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It is believed that the loss of the ice sheet would take between 2,000 and 13,000 years, although several centuries of high emissions may shorten this to 500 years. 3.3 m (10 ft 10 in) of sea level rise would occur if the ice sheet collapses but leaves ice caps on the mountains behind, and 4.3 m (14 ft 1 in) if those melt as well.
If ice shelves break up, the ice flow behind them may accelerate, resulting in increasing melt of the Antarctic ice sheet and an increasing contribution to sea level rise. Known changes in coastline ice around the Antarctic Peninsula: 1936–1989: Wordie Ice Shelf significantly reduced in size. 1995: Ice in the Prince Gustav Channel disintegrated.
A sea-level rise of 3.3 m (10 ft 10 in) would occur if the ice sheet collapses, leaving ice caps on the mountains, and 4.3 m (14 ft 1 in) if those ice caps also melt. [101] Isostatic rebound may contribute an additional 1 m (3 ft 3 in) to global sea levels over another 1,000 years. [ 100 ]
The Patuxent Trough is more than 300 km long and over 15 km wide, while the Offset Rift Basin is 150 km long and 30 km wide. These three troughs all lie under and cross the so-called "ice divide" - the high ice ridge that runs all the way from the South Pole out towards the coast of West Antarctica. [18]
Greenland ice sheet as seen from space. An ice sheet is a body of ice which covers a land area of continental size - meaning that it exceeds 50,000 km 2. [4] The currently existing two ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica have a much greater area than this minimum definition, measuring at 1.7 million km 2 and 14 million km 2, respectively.
The ice is estimated to be about 2,700 m (8,900 ft) thick at the Pole, so the land surface under the ice sheet is actually near sea level. [ 2 ] The polar ice sheet is moving at a rate of roughly 10 m (33 ft) per year in a direction between 37° and 40° west of grid north, [ 3 ] down towards the Weddell Sea .
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Visualization of the ice and snow covering Earth's northern and southern polar regions Northern Hemisphere permafrost (permanently frozen ground) in purple. The polar regions, also called the frigid zones or polar zones, of Earth are Earth's polar ice caps, the regions of the planet that surround its geographical poles (the North and South Poles), lying within the polar circles.