Ross Ice Shelf | Antarctica’s Largest Floating Ice Platform

By Coty Perry

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Ross Ice Shelf | Antarctica’s Largest Floating Ice Platform

The Ross Ice Shelf is Antarctica's largest floating ice mass – roughly 487,000 square kilometres, about the size of France or Spain. This immense platform stretches 800 kilometres across the southern Ross Sea, with its nearly vertical front rising 15 to 50 metres above the water. What you see represents just 10 percent of the ice shelf's total mass. The other 90 percent floats hidden beneath the surface.

Sir James Clark Ross encountered this barrier on 11 January 1841 whilst searching for the South Magnetic Pole. His reaction:

"It was an obstruction of such character as to leave no doubt upon my mind as to our future proceedings, for we might with equal chance of success try to sail through the cliffs of Dover."

— Sir James Clark Ross

The Picture Of The Ice Layer Ross Ice Shelf Antarctica Shutterstock Secret Atlas

The expedition couldn't sail further south, so Ross mapped the ice front eastward instead. Early explorers called it simply 'The Barrier' – a name that captured both its scale and its role as gatekeeper to the continent's interior.

The Ross Ice Shelf became the starting point for expeditions pursuing the South Pole. Ernest Shackleton's 1908 Nimrod expedition became the first humans to cross it. Both Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott crossed the shelf to reach the Pole in 1911, establishing bases on its edges.

Amundsen's party landed at the Bay of Whales on the eastern side near Roosevelt Island, whilst Scott's expedition based itself on Ross Island to the west.

The Ross Ice Shelf is the size of France. Standing in front of it is like nothing else.

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What makes the Ross Ice Shelf significant

Gateway to the interior

The shelf’s gently undulating surface provides the best approach into Antarctica’s heart. Its western edge at McMurdo Sound became headquarters for Robert Falcon Scott’s 1911–12 South Pole expedition and later hosted long-term research programmes, centred around what is now McMurdo Station. The eastern regions served Roald Amundsen’s successful 1911 South Pole attainment and Richard E. Byrd’s three U.S. expeditions between 1928–41.

McMurdo Sound at sunset Antarctica Shutterstock Secret Atlas

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Dynamic ice platform

Giant ice streams feed the Ross Ice Shelf, transporting ice down from East and West Antarctica's high polar ice sheets. The shelf acts as a vast triangular raft – relatively thin, flexible, and only loosely attached to adjoining lands. Giant rifts develop behind the barrier wall and occasionally rupture completely, spawning the huge tabular icebergs characteristic of the Ross Sea.

Though the barrier's position appears stationary, the ice undergoes continual change through calving and melting whilst moving northward. The shelf's mean thickness reaches 330 metres along 79°S latitude, increasing to over 700 metres further south. Bottom freezing adds 38-50 centimetres of ice annually at distances 160-320 kilometres inland from the barrier, whilst oceanographic data suggests the net effect dissolves the shelf by roughly 120-220 centimetres per year.

Long-term monitoring of the Ross Ice Shelf’s movement, thickness, and stability is conducted by institutions such as the British Antarctic Survey, which combine field measurements with satellite observations.

Historical significance

Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Expedition (1901-1904) made the first significant study of the shelf. By measuring calved icebergs and their buoyancy, Scott estimated the ice sheet averaged 274 metres thick. Measurements in 1902-03 showed it had advanced 555 metres northward in 13.5 months – evidence of the shelf's dynamic nature.

Adelie penguins on pack ice near Ross ice shelf Antarctica Shutterstock Secret Atlas

Experience the Ross Sea with Secret Atlas

The Ross Ice Shelf sits at the head of the Ross Sea, a region Secret Atlas explores on select expeditions. When ice and weather conditions allow, voyages may approach the ice front, offering rare views of the shelf from sea level.

The vast, flat-topped icebergs that calve from the Ross Ice Shelf do not remain confined to the Ross Sea. Carried northward by ocean currents, these giant tabular icebergs can later be encountered across other parts of the Antarctic — including along the Antarctic Peninsula — providing a tangible connection between Antarctica’s most remote ice shelves and its more frequently visited regions.

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