Above and Below Antarctic Ice
Antarctica is dominated by ice. The ice shapes the continent, dictates the ocean currents, and provides the platform for all life in this frozen realm. This ice cools the Southern Ocean to proved a convergence zone that protects Antarctica from the other oceans. It is the attachment point for the base of the Antarctic food web, phytoplankton. Without ice, the Great Southern Continent would be nothing but a rocky wasteland. In the south, ice is life!
The Antarctic ice sheet expands and contracts each year as sea ice freezes in the winter and melts away in the austral summer.
Great chunks of ice calve off the hundreds of glaciers that flow from land into the Southern Ocean.
The icebergs swirl around the continent in a clockwise rotation until they drift into warmer waters or are grounded and slowly break apart.
These icebergs scour the sea flow in the shallows and wipe away anything that has managed to take hold over the last summer.
For each amazing ice sculpture that is seen, it seems an even larger one waits just behind it.
The wind, waves, and even escaping gas all play their part to sculpt these natural works of art.
Each iceberg that passes by represents the future of this white continent, protected by its castles of ice.
The tips of the icebergs that are visible represent only a small fraction of the ice they contain, keeping up to 90% of the iceberg a secret from those that look from above.