File:Roi Baudouin Ice Shelf (MODIS 2021-02-26).jpg

English: The Roi Baudouin Ice Shelf sits along the edge of Queen Maud Land in eastern Antarctica. It is fed by the part of the Western Ragnhild Glacier, which slowly pushes ice over the ocean as it creeps forward and protected by an ice promontory to the west and by the Derwael Ice Rice in the east. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of the Roi Baudouin ice shelf on February 24, 2021.

Like all ice shelves, Roi Baudouin clings fast to the coastline as it floats over ocean water. Along protected coastlines, ice shelves can survive for hundreds—even thousands of years. They tend to have dynamic lives, expanding when ice oozes over them from glaciers that feed them and shrinking when icebergs calve from their edges. Ice shelves also change with the seasons. During frigid winters, the sea ice thickens and freezing expands, while the sunshine and rising temperatures of the Antarctic summer encourages melting.

The Antarctic summer melt season started December 12, 2020 and ended February 15, 2021. On February 24, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported that a first look at the 2020-2021 season points to an intense melt season in the northernmost and southernmost Antarctic Peninsula, but generally blow-average melting elsewhere on the continent. Coastal East Antarctica, in particular, recorded cold temperatures and had significantly below average melting. The report states “This late in the melt season the ice surfaces of the Amery and Roi Baudouin Ice Shelves are usually flooded with extensive meltwater in the form of flooded snow, lakes, and even rivers. However, such features are absent this year.”