Antarctica Satellite Image Map: Darwin Glacier, United States Geological Survey; National Science Foundation

Exhibition Label:
"Climate Change at the Poles," Jan-2009, Kate Meyer, Jennifer Talbott, and Angela Watts
Located on the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest ice shelf in Antarctica (roughly the size of France), Darwin Glacier is one of several glaciers that feeds into the shelf as it floats atop the ocean. Ice shelves affect the rate glaciers melt. Once an ice shelf disappears, the glaciers significantly increase their melting rate. In 2002 a large iceberg, nearly ten times the size of Manhattan, broke off the Ross Ice Shelf,confirming the rising temperatures at the southern pole. Strong interest in the Ross Ice Shelf has led most research teams to create camps on or nearby the shelf, as the Americans did with McMurdo.