How to Use ice shelf in a Sentence

ice shelf

noun
  • The dead buck was stuck fast, his snout buried firm under the ice shelf.
    — Nick Fasciano, Outdoor Life, 8 Feb. 2024
  • Think of the floating ice shelf as a dam that holds back the ice sheet on land.
    — WIRED, 27 Oct. 2023
  • There’s no way to know what an iceberg of this size will do to the ice shelf.
    — Avery Thompson, Popular Mechanics, 26 Feb. 2019
  • As this grounding line recedes, bits of the ice shelf break off.
    — The Economist, 17 Aug. 2019
  • The faster movement of ice causes the ice shelf to stretch and crack.
    — Andrew Freedman, BostonGlobe.com, 10 Feb. 2020
  • Such ice shelves are an important part of the earth's cryosphere.
    — Elizabeth Weise, USA Today, 13 Apr. 2025
  • The grounding line is the point where glaciers and ice shelves begin to float.
    — Stephanie Edwards, Discover Magazine, 8 May 2025
  • Much of that loss is because warmer ocean water has caused the ice shelves to melt.
    — Li Cohen, CBS News, 7 Feb. 2020
  • That could take hundreds of years, but the ice shelf could fall apart much sooner.
    — Taylor Wilson, USA TODAY, 17 Feb. 2023
  • This week a giant city-sized iceberg split off an ice shelf in what part of the world?
    — CNN, 26 Jan. 2023
  • Part of what holds it in place is an ice shelf that juts out onto the surface of the ocean.
    — Laura Paddison, CNN, 15 Feb. 2023
  • The key to the future of Thwaites is the ice shelf and its tongue.
    — Arkansas Online, 4 Feb. 2022
  • The ice shelf is one of the restraining forces holding the ice sheet back.
    — Ted Scambos, The Conversation, 7 June 2022
  • But soon that dam will break and the ice shelf will shatter into icebergs.
    — Matt Simon, Wired, 6 Jan. 2022
  • That allows ocean waves to rock the ice shelf, further stressing it.
    — New York Times, 14 Apr. 2022
  • This erosion lets the ice flow faster, pushing against the floating ice shelf.
    — Ted Scambos, The Conversation, 7 June 2022
  • The ice shelf acts as a dam, slowing its parent glacier's flow into the ocean.
    — Douglas Fox, Scientific American, 1 Nov. 2022
  • Although that could take hundreds of years, the ice shelf could fall apart much sooner.
    — Wyatte Grantham-Philips, USA TODAY, 16 Feb. 2023
  • And that could be bad news for the glacial ice sheet’s connection to the floating ice shelf.
    — WIRED, 8 Nov. 2022
  • Stronger winds tend to push ice away from the ice shelf, which leaves areas of water open for more ice to form.
    — Laura Paddison, CNN, 12 June 2023
  • Some sections build up ice shelves, but the creek is still flowing and the fish are still biting.
    — Brittany Anas, The Denver Post, 12 Mar. 2024
  • But as the ocean warms, its water laps against the ice shelves from below and speeds up their melting.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Oct. 2023
  • One by one, the ice shelves on the east side of the peninsula began to collapse.
    — National Geographic, 15 Nov. 2016
  • In satellite images, the center of the ice shelf looks stable.
    — Douglas Fox, Scientific American, 1 Nov. 2022
  • Meanwhile, ocean water seeps beneath the ice shelf and washes up against the base of the glacier.
    — Chelsea Harvey, Scientific American, 4 Apr. 2018
  • The bit of a glacier that’s resting on land is known as an ice sheet, and the bit floating on the ocean is the ice shelf.
    — Matt Simon, Wired, 16 Feb. 2022
  • Think of an ice shelf as a cork that’s keeping the rest of the glacier, that ice sheet, from sliding into the ocean.
    — Matt Simon, Wired, 16 Feb. 2022
  • The ice shelf on the upwind side of the hole is the perfect spot to set a couple of the duck decoys as resters.
    — Phil Bourjaily, Field & Stream, 3 Dec. 2019
  • The impact of the calving event on the ice shelf is unclear, scientists said.
    — Julia Jacobo, ABC News, 28 Feb. 2021
  • Now climate change has turned the ice shelf into a threat - to Pettit’s field work, and to the world.
    — Sarah Kaplan, Anchorage Daily News, 14 Dec. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ice shelf.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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