Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The loss of West Antarctica ice would take at least 500 years and possibly as long as 13,000 years. [110] [111] Once the ice sheet is lost, the isostatic rebound of the land previously covered by the ice sheet would result in an additional 1 m (3 ft 3 in) of sea-level rise over the following 1,000 years. [112]
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.
But the region is hugely significant: the Antarctic ice sheet already sheds an average of 150 billion metric tons of ice every year and, in its entirety, it holds enough water to raise global sea ...
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 Ross Ice Shelf is the main outlet for several major glaciers draining the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which contains the equivalent of 5 m of sea level rise in its above-sea-level ice." The report added that observations of "iceberg calving" on the Ross Ice Shelf are, in their opinion, unrelated to its stability. [10]
The Thwaites Glacier on the vast West Antarctica Ice Sheet is commonly called the "Doomsday Glacier" because of its potential to significantly raise sea levels, inundating low-lying coastal ...
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]