Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The loss of West Antarctica ice would take at least 500 years and possibly as long as 13,000 years. [110] [111] Once the ice sheet is lost, the isostatic rebound of the land previously covered by the ice sheet would result in an additional 1 m (3 ft 3 in) of sea-level rise over the following 1,000 years. [112]
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]
The Antarctic sea ice cover is highly seasonal, with very little ice in the austral summer, expanding to an area roughly equal to that of Antarctica in winter.It peaks (~18 × 10^6 km 2) during September (comparable to the surface area of Pluto), which marks the end of austral winter, and retreats to a minimum (~3 × 10^6 km 2) in February.
The Antarctic Ice Sheet is drained to the sea by several ice streams. The largest in East Antarctica is Lambert Glacier.In West Antarctica the large Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers are currently the most out of balance, with a total net mass loss of 85 gigatonnes (84 billion long tons; 94 billion short tons) per year measured in 2006.
In 2023, the Antarctic sea ice reached record-low levels, with over 2 million square kilometres less ice than usual during winter – about 10 times the size of the UK.
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.
(Reuters) -Sea ice that packs the ocean around Antarctica hit record low levels this winter, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said on Monday, adding to scientists' fears that the ...
Sea ice covers about 7% of the Earth's surface and about 12% of the world's oceans. [1] [2] [3] Much of the world's sea ice is enclosed within the polar ice packs in the Earth's polar regions: the Arctic ice pack of the Arctic Ocean and the Antarctic ice pack of the Southern Ocean.