The Amery Ice Shelf is a broad ice shelf

Ice shelf

An ice shelf is a thick, floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface. Ice shelves are only found in Antarctica, Greenland and Canada. The boundary between the floating ice shelf and the grounded ice that feeds it is called...

 in Antarctica at the head of Prydz Bay

Prydz Bay

Prydz Bay is a deep embayment of Antarctica between the Lars Christensen Coast and Ingrid Christensen Coast. Portions of the bay were sighted in January and February 1931 by Norwegian whalers and the British Australian New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition...

 between the Lars Christensen Coast

Lars Christensen Coast

Lars Christensen Coast is that portion of the coast of Antarctica lying between Murray Monolith, in 66° 54' E, and the head of Amery Ice Shelf in 71° 00' E. The seaward portions of this area were discovered and sailed along by Norwegian whalers employed by Lars Christensen of Sandefjord, Norway...

 and Ingrid Christensen Coast

Ingrid Christensen Coast

Ingrid Christensen Coast is that portion of the coast of Antarctica lying between Jennings Promontory, in 72° 33' E, and the western end of the West Ice Shelf in 81° 24' E. It is located in the western half of Princess Elizabeth Land, just east of Amery Ice Shelf. The coast was discovered and a...

. It is part of Mac. Robertson Land

Mac. Robertson Land

Mac. Robertson Land is the portion of Antarctica lying southward of the coast between William Scoresby Bay and Cape Darnley. Mac. Robertson Land is located at . In the east, Mac. Robertson Land includes the Prince Charles Mountains. Mac...

. The name "Cape Amery" was applied to a coastal angle mapped on February 11, 1931 by the British Australian New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE) under Douglas Mawson

Douglas Mawson

Sir Douglas Mawson, OBE, FRS, FAA was an Australian geologist, Antarctic explorer and Academic. Along with Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackleton, Mawson was a key expedition leader during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.-Early work:He was appointed geologist to an...

. He named it for William B. Amery, who represented the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 government in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 (1925–28). The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names

Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names

The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names is an advisory committee of the United States Board on Geographic Names responsible for recommending names for features in Antarctica...

 interpreted this feature to be a portion of an ice shelf and, in 1947, applied the name Amery to the whole shelf.

In December 2006, it was reported by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...

 that Australian scientists were heading to the Amery Ice Shelf to investigate enormous cracks that had been forming for over a decade at a rate of three to five metres a day. These fractures threaten to break off a 1000 square kilometre piece of the Amery Ice Shelf. Scientist want to discover what is causing the cracks, as there has not been similar activity since the 1960s. However, the head of research believes that it is too early to attribute the cause to Global Warming

Global warming

Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

 as there is the possibility of a natural 50-60 year cycle being responsible.

Lambert Glacier

Lambert Glacier

Lambert Glacier is a major glacier in East Antarctica. At about 60 miles wide, over 250 miles long, and about 2,500 meters deep, it holds the Guinness world record for the world's largest glacier...

 flows from Lambert Graben into the Amery Ice Shelf on the southwest side of Prydz Bay.

The Amery Basin (68°15′S 74°30′E) is an undersea basin north of the Amery Ice Shelf.

The Amery Ice Shelf is small compared to the Ross Ice Shelf

Ross Ice Shelf

The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica . It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than 600 km long, and between 15 and 50 metres high above the water surface...

 and the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf

Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf

The Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, also known as Ronne-Filchner Ice Shelf, is an Antarctic ice shelf bordering the Weddell Sea.-Description:...

.