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Over longer timescales, the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is much smaller than the East Antarctic ice sheet and is grounded deep below sea level, is considered highly vulnerable. The melting of all of the ice in West Antarctica would increase global sea-level rise to 4.3 m (14 ft 1 in). [98]
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]
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]
According to NASA, between 2002 and 2023, Antarctica’s ice sheet annually shed approximately 150 gigatons of ice, causing global sea level to rise by 0.4 millimeters per year.
Of the continent's 162 ice shelves, 68 show significant shrinking between 1997 and 2021, while 29 grew, 62 didn’t change and three lost mass but not in a way scientists can say shows a ...
A JPL analysis published in 2022 found that thinning and crumbling away of Antarctica's ice shelf had reduced its mass by some 12 trillion tons since 1997, double previous estimates.
A23a is a large tabular iceberg which calved from the Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf in 1986. It was stuck on the sea bed for many years but then started moving in 2020. As of February 2024, its area is about 3,900 square kilometres (1,500 sq mi), which makes it the current largest iceberg in the world. [2] [3]
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.