Antarctic Peninsula

Description

Glaciers and ice caps form in places where snow and ice build-up during the winter is more than the amount of melt during the warmer seasons. This build-up of snow gradually becomes denser and is compressed into ice, which is driven by gravity to slide and to flow downhill from the highest points of the interior to the coast. In Antarctica, much of the flowing ice has reached the coast and has spread over the surface of the ocean, to form floating ice shelves that are still connected to the land.