Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf
Coordinates: 78 ° 30 ′ 0 ″ S , 61 ° 0 ′ 0 ″ W.
The Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf is the second largest permanent ice sheet in the Antarctic after the Ross Ice Shelf . The double name is derived from the German geographer and expedition leader Wilhelm Filchner (1877-1957), who discovered the eastern part of the ice shelf on his expedition in 1911, and the American engineer Finn Ronne (1899-1980), who opened the western part named after his wife Edith Ronne after an expedition in 1947.
The 449,000 km² ice shelf covers a large bay of the Weddell Sea and is bounded in the south and west by the Ellsworthland and in the east by the Prinzregent-Luitpold-Land with the Argentinean Belgrano II station . To the southeast is the Queen Elizabeth Land , which is part of the British Antarctic Territory . The ice shelf extends furthest to the south where the Foundation Ice Current flows out.
The Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf is often also represented as two individual ice shelves - Filchner and Ronne Ice Shelf - the separating element of which is the Berkner Island enclosed in it , whereby the boundaries of the individual ice shelves cannot be precisely defined. In addition to the Berkner Island, two larger ice domes , the Korff Ice Dome and the Henry Ice Dome , are enclosed by the ice of the ice shelf .
The Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf is only 200 meters thick at its edge to the sea. However, in the region where the ice sheet pushes into the sea, it is up to 1,500 meters high.
From 1982 to 1999 the German Filchner summer station was on the ice shelf . In the fall of 1998, A-38 , a 150 × 35 kilometer piece of the ice shelf on which the station was located, broke away. The station was then recovered and loaded onto the research vessel Polarstern on February 13, 1999 .