The floating ice cliff at the seaward end of an ice shelf. See Frezzotti and Polizzi (2002) Annal. Glaciol. 34, 1 on ice fronts as indicators of climate change. An ice front responds rapidly to temperature rise: in the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland a floating ice tongue collapsed and caused the calving ice front to retreat several kilometres (http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/greenlandicesheet/).