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[74] [75] [76] According to one study, if the Paris Agreement is followed and global warming is limited to 2 °C (3.6 °F), the loss of ice in Antarctica will continue at the 2020 rate for the rest of the 21st century, but if a trajectory leading to 3 °C (5.4 °F) is followed, Antarctica ice loss will accelerate after 2060 and start adding 0.5 ...
The geography of Antarctica is dominated by its south polar location and, thus, by ice. The Antarctic continent , located in the Earth 's southern hemisphere , is centered asymmetrically around the South Pole and largely south of the Antarctic Circle .
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.
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.
Location and diagram of Lake Vostok, a prominent subglacial lake beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. East Antarctic Ice Sheet is located directly above the East Antarctic Shield – a craton (stable area of the Earth's crust) with the area of 10,200,000 km 2 (3,900,000 sq mi), which accounts for around 73% of the entire Antarctic landmass. [19]
<p>Chances are you make it through most days without sparing a thought for Antarctica. At just over 5.4 million square miles, it's a massive chunk of land that is nearly twice the size of ...
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.
From 1992 to 1996, the two ice sheets – which hold 99% of the world’s freshwater ice – were shrinking by 116 billion tons (105 billion metric tons) a year, two-thirds of it from Antarctica.