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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]
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 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.
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.
The Antarctic ice sheet is melting in a new, worrying way that scientific models used to project future sea level rise have not taken into account, suggesting current projections could be ...
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 ...
NASA estimates show the Antarctic ice sheet has enough ice to raise the global mean sea level by up to 58 meters. Studies have shown that about a third of the world's population lives below 100 ...
The West Antarctic ice sheet is likely to completely melt [94] [95] [96] unless temperatures are reduced by 2 °C (3.6 °F) below 2020 levels. [97] The loss of this ice sheet would take between 2,000 and 13,000 years, [ 98 ] [ 99 ] although several centuries of high greenhouse emissions could shorten this time to 500 years. [ 100 ]