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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 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.
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.
[14] [15] In 1978, it was believed that the loss of the ice sheet would cause around 5 m (16 ft 5 in) of sea level rise, [90] Later improvements in modelling had shown that the collapse of the ice grounded below the sea level would cause ~3.3 m (10 ft 10 in) of sea level rise, [102] The additional melting of all the ice caps in West Antarctica ...
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.
Nearly all of Antarctica is covered by a sheet of ice that is, on average, at least 1,500 m (5,000 ft) thick. Antarctica contains 90% of the world's ice and more than 70% of its fresh water. If all the land-ice covering Antarctica were to melt — around 30 × 10 ^ 6 km 3 (7.2 × 10 ^ 6 cu mi) of ice — the seas would rise by over 60 m (200 ft ...
Specifically, temperatures on the peninsula have risen by more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950, a much bigger increase than seen elsewhere in the world, said the study, which was published in ...
At 4320 km 2, [4] it is larger than Majorca, several times larger than Iceberg A-74 which calved in the same year, or approximately 14% the size of Belgium. The ice of the Filchner–Ronne ice shelf can be as thick as 600 m; the water below is about 1400 m deep at the deepest point.