Ice shelves are thick slabs of ice that are attached to coastlines and extend out over the ocean.

Ice shelves are thick slabs of ice that are attached to coastlines and extend out over the ocean. In the natural course of events, ice shelves often calve large icebergs. Beginning in the mid-1990s, however, some ice shelves began exhibiting a new behavior: rapid disintegration into small pieces, likely as the result of warming temperatures. On February 28, 2008, the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula exhibited such a phenomenon.