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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).
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 Mountains.
The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica (as of 2013, an area of roughly 500,809 square kilometres (193,363 sq mi) [1] and about 800 kilometres (500 mi) across: about the size of France). [2] It is several hundred metres thick.
Some 98% of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, the world's largest ice sheet and also its largest reservoir of fresh water. Averaging at least 1.6 km thick, the ice is so massive that it has depressed the continental bedrock in some areas more than 2.5 km below sea level; subglacial lakes of liquid water also occur (e.g., Lake ...
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. Until 2015, Antarctica’s ...
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 dome known as Dome Argus in East Antarctica is the highest Antarctic ice feature, at 4,091 metres (13,422 ft). It is one of the world's coldest and driest places—temperatures there may reach as low as −90 °C (−130 °F), and the annual precipitation is 1–3 cm (0.39–1.18 in).
Like the other ice sheets, West Antarctic Ice Sheet had undergone significant changes in size during its history. Until around 400,000 years ago, the state of WAIS was largely governed by the effects of solar variation on heat content of the Southern Ocean, and it waxed and waned in accordance with a 41,000-year-long cycle. [31]