387-410
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