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It is believed that the loss of the ice sheet would take between 2,000 and 13,000 years, although several centuries of high emissions may shorten this to 500 years. 3.3 m (10 ft 10 in) of sea level rise would occur if the ice sheet collapses but leaves ice caps on the mountains behind, and 4.3 m (14 ft 1 in) if those melt as well.
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 ice sheet is around 2.2 km (1.4 mi) thick on average and is 4,897 m (16,066 ft) at its thickest point. [2] It is also home to the geographic South Pole, South Magnetic Pole and the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station. The surface of the EAIS is the driest, windiest, and coldest place on Earth.
Sea ice thickness spatial extent, and open water within sea ice packs can vary rapidly in response to weather and climate. [1] Sea ice concentration is measured by satellites, with the Special Sensor Microwave Imager / Sounder (SSMIS), and the European Space Agency's Cryosat-2 satellite to map the thickness and shape of the Earth's polar ice cover. [2]
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.
Earth's North Pole is covered by floating pack ice over the Arctic Ocean. Portions of the ice that do not melt seasonally can get very thick, up to 3–4 meters thick over large areas, with ridges up to 20 meters thick. One-year ice is usually about 1 meter thick. The area covered by sea ice ranges between 9 and 12 million km 2.
Since the albedo of ice is much higher than that of water, ice concentration will regulate insolation in the polar oceans. When combined with ice thickness , it determines several other important fluxes between the air and sea, such as salt and fresh-water fluxes between the polar oceans (see for instance bottom water ) as well as heat transfer ...
Antarctic sea ice is the sea ice of the Southern Ocean. It extends from the far north in the winter and retreats to almost the coastline every summer. [1] Sea ice is frozen seawater that is usually less than a few meters thick. This is the opposite of ice shelves, which are formed by glaciers; they float in the sea, and are up to a kilometre thick.