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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 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). It is the largest of Earth's two current ice sheets, containing 26.5 million cubic kilometres (6,400,000 cubic miles) of ice ...
The Greenland ice sheet is an ice sheet which forms the second largest body of ice in the world. It is an average of 1.67 km (1.0 mi) thick, and over 3 km (1.9 mi) thick at its maximum. [2] It is almost 2,900 kilometres (1,800 mi) long in a north–south direction, with a maximum width of 1,100 kilometres (680 mi) at a latitude of 77°N, near ...
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) lies between 45° west and 168° east longitudinally. It was first formed around 34 million years ago, [3] and it is the largest ice sheet on the entire planet, with far greater volume than the Greenland ice sheet or the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), from which it is separated by the Transantarctic ...
In 2012, research found that the West Antarctic ice sheet had warmed by 2.4 °C (4.3 °F) since 1958 – around 0.46 °C (0.83 °F) per decade, which was almost double the 2009 estimate. [35] In 2022, Central WAIS warming between 1959 and 2000 was estimated at 0.31 °C (0.56 °F) per decade, with this change conclusively attributed to increases ...
[4] [5] [6] As ice sheets expand over the ocean, they become ice shelves. [6] Ice sheets contain 99% of all the freshwater ice found on Earth, and form as layers of snowfall accumulate and slowly start to compact into ice. [5] There are only two ice sheets present on Earth today: the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet.
Glaciology (from Latin glacies 'frost, ice' and Ancient Greek λόγος (logos) 'subject matter'; lit. 'study of ice') is the scientific study of glaciers, or, more generally, ice and natural phenomena that involve ice. Glaciology is an interdisciplinary Earth science that integrates geophysics, geology, physical geography, geomorphology ...
Laurentide ice sheet. The maximum extent of glacial ice in the north polar area during the Pleistocene period included the vast Laurentide ice sheet in eastern North America. The Laurentide ice sheet was a massive sheet of ice that covered millions of square miles, including most of Canada and a large portion of the Northern United States ...