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The Antarctic ice sheet is a continental glacier covering 98% of the Antarctic continent, with an area of 14 million square kilometres (5.4 million square miles) and an average thickness of over 2 kilometres (1.2 mi).
The ice sheet has an average thickness of around 2.2 km (1.4 mi). The thickest ice in Antarctica is located near Adélie Land close to the ice sheet's southeast coast, at the Astrolabe Subglacial Basin, where it measured 4,897 m (16,066 ft) around 2013. [1]
Nearly all of Antarctica is covered by a sheet of ice that is, on average, at least 1,500 m (5,000 ft) thick. Antarctica contains 90% of the world's ice and more than 70% of its fresh water. If all the land-ice covering Antarctica were to melt—around 30 × 10 ^ 6 km 3 (7.2 × 10 ^ 6 cu mi) of ice—the seas would rise by over 60 m (200 ft). [22]
Most of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, with an average thickness of 1.9 km (1.2 mi). Antarctica is, on average, the coldest, driest, and windiest of the continents, and it has the highest average elevation. It is mainly a polar desert, with annual precipitation of over 200 mm (8 in) along the coast and far less inland.
A map of West Antarctica. The total volume of the entire Antarctic ice sheet is estimated at 26.92 million km 3 (6.46 million cu mi), [2] while the WAIS contains about 2.1 million km 3 (530,000 cu mi) in ice that is above the sea level, and ~1 million km 3 (240,000 cu mi) in ice that is below it. [20]
Antarctica’s vast expanse of sea ice regulates Earth’s temperature, as the white surface reflects the Sun’s heat back into the atmosphere.
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.
Antarctica is the largest ice desert in the world. Some 98% of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet , the world's largest ice sheet and also its largest reservoir of fresh water . Averaging at least 1.6 km thick, the ice is so massive that it has depressed the continental bedrock in some areas more than 2.5 km below sea level ...